So the board meeting ends, and a few of the board members and I go out for steaks, single malt scotch, and cigars. The CEO has not been invited, and we drink, laugh, blow smoke rings and make CEO jokes. Two board meetings later, the board fired the CEO, and I drew the short straw. I had just earned the right to be excluded from the board meeting after parties. I was the new CEO.
It’s lonely at the top, a phrase that is no less true just because it is a hackneyed cliché. Leading a company means having vision, courage, and determination. Words like FEAR, DOUBT, UNCERTAINTY are not words associated with Washington, Lincoln, Gandhi, King, Bezos, or Cook. So where do CEOs go to share their doubts, their fears? Who vets their vision before they bring it down from the mountain? To whom can they share their vulnerability and uncertainty? Their CFO? Their board? Their COO?
Well yes, if they want to create doubt and distrust and open themselves up to the possibility of a palace coup. If an entrepreneurial leader wants to execute with certainty, inspire confidence, and create a winning culture, they should develop a circle of outside, agenda-less advisors.
When, as CEO, I came back to my board, they didn’t want to hear my doubts. They wouldn’t abide my fears. They expected and deserved well-thought-out plans, confidently presented and expertly executed. The board room is not a “safe” place for a CEO to vent, decide, plan, and be vulnerable. A CEO’s board and executive team is rife with competing agendas. Advice and counsel is colored with personal bias and self-interest.
Compound competing agendas and the isolation that comes with operating in a fast-moving, lean enterprise, and there is no wonder that leaders fail. Startup entrepreneurs get caught up in the fire du jour, which often supplants the important strategic planning and decision-making required to keep the boat on course. Important decisions like those that drive an intentional culture of high performance, hiring/firing, and product pivots, don’t get enough brain cycles and suffer when the company’s most critical customer’s project has caught fire and needs attention.
Lastly, no one individual has all the answers, which is why wise King Solomon said, “A wise man has a wealth of advisors.” Companies don’t fail by consciously jumping off a cliff, they walk out off that precipice one tiny bad decision step at a time. Those small hiring, firing, pricing decisions accrue to the reason a company thrives or cataclysmic results.
Every business leader should gather around them a group of peer advisors that:
- Force them to step back from the business strategies on a regular basis
- Work as a sounding board for critical decisions
- Hold them accountable
The best companies rarely achieve greatness on the strength of a unique secret sauce. Fierce execution of well-vetted plans improves the odds. Andrew Carnegie knew this and surrounded himself with a Master Mind group that improved the quality of his decisions. Google’s founders Sergey Brin, Larry Page, and CEO Eric Schmidt, engaged professional outsider and superstar business coach/mentor, Bill Campbell, Chairman of the Board at Intuit. Campbell, the rock star of business mentors, created a great franchise at Intuit and mentored a list of luminaries that include Steve Jobs.
So what should entrepreneurial leaders do to ensure they benefit from informed, well-intentioned, agenda-less council? They can try to develop their own peer advisory board; there are several organizations they can contact that will place them into a peer advisory group. Or you could contact me about my professionally facilitated, high-performance, Peer Advisory Group – ThinkTank
- If you’re already the best leader you can be….. congratulations!
- If you don’t have the time to become a better leader….. my condolences
If you’d like to invest in becoming a better leader, contact me, and let’s see if I can help.
