We all need help.
Critical insight and expert outsider perspective help to shore up performance gaps and clarify priorities. Constructive criticism and high counsel are key components that guide the game plan. Everyone can benefit from the expertise and wisdom of a strong advisory team!
So, how do you assemble the advisory team? Your clients and your network are pretty good places to start. Often the right selections will opt in gratis under the law of reciprocity. Meaning, you help them right back (or go first).
Any solid sales organization has a formalized client advisory initiative (or is simply missing a huge opportunity). And most good leaders and entrepreneurs are leveraging an advisory or an informal mastermind group for support and counsel. It simply does not pay to go it alone.
Some good self assessment questions around this include:
Where am I getting my outside advice and counsel to help inform and guide big decisions?
Is this the best advice in this area I can procure?
Is the advice unbiased and brutally honest?
Am I being held accountable?
What can I give in return?
My 2011 advisory team is at the ready. A group of 6 trusted experts covering industry, finance, operations, sales, procurement, leadership and strategy mobilized for reciprocal support as needed. They are on call and each is rock star good at what they do (which is most helpful in areas that are simply not my strengths). I also have the best coach in my business and consider her to be a wise investment in the CEO of me. Perhaps the best part of advisory and coaching relationships is being held accountable to commitments and learning from people you trust and respect.
If I had to do it over again this group would have been formally mobilized for the last decade. No doubt, that outside perspective and all star insight would have challenged me to be a better executive and leader.
Growth is a team sport.
