The value of developing your own council

Posted on 05. Feb, 2009 by Craig Killick in Business

I saw a speaker call Gary Bertwhistle a couple of years ago at a Leadership Conference. Nothing special but he did mention an idea about creating your own council – a collective of people for different areas of your life who you can share ideas with, be it work, hobbies or shared interests. Different councils for different aspects of your life – for collective support. The group needs to be based on mutual respect and the ability for each member to be able to contribute.

I have toyed with this idea since but done nothing with it… until last night. I arranged for a get together of eight local business people who I trust and respect who I could “chew the fat” with. This included business owners, a consultant, an accountant, a banker and a lawyer so we were well covered on the Professional front.

The premise that these people bought into was that we would get together with a view to discuss relevant issues to get a collective perspective. Last nights meeting being the first one, it was slightly unstructured and consisted of us firstly introducing ourselves formally to the group, including ways in which we each felt we could offer value to the collective.

From this, two themes came to ground, both giving me a new understanding of problems other businesses were facing – problems that I never come across – the main one being property and local red tape.

Needless to say, everyone took value from the conversation and we will be meeting again – maybe in larger (by invite only) numbers – and I am sure that over time, I will be able to persuade relevant people from my Basingstoke & Deane Borough Council to attend as well, as I personally feel they are very receptive at the moment to debate. If the quality of influence is high, who knows where that may lead in terms of actual change? I will remain naively optimistic.

Why tell you this?

Whether you work in a small company, large company, or on your own; you can’t beat sharing ideas and gaining new perspective outside your day-to-day routine. Your council could be about local business, it could be about getting all your fellow freelancers together. As long as you trust and respect each other, and you set some ground rules (mine was to say no overt selling to each other) I can’t see there is much to lose.

Tags: Business