Mastering Business Advisory: Your Path to Sustainable Growth

How to Build a Strategic Advisory Board for Your Business

As a business owner, it is imperative to assemble a trustworthy team capable of guiding your business toward long-term success. Join Dan Smits, CEO of GrowthPoint Partnership, on the complexities of setting up an advisory board. Learn about internal problem-solving skills and learn the essential components for any business aiming at sustainable growth. Explore the nuances of assembling a team of advisors, breaking down internal barriers, defining roles, and understanding the importance of external insights for optimal business impact.

 

What You’ll Learn

Dan Smits:
Partners in Growth podcast. I’m Dan Smits, the founder and CEO of Growth Point Partnership. With 25 years of owning and operating four businesses and being involved with two acquisitions and two successful exits, we know what drives growth and what hinders growth. And in the next few segments, we’ll dive into the challenges of setting up an advisory board unravel the complexities of internal decision making to make your business better. So let’s really dive in to this episode of Mastering Business Advisory, your path to sustainable growth.

Setting up an advisory board, solving problems internally. In the world of business, having the right guidance can be the difference between success or failure or just not doing that great in business. Today we’re exploring the ins and outs of a setting up an effective advisory board and honing in on your internal problem solving skills.

Two essential components for any business aiming for sustainable growth. How do we assemble a team of advisors who not only bring expertise, but also complement your vision? What does it take to break down internal barriers to problem solving? And how do you ensure that the advisory board you set up truly aligns with and amplifies your business objectives? Stay tuned as we explore these critical topics and give you a better understanding of the importance of having an advisory board for your business advisory board, an effective one, is really identifying the right mix of skills of these different people. How many people, are they internal people, are they coming from the outside? What type of experience do these people have to be able to fit into the group and really be a catalyst for helping to influence positive change? And developing or balancing diverse perspectives, highlight the challenge of integrating diverse viewpoints while maintaining a unified vision. So it’s okay to not agree on things. It’s not okay to be unprofessional on how you go through trying to solve these different obstacles. Because running a business is hard and bringing people in as an advisory board is even more difficult.

So, defining roles and expectations, talk about the complexities in setting clear roles and expectations for advisory board members.

Number two, we’re understanding internal problem solving barriers. We’re gonna address the common issues of internal bias and blind spots affecting the critical decisions. So we as people outside brought in to your advisory board have a better insight as to those blind spots. We’re gonna discuss how internal resistance to new ideas and strategies can hinder problem solving. You dive deep into exploring the challenges.

Explore the challenges in departments and the lack of cohesive communications with either people or teams or leaders within the organization. The importance number three is the importance of external insights into business growth. Emphasize the importance of external perspectives in providing fresh unbiased insights.

Discuss how internal advisors can help businesses stay aligned and responsive to market trends. Highlight how an advisor can contribute significantly to strategic planning and execution. Number four is structuring a business advisory board for optimal impact. If you’re going into a huge growth spurt or you’re having issues within your organization with profit of really knowing why you’re heightening the urgency of advisory board or the number of times that you meet or maybe bringing in another advisory board member because they’re really strong in those different areas. Discuss strategies to foster effective communications between the board and company leadership. Explore ways to assess and measure the impact and contribution of the advisory board.

These four different areas that I walked you through today will give you the foundation for setting up or tweaking your advisory board to really just find ways to better communicate in your organization. And keep in mind, using a fractional COO or a business consultant that helps you navigate through this process is a faster way of gaining traction if you don’t have the team members internally. So I encourage you to visit our website of grow If we can help you any way, please reach out. Please review our podcast. Leave a positive note on how I can influence your business in the future with other topics. Join my LinkedIn and have a great day and thanks for listening to Partners in Growth podcast. I’m Dan Smits. Thank you.