The Benefits of an Advisory Board

In the fourth of a six-part series of blogs about the growth of The Lit­tle Pota­to Com­pa­ny (LPC), and the lead­er­ship CEO/­co-founder Angela San­ti­a­go, we talk about how she built and con­tin­ues to lever­age and ben­e­fit from an Advi­so­ry Board.

Full dis­clo­sure: I’m hon­ored to be a mem­ber of LPC’s Advi­so­ry Board, which has just been named the Best Advi­so­ry Board in Cana­da. This recog­ni­tion comes from a new, first-of-its-kind annu­al awards pro­gram that cel­e­brates the impact of excep­tion­al gov­er­nance on the suc­cess of pri­vate com­pa­nies — and I couldn’t be proud­er to be part of it.

In place for a few years, the val­ue of LPC’s Advi­so­ry Board to Angela may sur­prise peo­ple who usu­al­ly define its role strict­ly with­in busi­ness terms.

A Safe Place

This Board – dif­fer­ent from a gov­er­nance fidu­cia­ry board – is a safe place for Angela to strug­gle with the chal­lenges of leadership.

“It’s a place where I can go and say that I real­ly don’t know what to do next or I don’t know what my next move is. I’ve nev­er been a leader of this size of com­pa­ny, and you have to find the right places to be vul­ner­a­ble. You can’t just do that any­where, with anyone.”

But Board mem­bers are not just cheer­lead­ers. They also pro­vide crit­i­cal feed­back to let her know when she’s not doing some­thing right or has a blind spot.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kef8KKUdH2w&width=400&height=225&centervid=1&modestbranding=1[/embedyt]

“A cheer­leader is some­one who is will­ing to put them­selves out there

and be vul­ner­a­ble with you and call you on your stuff.

Their best inten­tion is to care for me as a leader of a grow­ing company.”

As I explain in Quadru­ple Your IQ (Chap­ter 11 of Your Oxy­gen Mask First), the key is to seek out peo­ple who’ve been there and done that. These are the ones who’ve made the mis­takes, learned the lessons, and moved past con­ven­tion­al wis­dom and the­o­ret­i­cal knowl­edge. They bring true wis­dom root­ed in real-life experience.

How to Start an Advi­so­ry Board

Here’s Angela’s advice about cre­at­ing a Board that she con­sid­ers essen­tial to scale and grow:

• Start small.
• Choose peo­ple you trust and respect, with whom you have a pro­fes­sion­al con­nec­tion — avoid­ing close friends or family.

She start­ed with just two peo­ple she knew well and worked with close­ly, grad­u­al­ly expand­ing her Board as she grew. Here’s her advice on how to get started.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDIHARPgFeg&width=400&height=225&centervid=1&modestbranding=1[/embedyt]

For more, here are links to our recent LPC Case Study and watch the full inter­view with Angela below.

[embedyt] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvkrdf8rcSk&width=400&height=225&centervid=1&modestbranding=1[/embedyt]

Oth­er Blogs

• Lever­age Busi­ness Advisors
• What Would Hap­pen If You Spent Anoth­er 10% of Time on Growth?
• The Great Lead­er­ship of Char­lie Munger

Old­er Podcasts

• Find­ing the Best Advi­sors Will Help You Quadru­ple Your IQ