Why you need CEO peers to challenge your assumptions.
As a CEO and business owner, I needed more perspective. I was stale. I felt isolated at the top.
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Even worse, no one was challenging my assumptions. Advice was everywhere — and always had an agenda attached.
I knew this: what I was doing was not producing the growth I wanted.
Something had to change.
I needed someone to question my answers.
I gathered with a dozen business owners — a CEO peer group. We met confidentially to share experiences and insights. We described our challenges and opportunities — and greatly benefited from each other’s agenda-free recommendations. We learned, as Daniel Joseph Boorstin said: “The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance. It is the illusion of knowledge.”
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The results were substantial: my company became more professionally managed, process driven and — when I was ready — sellable.
This experience also improved my life beyond business. Held accountable by my peers, I allocated my time better. I stopped doing other people’s work. I was able to get home earlier. Life got better.
Want to grow — personally as well as professionally?
Feeling “isolated at the top?”
I convene monthly meetings of business leaders, meet individually with members, and bring in experts (on topics of management and beyond).
Our groups are for business owners and CEOs; we have groups for key executives (who report to CEOs); and groups for solo practitioners and emerging leaders.
Chuck, let’s chat about whether I would fit in a peer group.
Can you say: "I am trustworthy, trusting, smart, ambitious, effective, glass-half-full, coachable, self-aware — and would fit at a table of CEOs, business owners, or key executives."