May 5, 2015
Creating brightspot’s Advisory Board
We are excited to announce that brightspot recently completed one of our goals for the year: we created (and already met with!) our advisory board. Inspired by discussions with other entrepreneurs, other organizations, and articles like this one, we convened a group of trusted, outside experts to provide advice and accountability as we grow and develop as an organization.
The purpose of the board is two-fold:
- To give us advice on the strategic questions we face from a small group of individuals with different views of our industry and our organization. We envision getting advice on a range of topics such as long-term vision, recruiting, business development approaches, and staff learning and development.
- To increase the accountability of brightspot’s management by creating an outside board to whom we report progress and from whom receive ongoing feedback. While not playing a formal role in brightspot’s governance, this feedback will inform our long-term strategy and be part of our management’s annual performance review.
We may add to the board over time, and we’re incredibly lucky to have 3 brilliant inaugural members that we know well and trust:
- Bill Mayer who brings extensive experience in libraries, higher education, and leadership.
- Georgia Collins who brings experience in planning, people management, and business development.
- Mark Raheja who brings experience in strategy, marketing, and 21st century organizational design.
Our plan is to meet twice a year in April and October retreats and have remote check-ins at the midpoint between these times. We just had our first meeting and are already benefiting! A few of the impacts from our session include:
- It forced reflection and team discussions about where we are and where we are going (our SWOT discussion was particularly lively!)
- It gave us a chance to celebrate our successes in building the team, sustaining and creating client relationships, developing and diversifying our service offerings, and maturing our processes and operations.
- Each brightspotter was able to present and get feedback on his/her areas of responsibility in our org design.
- We were able to “walk the talk” and apply a lot of the tools and thinking we use with clients to ourselves (and test drive some new ones as well).
- It gave us time to be together out of our typical daily rhythms and to check out the latest pier redevelopment in lower Manhattan for dinner.
We look forward to continued and ongoing engagement internally and with our advisory board and are grateful for their service!