E2A 092: Unlocking Business Potential Through Advisory Boards with Anthony Moss 

Episode Transcript

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Scott MacMillan

You're listening to the Entrepreneur to Author podcast. 

Announcer

Welcome to the Entrepreneur to Author podcast, the podcast that brings you practical strategies for building authority and growing your business. And now, here's your host, Scott MacMillan.

Scott:

My guest today is Anthony Moss. Anthony is director of Lead Your Industry and the author of the CEO Game Changer, How an Advisory Board Can Unleash Your Business Potential. Anthony, welcome to Entrepreneur to Author. Thanks so much for joining us.

Anthony Moss:

Thank you, Scott. It's great to be here.

Scott:

Listen, to start, I'd love if you could share a little bit about your background and experience that's brought you to what you're doing professionally and the work that you do with boards and CEOs.

Anthony:

Sure. Well, I was, I guess, fortunate in the very early stage of my career to be shipped from the UK to the US, to New York, in fact, to set up a new business, a greenfield site for the company that I was working for in the UK as a relatively young guy. Why am I sharing that?

I'm sharing that because that was a complete startup from scratch. It wasn't my business, but it felt like my business. And I was the only one in the US at that time.

I had to hire a team, build a business, spent a lot of time traveling in Canada, interestingly enough, which was great. But I had a fabulous experience of building that business over 10 years, making a couple of acquisitions, ending up with people in the Dominican Republic working for me, etc. And it was kind of like, even though I'd studied business, it was where I kind of learned how to run a business and the challenge of the evolutionary stages of business.

Fast forward to moving to Australia, did a couple of CEO jobs and then eventually decided I'm tired of working for others. I wanted to make money for myself. So I joined a small consulting firm in Sydney with three other partners, which was fantastic, working with high growth private companies to help them kind of go through transformation and did that for 10 years with the partners and then decided to set up my own organization, Lead Your Industry, about 12 years ago.

And the focus of my core business is strategy development for high growth private companies. So helping them get clarity about purpose, potential, appetite and kind of getting the right strategy for them. And then where appropriate and if appropriate, helping them establish an advisory board.

And so I currently chair three advisory boards. I'm a non-exec director, non-exec chair of an organization, too. So kind of the focus for me now is really on those advisory boards and non-exec roles.

Scott:

Wonderful. Wonderful. And we'll get into a little bit more about advisory boards in a moment.

But let's talk about the book, because you recently published your new book, The CEO Game Changer. Who is it that you wrote it for and how does it help them?

Anthony:

Well, I wrote it for those CEOs who I've been working with. So in my professional career, I guess I've had the fortune to see successes and failures, both in the businesses that I've been in in charge of and also clients that I've had. So I've seen what success looks like and I've seen what failure looks like.

And I think I wrote the book as an opportunity to share this idea of this concept of advisory boards to help those CEOs, I guess, who I define as being what's called commercially lonely. What I mean by that is that they are the fountain of inspiration for the team, for their leadership team, for all of their staff, for their shareholders, other executive directors, et cetera. And what that means is there's an expectation that they always have the answer or they'll always be able to find out the right answer.

But in reality, everyone's human and sometimes we don't know the answer. We don't have the confidence. We're not able to make that kind of decision.

And I guess I wanted to share this mission with those CEOs who I know every CEO is going through that challenge to show them that there's a pathway that might be different from the kind of executive, from the governance board structure. I think it's a very useful kind of step change for CEOs. So the CEOs typically are privately held companies.

They might be family businesses. They might be partnerships. But predominantly, the CEOs realize there's a better way.

They can see, they can sense the potential for their business. They have a clear vision of ambition where they want to take the business. They know that it's perhaps not going as well as they want it to.

So they're innately aware that there is a better way, but they're not quite sure what that better way is.

Scott:

Wonderful. You know, I think for the benefit of some of our listeners who may not be familiar with what an advisory board is, what's the difference between, say, a board of directors and an advisory board and kind of related, how frequently should an advisory board meet?

Anthony:

Yeah, it's a very clear distinction between a board of directors and a governance board. So if you kind of think of a, if you think of a large organization that's quoted on your stock exchange there, right, there's a legal responsibility to have a board of directors. The board of directors have a legal responsibility, a fiduciary responsibility to be stewards of that business.

And when they have non-executive directors, you know, they have enshrined in law, a level of control over that business. And that's entirely appropriate when you have multiple shareholders, stockholders, et cetera. That's entirely appropriate to have that.

But in addition to having that fiduciary responsibility, you know, they're also there to contribute to strategic direction, thinking about the right culture in the organization. It says, so they are stewards of the, of the organization. And, and in that sense are a great help to CEOs.

You know, who have, who have challenges kind of running their businesses. Of course, an advisory board has some similarities, but is also quite different to that in the sense that the CEO never cedes control in an advisory board, unlike a board of governance. So the, in an advisory board, the CEO decides who's on that advisory board.

They decide what the cadence of meetings are. They decide when that advisory board comes to an end. So the advisory board is there purely to provide exactly that advice to the CEO.

And the ultimate decision making is reserved exclusively for the CEO. So they can kind of listen to the advice of chosen hand chosen experts. But at the end of that, they can then say, thank you very much, but I'm actually going to ignore that piece of advice at this point.

So they retain that control. They retain that kind of choice. And a point I wanted to make a little bit earlier was that for CEOs, running a business can be a bit like a, what I call a game of snakes and ladders.

You know, you can have the vision. You're trying to get to the end of the game. You can see where the end of the game is and kind of roll the dice.

And sometimes you get the ladders and you go up and you drive and you say, this is directly because of our effort and our strategy and our capability, then you roll the dice again and you hit the snake and you kind of roll back, which is, which might be, you know, the analogy is competitive forces, economic challenges, geopolitical challenges that we've got now. So there's this game of snakes and ladders that's going on that the CEO has to retain their resilience and mindset during this timeframe. And that's where kind of an advisory board can really add value, I think.

Scott:

Yeah, that's really helpful. I think clarification. And you mentioned in your description that with an advisory board, the CEO sort of sets a lot of the rules, including the frequency that they're meeting.

Is there a guidance that you have around how frequently they would typically meet and the rationale for that?

Anthony:

Yeah. So let me, let me talk about a couple of things if I may there. One is the composition of what's in an advisory board and, you know, who, who, who are these experts that should be around there?

So, so first of all, really you have to kind of think of this is about a CEO putting together their A team of advisors. And for me, the way that the CEO chooses those advisors or determines the skillset of those advisors falls out of what their strategic direction is. You know, if they're looking to expand internationally, for example, then it'd be great to have somebody on that advisory board that's kind of already done that, already been there and done that.

So the skillsets around that table fall out of a strategic direction that the CEO has chosen. In terms of the cadence of meetings, that's really a function of the CEO and their organization's ability to digest what comes out of those discussions. So for larger organizations that are perhaps more sophisticated with a leadership team that has deep and broad commercial experience, those meetings might be monthly and where there's a lot of change going on and there's a high appetite for growth, for example, they might be monthly or they could be bimonthly or they could be quarterly.

I tend to settle on around bimonthly because I think that just gives the CEO and their kind of leaders that breathing space to be able to kind of digest, absorb what came out of that, of those discussions, which tend to be kind of fairly wide ranging. And then settle on what their decisions are because the advisory board does not make decisions. It's only the CEO having had the conversations with their A team of advisors, then goes away, thinks about that, reflects on it and says, yeah, okay, this is what I'm going to do.

And, and I think bimonthly works really well, but equally again, it could be quarterly or they could be monthly. So it's a function of, it's a function of the organization's ability to drive, implement, and the kind of ambition of the organization for change.

Scott:

Oh, excellent. So there's quite a bit of flexibility there. Yeah.  How, how does an advisory board help the CEO with strategy?

Anthony:

The, as I kind of use the sort of analogy of snakes and ladders and the, and the, and the CEO kind of mindset being a, a key determinant of growth, it's really up to the CEO to develop the strategy for the organization with their kind of leadership team, but then they can bring that strategy to the advisory board for that sense check to really have that independent advisors that are not kind of in what I call emotionally attached to the business because CEOs are inevitably, and certainly if they're CEO founders, you know, their status livelihood is built up around this kind of a business. So they are emotionally attached to the business.

So to have a group of qualified people that understand your market, understand your capability, understand your resources, but who are not emotionally engaged and can see and have perspective to be able to look at the business, look at its capability, look at the strategy that they're, that that's being proposed and critique it and perhaps offer alternatives or indeed offer alternatives that might speed up or slow down depending on kind of, you know, how they see it.

So it's that, it's that kind of independent, objective, unemotional advice, unattached advice, I guess, that's really the advantage. And, and, and you could say, well, that can be done in lots of different ways, coaches, consultants, et cetera. But the difference of an advisory board is, is the formality of the structure.

Even though it's not like an advisor, even though it's not like a governance board, it's that commitment to time. It's that commitment to that cadence that gives it some structure and adds weight to the discussion that come from the advisory board.

Scott:

I can see how that would be incredibly powerful. Absolutely.

Anthony:

Yeah.

Scott:

I'd love to pivot a little bit and talk about your experience writing the book. How did you find the writing process? Getting, getting all of your experience out of your head and onto the page.

Anthony:

Well, I found it challenging, Scott, and others may not say that, but I did find it challenging, but also extremely rewarding because exactly as you say, it really forced me to distill and think about, you know, kind of what is that expertise that I've kind of developed over the years and that, that those experiences that I've had and seen the successes and the failures of businesses and, and boards and advisory boards and structures, et cetera.

And so it took a while for me. I then also did a sense check by going out, sending out surveys to a whole series of CEOs to kind of go, hang on a second, let me check that. Let me do the reality check on this.

And that was great because it affirmed a lot of what I, of what I'd kind of developed. Look, I thought, I think it was a, it was really cathartic in the, um, in, in, in that sense, took me a while, took me a little bit longer than I would have liked it to, for a couple of reasons. I can't say that I, that I enjoyed it, but like a lot of challenges, I felt really good when it was completed.

Scott:

That's a really good way to put it.

Anthony:

You know, the, the, the, that I've achieved it and I've got it. And then when you finally see the book in print, it kind of goes, well, yeah, that was, that was well worth the exercise, well worth the exercise.

Scott:

Yeah. Well said. It reminds me, I often talk about the similarities between, you know, running a long distance, whether it's a marathon or half marathon and writing a book where to your point, when you're in it, it's not always enjoyable, but once you get to the finish line and you've got that medal, um, or in this case, the book, it, uh, it, it makes it all worthwhile.

Anthony:

Yes, absolutely.

Scott:

What about the publishing process? What did you find perhaps, um, you know, interesting or surprising or challenging getting the book from the point where you've got the manuscript to the point where you've got books in hand?

Anthony:

I have to say it was, it was great Scott. And I have to thank you and your, your team for that process, because that really brought it to fruition. You were able to hold me to account.

You were able to accept, uh, without judgment, my delays, when I would take more time than we had originally planned. I can't remember how many times we reset the, uh, the process, but it was kind of a little bit like having an advisory board actually, because, you know, I had, I had an editor, uh, which, which was great that looked at the work and pointed out the kind of the obvious low hanging fruit to me where, you know, what do you really mean by this paragraph that you've kind of written? And I can look at it and I go, isn't it obvious?

And then I read it again and go, Oh no, that's my language. That's not, um, and then who also challenged me about structure and we had a little bit of debate around structure, but inevitably that process, that dynamic resulted in a much, a much better book. So, so I really thought that was an excellent process.

Then, you know, as we moved on to the design phase for the, uh, for the cover of the book as well, I thought that was, uh, I thought that was excellent. Had a little bit some chewing and throwing around that, but I thought your team did a really super job of putting that together and, you know, the communication, it was, it was excellent. This would have never happened if Grammar Factory hadn't been there stewarding the process.

It's cool. So thank you to you and your team.

Scott:

Wonderful. Well, it's, it's wonderful to hear that. Thank you for that feedback.

What, what are your business goals for your book? And you know, now, now that you've got the book, it's in market, how are you using it to support what you're doing in your work?

Anthony:

Yeah, well, like this, as I said, right at the outset, I've, I've written this book to, to really get this message out there because I know that there's a lot of private company CEOs who are in what I described as this commercially lonely kind of phase who have this sense of obligation that they're supposed to know the answers, et cetera, and they, they dabble with advice and dabble with support, et cetera, and they might've heard something about this idea of an advisory board and think, Oh, that's complicated. It's difficult to set up and all those things. So I guess I wrote the book to provide that relatively simple roadmap for people, for them to be able to, for CEOs to be able to see that actually, you know, this thing is not that complicated.

It's, it's relatively easy to put together. And, and if I choose to, I can decide to stop it kind of whenever I, whenever I want to, whenever I want to stop it. So, so really for me, it was that mission of getting the, the value of, of that idea out to as many people, as many people as I can.

So really that's, that's what it's for. It's to, it's to broadcast, broadcast this mission.

Scott:

Well, listen, it's such a, you know, the way you describe it in the book, it, it, it's very clear the, the immense power that an advisory board can have, particularly for those businesses where you don't have all of the expertise at your fingertips that you really need to move the business forward. So, you know, really, really compelling read, really valuable for the people you wrote it for. Anthony, how can people get in touch with you if they're curious about learning more about advisory boards and how it might help them in their business?

Anthony:

Sure. Pretty easy. My website is leadyourindustry.com.

That's exactly as it written as exactly as it sounds, lead your industry dot com. Obviously people can reach out to me on LinkedIn, Anthony Moss on LinkedIn too. And I'll come back to them pretty swiftly.

Scott:

Wonderful. Well, we're going to put those links in the show notes along with the link to the book. Anthony, thank you again for joining us today and for sharing your experience and your expertise so generously.

I've found it really valuable and I have no doubt that our listeners have too.

Anthony:

Thank you, Scott. It was great to talk with you today.

Scott:

As we wrap up this episode of Entrepreneur to Author, remember this. Now is the time, time to write, time to publish and time to grow. I'm Scott MacMillan. Until next time.