Rather than crash into 2017, I thought I’d share a couple of thoughts to stimulate your thinking during the inevitable reflective period of your forthcoming break:
1. Advisory Board / Panel / Committee structure:
Following from the last newsletter article about the value of an Advisory Board structure to assist high growth companies navigate the unknown unknowns I received questions about who should be on your advisory board, how often should they meet etc, should they be paid?
Your Advisory Board members should have “expert” skills and experience in subject areas that are essential to your growth strategy and which your team is under skilled or under resourced in. The specific skill requirements will inevitably change over time as the business develops. Of course members of your Advisory Board also need to be absolutely trustworthy and willing to sign a confidentiality agreement.
How frequently should they meet – at least quarterly, some meet bi-monthly and when the organisation is navigating rapid change that can be even monthly. Bottom line the advisory group meets as frequently as it needs to be effective for the organisation.
Should they be paid? Of course to ensure there is a clear obligation on the members to be effective. The Advisory Board lasts as long as the company directors want it to.
2. Why January and Feb is a great time to review strategy
For any strategic planning exercise to be effective you and your team have to be in the right frame of mind. Developing strategy is about choices –what to do and what not to do. It requires external inputs not just a review of internal performance. That means new information needs to be processed and evaluated along with a methodology to mitigate our inherent biases.
Robert T. Tucker – an innovation thinker posits that to develop your organisations innovation capability your team needs to (amongst a range of factors)
- cultivate taking risks,
- to collaborate with customers and partners,
- and to identify unmet and unarticulated customer needs
What better time to explore new ideas, new ways of doing things, new markets and new business models but when everyone has returned from a relaxing holiday season, have fresh open minds and haven’t yet completely settled into the ‘usual’ way of doing things..
So in that reflective time over the holidays think about how robust your strategic planning process is and when you should start in 2017 and what can you do to take a measured risk, stretch your thinking and get you a little out of your comfort zone, maybe a little maybe a lot…
3. By Invitation – CEO Luncheon
Lead Your Industry is hosting an Invitation-Only series of CEO Luncheons for CEOs of high growth privately owned companies. These are opportunities to hear an expert presentation over lunch, engage in robust discussion with peers on topics of key importance to CEO’s.
The last two meetings included Rory Kennard presenting the Makinex growth story -20 products, 20 countries, 10 years, (Sydney Morning Herald article) and Chris Golis discussing the importance of CEO’s developing their Emotional Intelligence skills and practice. His message is that people drive performance, emotions drive people, temperament drives emotions. EQ highlights the need to understand and therefore be able to influence yourself and others. Whilst you can’t change your personality you can certainly change your behaviour.. Lessons for us all.
For more information about Chris Golis see his website
Attendees from the lunches shared the following feedback:
“A good luncheon with other quality businesses”
“I thought it was a very collegial group, very open and stimulating”
“Good atmosphere and enjoyable group”
“Really good selection of people. All like-minded”
If you are a CEO of an established high growth business and would be interested to attend please contact me
4. Strategic Planning workshops:
In 2017 Lead Your Industry will run a series of Strategic Planning workshops targeted at CEO’s and Management Teams of high growth, privately owned businesses.
The workshops will be designed to facilitate company’s to re-engage with an inspiring vision, develop a winning strategy, navigate global opportunities and establish an Advisory Board. There will be a range of formats including one day, three day sessions with work in between and a two day intensive offsite format. If these would be of interest to you and your team please contact me.
5. Groupmind:
Leveraging collective intelligence for strategic planning and organizational development.
Lead Your Industry Pty Ltd utilises the GroupMind cloud based tool with all client engagements. Customised to the Lead Your Industry process the GroupMind platform and tools ensures all communication, processes, collective intelligence and content generated is easily accessible from anywhere in the world and visible to all engaged in the project. Implementation tracking, traffic light reporting and email prompts drive action planning and KPI tracking maximising engagement and measureable results. See here for more information
Merry Christmas
Wishing you and yours a very Merry Christmas, a happy and prosperous New Year and a relaxing holiday season. See you in 2017 for another year of learning and growth.