The Success Split

January saw our EB peer group programme for existing and aspiring NEDS, trustees, board advisers and consultants working at board level split into two cohorts. The numbers have swelled significantly with constant requests to join - this way we can ensure each member gets valuable airtime. And, once a quarter, we all come together and catch up!

In EB1’s first session of 2024 we welcomed new member Arif, who has been involved in the Experience Bank for a number of years and has recognised the support that the group for existing and aspiring NEDS, Trustees, Board Advisors and Consultants at Board Level will give him in his roles.

We start our sessions with a sign-in where we look at scores for how people in the group are doing business wise and in their personal lives. We also use this as an opportunity to raise any questions. The scores were all solid for January and words like, manic, slow, steady were all used to describe the start of 2024!

Given we are at the start of a New Year our amazing facilitator, mentor and coach, Andrew Marsh, asked us all to make a start on our outcome/intent statement i.e. what does 'good' look like by December 2024? The model is based on the 1-3-5 approach from Pete Wilkinson.?For the next group meeting we all agreed to have finished our 1 intent/ambition statement and 3 objectives used to ensure we have achieved it.???

We then moved onto other questions including an issue on company culture, especially in larger companies multiple sites and geographies. The scenario is tension with the MD of an acquired business leading to friction between central finance and the local team. We undertook a wide discussion and looked at the Burke- Letwin Diagnostic Model as a way of evaluating culture and systems – we will be expanding on this next time as many of us were interested.??

We then explored what CRM systems people are using. Lots of systems like Hubspot, Salesforce etc were shared. However, when looking at the purpose of the system to track the sale/lead and project management/delivery, this widened the discussion to include Trello and other PM systems. The discussion made us question if one system could do all.?

As part of the discussion Andrew mentioned system mapping. We didn’t have enough time left to get deep into that so we are all looking forward to getting to grips with it at the February meeting.

If you would like to join our peer group, do get in touch with me on peter@theexperiencebank.co.uk