Advisory Board Development

I have run a company for years without a mentor, Advisory Board or Board of Directors, and we plugged along just fine. I had been completely comfortable in my role. The company was growing, I was making the company better and challenged myself to continuously improve what we did. I felt great about this. Then along came Mark.

Mark is a successful person and businessman that mentors me. First thing he did was push for greater accountability of me. I had always viewed myself as an accountable learner that worked continuously to improve my skill set and prepare the company to be better, but he recognized that I although I was improving myself and the company in different areas, all of these improvements lived inside my comfort zone. I was refining skills rather than learning new ones. He was right.

Through Mark's perspective, I was able to clearly see my shortcomings. There were things I was doing that broke down the vision of the company. I created a fragmented company by not saying things that needed to be said and not pushing for things I needed to push for. I was not leading well. I needed to demonstrate a willingness to face difficult situations and lead the company.

Once I started to assert leadership, everything started to fall into place for me. The company unified around an inspiring vision and silos were torn down. I was executing Mark's statement, "Do the hard things first".

I am now in the process of building an Advisory Board, thanks to Mark's suggestion This will create an ongoing process of accountability for me. This will lead to even more scrutiny, but I welcome it. Scrutinize me as much as possible. I want to be great, and by acknowledging my shortcomings, I am better equipped to fix them.

I am grateful to Mark for pushing me to be great. I hope this inspires you to push yourself to be great.