Building a peer group as a startup executive
As you become more senior, the job becomes more lonely. Engineers can go to happy hour, share stories, talk a little trash, and help each other shake off the day’s stress. When you are CTO, you are the only one in the company with that job and you don’t have a direct peer group. You have senior engineers, other execs, and maybe the CEO, but you can’t go to happy hour with 3 other CTO’s from the company and riff on your day because there aren’t others. So you have to reach outside the company to build that peer group.
Targeted peer groups can improve your happiness and performance in a variety of ways:
Relieving stress - sharing notes and coping strategies with people who have empathy for your unique pressures
Improving operational decisions - sharing experiences with vendor selections, talent and culture issues, and operational processes
Improving relationships - discussing how to manage relationships with stakeholders
Improving your network - getting to know other experts for future opportunities or recruiting
Therefore it is important to build targeted peer groups, especially for new executives. For CEO’s, I recommend YPO. Women may enjoy Chief. Some VC’s have guilds or groups for different functional leaders within their portfolio companies.
If you don’t have built in communities, you can go find them or create them. They can be casual or well organized like Round. Either way, it’s important.
Your homework for today:
Think about the unique challenges you face in your role
Consider where you want to be in 12 months
Review the frequency and quality of discussions you get with like-minded peers
If you are satisfied with 3, given 1 and 2, congrats - time for happy hour. If not, find a way to improve it. The communities are there. If you can’t find them, email me and I’ll help 🙂
