Tag Archive for "Strategy"
How well you prepare to select your advisors will make or break your advisory board. It’s not a simple matter of selecting friends and colleagues, at least not if you want to have an effective advisory board and not waste time or money. It requires thought, honesty, analysis, and planning.
I have observed that many advisory boards get “slapped” together with insufficient thought and planning. The end result is people don’t show-up, money gets wasted and the company never starts its ascent toward greatness rather it wallows in mediocrity.
Answering the following questions will start you on your way to selecting advisors successfully.
- What does your company stand for?
- Why does your company exist?
- What is your company good at and known for?
- What do the markets you serve want and need?
What these four questions get at is the vision for your business. The people you ask to be your advisors will be very interested in this information.
- When was the last time you analyzed your business from the perspective of its strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats?
In the course of completing whats is known as a SWOT analysis, you will determine where the gaps are in skills and talent. This exercise requires that you and your senior management team, to the extent you have one, be honest with yourselves and each other.
Once you can answer these questions you will have the information you need to identify what type of advisors you need.
Want help with this and other exercises to build your advisory board? Consider the Advisory Board Kit, A Comprehensive Guide to Establishing an Advisory Board. Learn more by clicking here.
For years I have preached and sometimes cajoled clients about setting up an advisory board. Today I start a series on setting-up and running my own advisory board. I’m now taking my own advice.
The Process:
I always advise clients start by thinking about the following questions:
- Why do I want an advisory board? What are my goals and objectives for forming a board?
- Am I clear about my vision for my business 2 years out?
- What are some of the unmet needs of my business, including skills sets?
- What do I need to do to make my advisory board most effective?
- What are the benefits to advisors and reasons that they might want to join the board?
- Who can I identify as potential advisors among my colleagues, friends & acquaintances?
- What is the appropriate size of my advisory board to meet my goals and objectives?
- How often do I want to meet? What frequency works for the advisors?
- What am I able to pay advisors: cash, stock or options, expenses, product?
- How long should advisors serve? Should I have rolling terms of service?
- How will I handle an ineffective advisor?
- How will I communicate between meetings?
- What is the appropriate board structure?
- How should I organize & conduct board meetings and distribute the materials?
In future posts I will share my thoughts, fears and successes as well as those of my three advisors. I am fortunate that three long-time colleagues readily agreed to serve when I asked. It will be a privilege to work with them.
In a previous post I discussed how seeking out a mentor can help a business owner gain more depth of experience without incurring a lot of cost. In this post I discuss another option: using an advisory board also known as a non-legal board of directors.
The benefits of using an advisory board are numerous and include:
- Providing additional business experience, skills and functional expertise that maybe missing within your company.
- Strategic thinking about how to position the business.
- Providing access to new contacts and resources.
- Increasing credibility to the outside. This is particularly useful to a start-up.
- Creating greater accountability of senior management.
- Providing an outside perspective about what is working and not working inside the company.
Starting an advisory board will work best where the business owner is completely open with sharing company information. Any limiting of access to financial and other key information handicaps the advisors and dilutes the benefit to you the business owner. There are times when you might bring a group of advisors together to discuss a specific area. In this case financial information may not need to be disclosed.
Here are the questions I suggest you answer before starting: Continue Reading “Using an Advisory Board to Grow Your Business” »
