As your company grows and changes, your job changes, and so should the composition of your personal board.
That doesn’t mean you should dump the people who helped you get to where you are. Instead, expand your board, adding new members that have greater subject matter expertise dealing with the problems still ahead of you and with greater professional context of where your role as CEO is going.
You meet candidates for this often through your normal workday: through your employees, investors, customers, industry conferences, and the numerous other friendly intros you take each month. But chances are, you won’t naturally become close enough to any of them just through a “business as usual” approach. You’re too busy and they’re too busy. And if you’re honest with yourself, you’re probably always in “sales mode” in those conversations.
Take a much more active role in “hiring” for your personal board using a process similar to how you would recruit an executive to your company or an independent board member. Identify what dimensions/characteristics you’re missing from the voices on your board, build a target list of candidates or at least an archetype, and then prospect.
Some examples of what you might want/need
- Is one of your goals to IPO and be the CEO that rings the bell? Find ten people who have done that.
- Are you considering exists to an incumbent/competitor in your industry? Find ten people who have done that.
- Fundraising soon for your Series A, B, C, or D round?
- Scaling your business with co-founders?
- Transforming from a one-product company in one market to a multi-product company across ten markets?
- Hiring (or firing) 100+ employees?
- Consider other CEOs that are one step ahead of you, as well as those that have done it all. Both will have important perspectives.
You’ll eventually find one or more individuals that are a good match for your personal board and you’ll at a minimum learn something new from every conversation.
References
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