Newport Board Group was founded to enable CEOs and Boards of emerging growth and middle market companies to access hands-on advice from executive advisors who understand their company and its issues in depth.
As an early Newport white paper put it: “It’s one thing for a CEO to pick up advice or market intelligence over drinks or a round of golf —it’s another to figure out how to adapt it to an organization’s unique market positioning, structure, culture and constraints.“ That’s why Newport offers the services of senior-level advisors, who can quickly become knowledgeable about the business and work by the side of the CEO and Board, providing expertise on challenges like improving capital structure, timing capacity expansions, grooming management talent and developing new value-added services. They also assist clients who need to get projects done or have a deficiency in skills or experience.
Our view that even highly competent CEOs can benefit from having an on-going, in-depth advisor has now received important confirmation by a new study conducted online in October and November 2011 by Harris Interactive Service Bureau.
The survey reveals that 54% of CEOs say that the top spot is more complex than they expected and that they feel isolated in their role. It reports that first-time CEOs are particularly susceptible to this isolation, with nearly 70% saying it negatively affects their performance. A recap of the study goes on to say: “To some degree isolation is part of the job. A CEO can only share so much with his colleagues before he is open to favoritism or is ill-advised by those who may have their own agendas.”
We believe that the strong response to Newport’s rollout of CEO and Board services in our initial cities is an indication that the need highlighted by the Harris Interactive survey is real. And we are excited to be innovating new services that CEOs need in order to be more effective in their roles.
