Missing or Ignored Financial Procedures Are a Governance Problem
Small and medium-sized businesses often run on trust rather than processes, and without a board many run on the hope that nothing serious will break; peer advisory groups can fill part of that gap.
Featured in “Does your business have safeguards in place to ensure financial oversight?”, Rochester Business Journal (Kevin Oklobzija).
Thank you to the Rochester Business Journal and Kevin Oklobzija for the chance to highlight a challenge facing small and medium-sized businesses: too little attention to the structural basics that secure the successful operation of every business. In this case it's a practical issue, financial transaction checks and balances.
Issues like these highlight a risk most small and medium-sized businesses face: they run on trust, not on processes designed to protect the company while it grows. In larger companies, that's the role a board of directors plays. In smaller companies, many run on the hope that nothing serious will break.
On some level it's understandable why smaller companies don't have boards. Building and running a board costs money, takes time and adds complexity, so it keeps sliding to the bottom of the list. But those same facts make it imperative that smaller businesses find some external perspective and advice, so they can avoid the worst problems that can develop.
What peer advisory groups do
Many successful businesses without a board of directors turn to peer advisory groups to fill the gaps. While these groups don't have the authority over your company that a proper board of directors does, they still perform very important oversight and guidance roles that help avoid costly mistakes and often improve performance.
The work of these groups is practical. Members work together to:
- Find the blind spots that quietly hold business growth back
- Recommend proven practices to strengthen the company
- Aid company leaders in gaining the confidence to make the hard decisions they've been postponing
- Help you address the hundreds of other issues that keep you awake at night
Everyone brings their own experience to each other's businesses, so every CEO in the group benefits from the whole group's know-how.
As an ex-Vistage chair, I founded Brooklyn Advisors to build better peer advisory groups, OCTETs.
OCTETs are small, mastermind-style groups of eight CEOs from small and medium-sized businesses, with short, 4-hour impactful monthly meetings and added opportunities to learn from subject matter experts and network with your peers in optional, separate 2 hour sessions.
Test it out: who among your peers is using peer advisory to improve the performance and accountability of their business? This week, find out. There are several options here in Rochester, and I invite you to have a call or attend one of our insight sessions.
Membership in a CEO peer group doesn't have to cost thousands per month. Whether you're an owner or a hired-in CEO, OCTET membership is the best ROI-focused investment you can make short of building your own dedicated board of directors.
Join one of our no-cost Rochester CEO insight sessions and test your ideas with your peers.
Originally posted on LinkedIn ↗