Building Advisory Boards & Mentorship Whiplash

In my last company, I had a wonderful advisory board. During one session with a few advisors, the wise Collins Andrews, one of the early leaders at FIS Global, said, "Let's not give Marla mentorship whiplash." He coined that phrase after being in hundreds of sessions where conflicting advice had been given.

In my opinion, mentorship whiplash is inevitable if you seek diverse feedback on your company's products, services, team, performance metrics, leadership, and culture. Your company is like the elephant in the Buddhist Parable of the Blind Men and an Elephant. Depending on what part of the elephant the blind men touched, their emphatic description of "elephant" was that it was like a thick snake (trunk), a hard spear (tusk), a tree-like pillar (leg), a rope (tail), and a wall (side). All of the perspectives had truth in them, but none were the totality of truth.

As a company leader who's constantly seeking information and insights, you will get contradictory advice. Here are 5 things to keep in mind when putting together your advisory board and 3 ways to get better outcomes overall from the advice you get so you don't get mentorship whiplash.

Building an Advisory Board

1.????? Diversity: Know your vertical and create a matrix of the types of knowledge you need to succeed. Pursue people who can provide insights from their related fields and networks. For example, if you're in retail, seek experts in your product line, logistics and transportation, storage, packaging, distribution, etc.

2.????? Customer Representation: Make a list of your top 10 client targets and seek leaders in those companies who are influential and have large, respected networks. Focus first on your core audience but add advisors from tangential sectors.

3.????? Creative, Problem-solving Communicators: Get advisors who display imaginative and critical thinking, who are sleuths, who like to figure out how to do things. Give them the freedom and opportunity to think through problems with you and enumerate possible solutions when evaluating if their suggestions are a good fit. Listen for breakthrough ideas or input that surprises and challenges your assumptions.

4.????? Doers: Avoid big talkers who don't do anything. You want advisors who are willing to make a call, write an introductory email, or meet with your dev team.

5.????? Agreement: Get a written agreement from your advisors about their role, time commitment, and required respect for the opinions of others. Make it clear if this is a paid or unpaid role and get explicit permission to publicize the members of your board. Keep the time commitment manageable but ask permission to call with specific requests from time to time. You should meet with your advisors at least quarterly. I know one founder who meets weekly with his advisory board.

Getting the Most from an Advisory Board

1.????? Expectations: Make it clear to your advisors that you expect to be challenged. Invite contradictory points of view. Don't present information so that you're confirmed as right. Seek to learn by creating open-ended questions.

2.????? Verification: Advisors want to be helpful, but they're not always right. Don't necessarily act upon advice or dismiss it out of hand. It's up to you to research the advice you get and add it to the picture of the elephant in the parable. Crowdsource, get on Quora, Google it, read, and ask AI Assistants about the advice you get.

3.????? Time to Ponder: Give yourself time to ponder the advice you get. YOU have the greatest depth of knowledge about your company and know some things intuitively. You may not be able to debate your opinion, but following your gut is a euphemism for taking your own deepest, collective advice.

In summary, the best way to deal with mentorship whiplash is to invite it and plan for it. In the end, the buck stops with you, and you have to trust your gut and make decisions that you feel right about.

About Soul Food for Founders

There are a lot of resources, books and advisors to help entrepreneurs, and Marla Johnson accessed many of them over her 30-year career as a founder of video production, ISP & web design, digital marketing, game development, blockchain, and fintech SaaS companies. Soul Food for Founders is Marla’s attempt to wrap up her learned experiences, successes, and failures into meaningful and satisfying insights to lift up creative founders, so they are inspired, centered and can power on. In some cases, these are learnings that would have changed everything if she could have understood them earlier.

Marla brings her whole self to each delicious day and is passionate about doing, making, fixing, founding, and innovating. She loves her family, friends, neighbors, music, art, words, nature, gardening, and biking.? She uncontrollably jives and sings when any of a variety of tunes come on.?

Do you know a company founder?? Please, share!