CEO peer group provides support, feedback
Kathy Doyle has become comfortable with financial statements, thanks to fellow members of her Vistage International CEO group.
A "better understanding of the role numbers play" isn't all that Doyle has gained from her Vistage peers, however. They've also helped her work through human resource concerns and resolve a "serious" benefit issue.
"For me, it's clarity of thought," Jay Medlin says of his CEO group. "The reality is that you get so in tune with your business that you can't look at it from the outside in."
Medlin's peers provide that outside look with an "open, honest discussion" of his ideas, he says.
Doyle is president of Doyle Research Associates Inc., a Chicago-based qualitative research consulting firm with a tad more than $3 million in sales and 15 employees. Medlin is president of Medlin Communications Inc., a Burr Ridge low voltage cabling company that has 20 employees and $4.5 million in annual sales.
Vistage is a San Diego-based peer discussion group organization with, says regional president Gaye van den Hombergh, 650 members in the Chicago area. Vistage, founded 50 years ago in Wisconsin and once known as TEC (The Executive Committee), opened a Rolling Meadows regional office in May.
There's a cost to belong, of course, but the cost seems reasonable when you think in 12-month periods. Specific numbers are hard to come by, but the annual cost to be part of a Vistage CEO group seems to hang around $12,000.
CEO groups max out at 16 members; businesses generally have sales between $4 million and $50 million. There is a lower cost option for smaller businesses.
Based on the experiences Doyle and Medlin share, plus conversations with van den Hombergh and two group chairs -- Bill Durmer, who is in charge of Doyle's group; and master chair Bob Berk -- here's what that $12,000 buys:
• An intensive full-day group discussion meeting each month, plus monthly one-on-one coaching sessions with the group chair.
The meetings are "exhausting," Doyle says. "We're drained when we walk out." The coaching, she says, "is hugely valuable because it's all focused on me and my company. Bill (Durmer) tackles very specific issues."
• The benefit of other peoples' experience. "Vistage's over-riding goal is to increase the effectiveness … of the CEO," Berk says. The process includes a requirement that members present annual business plans for group critique and quarterly reports on how they're doing. In addition, each group has four to six high-level outside speakers a year, plus the coaching.
• Tiger Teams, or group members who will drop everything and head for a member's business if there's a crisis. Two examples: Tigers responded when one member's chief sales executive left and took two top sales people; another Tiger Team ran a member's business for 18 months while the CEO battled illness.
Smaller businesses, those with sales up to $3 million, can join a small business CEO group for about $9,500 a year. Those groups have one full day and two half-day meetings a quarter, plus speakers and coaching.
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