This retreat focuses on how the rapid developments in the technologies of life sciences are impacting the way we must start viewing the economy in general and individual companies in particular. There will be discussions on the major shifts now underway -- the maturing of the Information Age Economy and the emergence of the Molecular Economy.
 

Loren Carlson and Stan Davis

CEO Roundtable, LLC Offers a 'Solid Idea' for CEOs Looking for Solid Solutions

"Loren has a very solid idea," Robert Sullivan, Managing Partner of Korn/Ferry International, the world's premier executive placement service, said over dinner in March.

He was referring to Loren G. Carlson's CEO Roundtable, LLC, which brings CEOs, presidents and company owners together in monthly, professionally- facilitated groups of 10 to 12 people for candid, solution-seeking discussions. These discussions focus on issues unique to top-level management -- topics like improving performance, increasing corporate growth potential, and reducing the risk of failure.

"The combination and variety of non-competing business leaders offers a rich perspective on business issues," Carlson said. "Our members are humble enough to know they don't know all the answers, smart enough to want the answers, and generous enough to share the answers they already have."

Carlson, who chairs the Roundtable, bases his idea on the principle that peer-teaching is one of the most effective ways of learning. And for Carlson's 65 CEO members, good leaders never stop learning.

In addition to the monthly meetings, each year, Carlson, invites all the members to participate in a two-day retreat. This year, Stan Davis, co-author of It's Alive: The Coming Convergence of Information, Biology, and Business, led the discussions conducted at Babson College's Executive Education Center.

Davis had asked the CEOs during the day, "How will your companies meet the future? Will you use a 'predict and control' management model or an 'adapt and evolve' model?" According to Davis, smaller organizations may naturally operate from the "adapt and evolve" or bottom-up model. But, as they grow, they must resist the "predict and control" or top-down approach that characterizes so many companies in the current economy.

Noting that most of the CEOs at the seminar were in their mid-40s, Davis said, "You are lucky not to have had the huge influence of top-down, command- control models, but you must resist this tendency."

And the CEOs responded.

Vinit Nijhawan, CEO of Taral Networks in Lexington, MA, said, "The business process has always been 'adapt and evolve.' The problem is that change is becoming more rapid because less is unknown."

L to R: Loren Carlson, Stan Davis, Mary Wellington, Gary Henricksen

"If a company doesn't have the feedback from below, then that company can't survive," Carey Erdman, CEO of Applied Analysis Inc. in Billerica, said.

"If the CEO has to make all the decisions, then the business will not grow," Safi Bahcall, CEO of Synta Pharmaceuticals in Lexington, MA, added. "My attitude is, the employees don't work for me. I work for them. I must ask 'what can I do to help you?'"

One CEO said, "I look at my run of being CEO as my leg of the race. When you see the horizon and you like it, then it is probably time to hand the baton over to someone else."

Larry Stybel of Stybel and Peabody has often told Carlson, "There is a third rail in every organization. Know where it is or you'll hit it and you're dead." Carlson believes that CEO Roundtable is a safety mechanism wherein CEOs help each other avoid that third rail.

Sullivan, a sponsor of the event, was a guest at dinner during the seminar where the CEOs continued their discussions.

Responding to Sullivan's observation, Erdman said, "The real value is coming together and listening to what all the CEOs can share with each other."

Later, at the conclusion of the seminar, Bob Glorioso, the founder and chairman of several companies, said, "The mix of people and experiences added to the discussion. It was wonderful."

Others agree with Sullivan's observation that Carlson has a "solid idea." James K. Morgan, a VC and investment banker in the Boston area, stepped in to run a company in which he had a major investment. In the process of moving to the "other side" he had difficulties finding good advisors. He joined one of Carlson's CEO peer groups for high tech companies "to see what these peer groups were all about."

He found that his peers understood his issues quickly and provided "real world" advice. As Morgan says, "Today, CEOs tend to be left alone with issues that others have faced but which can't be aired within the company. CEO peer groups serve a very valuable function."