Marco has changed dramatically over the past five years – both in size and the services we offer. In many ways we have become so progressive that it has become difficult to find companies that do what we do and are similar in size.
When I was presented the opportunity to meet with a group of similarly sized companies, I jumped at the chance. We formed a peer group with two companies from the U.S., one from Australia, and Canada.
We started with a couple conference calls and even leveraged telepresence technology before we recently planned our first face-to-face meeting.
Here’s what I learned about peer groups along the way:
1. If you can’t find one, create one. It may be easy to say no one else is doing what we’re doing. But rarely is there an instance when we cannot learn from someone else. Get creative, remove the obstacles and create what you need. The result will be impactful. In a day and a half meeting, we made some business and life-changing decisions.
2. Commonalities should be at the core. That naturally gives way to sharing best practices, improving operations and doing what we do now better.
3. Differences can define the experience. It’s those differences that we challenge our own thinking and identify new opportunities. At our recent meeting, I was interested to hear how another managed services company has developed and implemented a new service line. It gave me the opportunity to evaluate if it would work for our company.
4. Leverage your personal specialties. At our first meeting, we asked each member to present on a specific topic we knew they were experts in. That included everything from shared services and leadership plans to project management and a new managed service.
5. Share what you know, even the small stuff. One of the biggest takeaways I had from our recent meeting was a technique on how to better manage my emails. It came out of a discussion on needing to work more on the business than in it and what stands in the way. It may seem small, but it can be transformational.
6. Engage other leaders from the organization in the group. I can learn a lot from this new peer group – and so can other leaders in my organization. At our last meeting, we committed to intentionally connecting key leaders within our group. That can include sharing the details of a new idea we may want to implement or having them meet as a group to talk about challenges and opportunities.
Over the years, I have learned the success of staying ahead of the curve is surrounding yourself with the right people. As CIO, it is my job to navigate the new world, identify opportunities and take action. But, even as a technology company, it’s not about reinventing the wheel. The key is finding others to learn from. Peer groups have been instrumental in helping me pave the way for our company.
