How to Become a Board Member — The Field Guide (Fillable PDF)

Fifty-seven worksheets for the search, the boardroom and the sale.

The working companion to How to Become a Board Member: An Operator’s Guide to Your First Seat, for operators who want a seat on a private-equity board, and want to be asked back.

One instrument to a page, in the order of the book’s nineteen chapters. For the search: the hard-thing line, the seat profile, the board résumé, the membership test, the room map and the yes-or-no test. In the boardroom: the Number worksheet, the reporting contract, the meeting clock, the variance split, the covenant forecast and the CEO-change test. For the sale: the T-18 calendar, the readiness scorecard, bids side by side and the conflict register.

Every blank page faces the same page filled in for Hovland Fire & Safety, the book’s invented company, so you see a finished page before you start your own. Print it for the binder you carry into the boardroom, or fill it in on screen with the credit agreement open beside it.

• Prove your one hard thing with numbers, and put it on one page.
• Count the days, put the terms on one page and say yes or no.
• Find the Board’s Number in your first month, and keep the board on it to the sale.
• Test the board’s own work before you test the CEO’s.

The guide adds Day Zero (the call and the eight weeks to the close), Day One (the first meeting), the board calendar, a chair’s guide, a glossary and the book’s 38 figures. Hovland’s numbers are teaching illustrations, not benchmarks. Check the arithmetic yourself. The guide is not legal, accounting, tax or investment advice.

Complete fillable PDF, 278 pages, with 2,421 fillable fields. After checkout, BookFunnel emails your download link. Save a copy before entering responses. No physical workbook is shipped. The main book is sold separately.