Category: innovation

Will peer advantage gain traction?  Can it be as common to the business lexicon someday as Emotional Intelligence is today?   The short answer is “yes.”  Why?  Because CEOs need peer advantage every bit as much as the cavemen needed the wheel.  In a recent conversation with Miguel Dias, Founder and CEO of CEO World, he reminded me of the cartoon of the cavemen ignoring their peer’s offer to make their lives easier.  While this cartoon is a “slightly altered” version of the original, it illustrates an important point.

It’s what every CEO peer advisory group leader must feel like when he or she reaches out to a CEO with a solution to a problem that too many CEOs don’t realize they have.   And if most CEOs took just a minute from being “too busy,” they could be reminded that who you surround yourself with matters and, because it matters, CEOs and business leaders can help each other in ways they just won’t find anywhere else.   In this fast-changing, complex world of ours, none of us should try to go it alone.

In the book, The Power of Peers: How the Company You Keep Drives Leadership, Growth & Success, Vistage Chair Bob Dabic said that participating openly in a peer advisory group involves fighting off a caveman mentality and its 10,000 years of human conditioning.  Today, too few people avail themselves of the myriad benefits of enlisting the support of their peers.  Fortunately, the wheel became an everyday part of our lives.  Sooner rather than later, so will peer advantage.