Founder in Eleven

Technology Services Group’s (TSG) improved performance was vastly different during the last 19 years as it was the first 5. This was in great part thanks to my involvement with multiple peer group boards and executive coaches.  During the last 19 years, I relied heavily on the shared experience of 30+ business owners to make better and more profitable decisions on everything from hiring sales representatives to balancing family and business demands.  Some peer group boards I joined were the Young Entrepreneurs Organization (YEO now EO) and The Alternative Board (TAB). I also helped found a new peer group, the Chicago Technology Roundtable (CTR), specifically for IT Services in the Chicago area.  This post will elaborate on some commonalities between these different peer boards and list the many benefits of joining.

Differences between a Peer Board and an Advisor Board

A “peer board,” also known as a “peer advisory board,” is a group of individuals who work similar roles—for the purpose of this post,  company founders.  The purpose of a peer board is to provide a forum for members to share insights, experiences, and advice with each other.  Peer boards for founders can be particularly helpful as individuals who face similar founder challenges can learn from each other’s successes, failures, and experience.

An advisor board, on the other hand, is a group of individuals who are selected to provide expert advice and guidance to one organization or business. Advisor boards are typically composed of individuals with diverse backgrounds and experiences who can offer different perspectives to an organization about achieving their goals. Unlike peer boards, advisor boards are not necessarily made up of individuals who are in similar roles or industries, but rather board members are chosen based on their expertise and ability to provide value to the organization.

While both peer boards and advisor boards are designed to provide guidance and support, peer boards focus on sharing insights and experiences among peers, while advisor boards focus on providing expert advice and guidance to one organization.  

Joining a Peer Board

The first and often hardest step is deciding on a board to join.  I joined YEO, a national organization that you pay to join, at the encouragement of two good friends who recognized I could better run TSG with peer input.  After training at YEO, it took a couple of months before I was selected for a forum group.  With TAB, I was recruited by a former partner I knew from Accenture that was the group’s facilitator/coach.  During the time at both YEO and TAB, I had drinks with two YEO members that also had IT professional services firms similar to TSG.  We discussed how it would be nice to form a group that was somewhat less formal than YEO and composed solely of IT professional services firms.  From our network of contacts, we were able to form the Chicago Technology RoundTable.  Through my time at YEO, TAB, and CTR, I learned many valuable lessons on peer group collaboration, many of which are listed below:

“Peer Group” Means “Equals”

In a true peer board, everyone is equal.  Establishing protocol and prioritizing meetings requires that no board members’ time or comments are more important than any other.  For founders used to being the boss, playing the role of a peer and listening rather than talking can be a difficult skill to acquire, but is essential to a board’s efficiency and function.

Leave the Ego at the Door

Founders/Entrepreneurs have a certain ego or competitive drive that made them successful with their company.  To have a functioning peer group requires founders to leave their competitive drive and ego out of the meeting.  Having a bigger or more profitable company does not equate to having better experience or advice to share.  Embracing a “servant” mentality means prioritizing the needs of the group and other members over one’s own objectives, which is key for a good functioning board.

Sharing Experience rather than Giving Advice

YEO Forums trained on the “Gestalt Protocol,” which encourages members to speak from experience, and not just give advice.  When a forum member would present an issue, YEO trained members to avoid advice in the form of “You should.”  The Gestalt Protocol focuses on experience-sharing and encourages the exchange of “I had a similar experience and did this” anecdotes.  The Gestalt Protocol training I did at YEO is something I bring to other peer groups, friends and relatives, and this blog.

Mining for Topics

Meetings typically start with each member sharing an update.  For the CTR, we followed a Goals/Best/Worst approach, where members would take 6 minutes to share following a standard template.  From the updates, topics can be picked for discussion based on their urgency or a member’s desire to dive deeper.  YEO pushed a specific protocol for topic presentation and experience-sharing from the members.  TAB had a paid a coach/facilitator to navigate topics.  For the CTR, we would keep track of topics on a Trello, which also had the benefit of  allowing for more informal discussions via comments and direct messaging..

Topic Presentation

Whether formal at YEO or looser at CTR, presentations  would begin with the member giving a background of their issue.  Members would ask questions when appropriate and share experience.  For CTR, we would specifically preface whether we wanted experience or advice from members.

Retreats and Bonding

YEO always encouraged members to “go deep” and share more than just business, including personal issues that might be common to other business founders.  In establishing trust to share critical business or personal issues, board members should be not only peers, but friends that do more than just meet once a month.  YEO would host annual retreats and lunches/dinners.  TAB and CTR would hold informal get-togethers and dinners.  With CTR, we invited spouses during our dinners and other various events. 

Confidentiality

Part of the training at YEO focused on confidentiality, and would include specific thoughts around what remained within the forum.  For the group to share deep issues requires members to respect the confidentiality of the board.  

Being composed of similar companies, CTR did a “compare metrics,”, something I had learned from TAB.  Comparing the companies’ revenues, net income, and percentages on a shared whiteboard was always a very confidential, but in the end beneficial in comparing key performance indicators in a safe and respected space.

Lifecycle of a Board

For both YEO and CTR, turnover came to us in the form of new members joining and old members leaving for different reasons.  While TAB remained very steady, I eventually left both YEO and TAB to focus exclusively on CTR.  Just like a company has a lifecycle of ups and downs, so does a peer group board.  With CTR, we had turnover as members successfully exited their companies in a sale and brought in new members from our networks.  Alumni still participated with new members in coming back and sharing their stories.

Benefits of the Board

All three boards prioritized getting out of the day-to-day company operations by listening to relevant experiences from other founders.  While all boards have a lifecycle and eventually end, I to this day look back to my many experiences and can still count on the friendships I made with the other members.  Below are some posts about my best practices that came directly from my board experience:

• Daily Huddle – Game Changer for Professional Services – This came from the YEO training and reading Mastering the Rockefeller Habits
• Embracing Inbound Marketing to Reach Unreachable Clients – One of my YEO peers was unbelievable at TV advertising, and I was always looking for a similar way to reach my IT services peers
• Solving “I Just Need to Hire a Better Salesperson” by Building an “Everybody Is in Sales” Organization – This came from both a quarterly meeting recommended by YEO and a facilitator from TAB.  This was also a topic that came up often in the CTR
• Company Culture Quick Fix – Employee of the Week – This approach came from a YEO forum member (thanks Carson!) 
• Jumpstart Consulting Sales through Software Partnerships – Early experience at CTR had all of us sharing software partnership experiences (thanks Mike and Lance!)
• Thoughts on Founder Work, Life and Sacrifice – All of the different board’s members shared experience that contributed to this article