Do CEO Peer Groups Actually Help With Decision Making?

Yes, in a narrow way. A CEO peer group improves decisions where the problem is that nobody around you will disagree with you honestly. It won't improve technical or specialist decisions, and a badly run group makes things worse by manufacturing consensus. Helm runs Forums of 6 to 8 people with a Chair who has run a business.

The useful question is which decisions, and under what conditions. That's what the rest of this covers.

It's counterintuitive. You have more information at £15m than you did at £1m, more people, better reporting. And yet founders consistently report that the decisions get harder and lonelier. Several things are happening at once.

Put those together and you get a specific failure mode. Decisions take too long, then get made anyway on limited evidence, and nobody in your orbit has both the standing and the incentive to say the uncomfortable thing.

That's the mechanism and everything else is implementation detail. Nobody in that room works for you or holds a share of your company. Helm prohibits selling in its membership agreement and enforces it, which exists precisely to protect this.

The second thing it changes is your sample size. If six people have collectively done 20 funding rounds, four exits and a dozen senior firings, you get a much larger evidence base than your own. Over 15% of Helm's 400+ members have exited, so on questions about selling a business the room usually contains someone who's been through it rather than someone who's read about it.

The third is that structure forces the issue onto the table. In an unstructured network you talk about the business at a level you're comfortable with. In a forum with a set format and a facilitator, someone whose job is to notice will ask what you're avoiding.

This is the protocol EO built its forums on, and it's the most transferable idea in the sector. It looks like a semantic quibble and isn't.

Here's why that works.

Advice is compressed. When you say "you should fire him", you've collapsed your entire situation, timing, cash position and personality into an instruction, and hidden all the assumptions. Experience keeps the detail attached, so the person listening can work out which parts apply to them.

Advice also creates false authority. In any room, one person is more successful or more confident, and once they've given an instruction the group tends to fall in behind. Experience sharing keeps everyone on the same footing, because nobody can claim their story is more true than someone else's. And it leaves the decision in the right place. If the room tells you what to do and it goes wrong, you have somewhere to put the blame, which is exactly what you don't want as the person accountable.

EO trains members in this through a formal eight-hour programme. That requirement tells you something. Left to themselves, experienced operators default to giving advice within about ninety seconds, because that's what they do all day. Holding a room to experience takes active work.

This is where the organisations differ most, and it matters more than the branding.

YPO forums are peer-led, with no professional facilitator. That works when the group is mature and disciplined. It struggles when someone dominant joins and nobody has the standing to rein them in. EO uses trained peer moderators, which is the same model with training added.

Vistage uses paid professional Chairs, typically with 12 to 15 or more years of C-level experience, trained through its Chair Academy. That's the most rigorous selection and training in the sector. TAB uses franchisees who own a territory, so quality varies by postcode.

Helm sits between the two models. Its Chairs are Helm members further along, usually exited founders and often with NED experience. Mark Colquhoun ran Solar Communications. Stuart Miles ran Pocket-lint. Richard Coombes and Jane Gomez chair Forums too. The idea is that the person holding the room has both the standing to interrupt and the scar tissue to know when someone is describing a problem that isn't the real problem.

Group size feeds into this. In a room of 6 to 8, the facilitator can track who has spoken and who hasn't. Vistage's Chief Executive Programme runs 12 to 18 on its own published figure, and a group that size behaves differently. More perspectives are available, and less of the room's attention lands on any one member.

The pattern is that peer groups are strong on decisions common across businesses and weak on decisions specific to your domain. Judgement calls about people, money and ownership recur everywhere. Choosing a database or handling an FCA application does not.

• Rooms that are too similar. If everyone runs a UK agency at £6m, you'll get sharp thinking on agency problems and a shared blind spot on everything else. Some similarity helps, because a room spanning wildly different scales wastes time. The mix that works is similar stage with different industries.
• Poor facilitation. A forum with a weak facilitator becomes a support group, or gets dominated by the loudest person, or drifts into advice-giving where the most successful member's opinion wins. The format only produces better decisions if someone enforces it.
• Selling. A room where people are quietly pitching each other stops being a room where anyone admits they're worried. This is why Helm prohibits it in the membership agreement, and why enforcement matters more than the rule.
• Not turning up. A group can only help with a decision it knows about. Attendance at Helm is compulsory and repeated absence can cost you your place.

If you're a salaried CEO without equity, Helm and EO both require ownership. Vistage runs programmes for salaried executives and would be the fit.

If you want expert advice on a specific technical problem, hire an expert. A forum will give you a confident answer that isn't grounded in anything. And if you want to be told what to do, the format will frustrate you, because it deliberately leaves the decision with you.

Do CEO peer groups actually improve decisions?

They improve a specific class of decision: the kind where you already have the information but nobody around you has both the standing and the incentive to challenge you. People decisions, funding, ownership and exit all fit that description. They don't improve technical or specialist decisions, because the room doesn't hold the expertise, and a confident group will answer anyway.

What does "share experiences, not advice" mean?

It's the protocol EO built its forums on. Instead of telling someone what to do, you describe something you personally went through and what happened. That keeps the context attached, stops the most confident person in the room setting the answer, and leaves the decision with the person accountable for it. EO trains members through a formal eight-hour programme.

Can a peer group make my decisions worse?

Yes. A long-running group with similar members develops a house view, and new information gets filtered through it. Weak facilitation lets the loudest voice dominate or turns the forum into a support group. Rooms will also opine confidently on technical questions nobody in them is qualified to answer. The facilitator is what prevents most of this.

How big should a CEO peer group be for good decisions?

Small enough that the facilitator can track who's spoken. Helm runs Forums of 6 to 8 plus a Chair. EO runs 6 to 10. Vistage's Chief Executive Programme publishes 12 to 18, which gives you more perspectives and less individual airtime. There's no single right number, though smaller rooms know your business in more detail.

Is a peer group better than a board or an adviser?

They do different jobs. A board has governance authority and, if you've raised, its own return requirements. Advisers have expertise and a commercial relationship with you. A peer group has neither authority nor a stake, which is what makes people say the uncomfortable thing. Most founders who use one keep their board and advisers too.