The Friendly Outsider

It’s great to talk with the people you work with every day — your partners, customers, employees, suppliers, vendors. They can give you their perspective about how they experience working with you and your business. And they can also can give you valuable input on ways to make your business better.

But it’s also helpful to get another perspective — from someone who’s not directly involved with your company. Someone who’s close, but not too close. Someone who cares about you and your business, but who is not personally invested as a stakeholder in its success.

The Friendly Outsider can be your accountant, your attorney, the owner, manager or executive in another business or professional practice, virtually anyone you think has good judgment. Someone who “gets” you and has a feeling for what you care about and what motivates you. Someone who is willing to spend some time with you at regular times, listening to and talking with you about anything that’s on your mind. It should also be someone who’s able and willing to ask you some hard questions about what you’re doing — even why you’re in business at all — and to challenge your assumptions about what’s possible.

Does this sound familiar? Sure. Big business entities have boards of directors and advisors.

Why let the concept of an outside Board of Directors or Trustees be just for them? You can the same benefits for your business by identifying and connecting with your own Friendly Outsider.

You don’t have to make it a formal relationship, like Board membership. Asking someone to be on your Board, with all the responsibility and fiduciary obligations that entails, can be off-putting even to a close acquaintance.

Some business owners have found it helpful to join the local chapter of one of the moderated peer-group franchises that started awhile back. You might attend one of their meetings or even try that out for awhile and see how you like it. The formal structure and the fact that you have to pay to belong adds some discipline and implies the expectation of value, and that approach may be right for you. But if it doesn’t work out, don’t stop there.

Start small by talking to someone you trust about a small, low-stakes business decision that’s on your mind, and see how it goes.