Trusted Advisors: Researching the People Who Will Help Guide Your Company’s Growth

Welcome to the June 2018 edition of our newsletter! In this issue, we’ll examine the importance of vetting parties connected to your business in secondary ways, from award recipients to advisory board members.

Trusted Advisors: Researching the People Who Will Help Guide Your Company’s Growth

Companies of every size and type, especially growing privately-held companies, often rely on a cadre of industry experts, business mentors and investors to help shape the company’s vision of its future. Such resources are vital to thorough discussion of a company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. Yet while executives feel comfortable calling upon former professors, supervisors or industry peers, that level of comfort can also blind them to possible public relations headaches. An impartial and thorough due diligence — focused on a candidate’s reputation and background relating to litigation, any employment disputes or personal issues — is a necessary part of considering whether to ask someone to accept a board position. Although not as high-profile a part of your company’s business, advisory board members can often be referenced as such in news articles about them in other contexts, some of which may not be flattering. By understanding as much as you can about their life, and not just their expertise in your field, you can prepare for any issues that may arise later, or decide not to make an offer in order to avoid having difficult issues raised in connection to your company, however tangentially.

Advisory board members are to a certain degree, similar to employees in the sense that they represent your company, if only part of the time. Others who fall into this category could include award recipients, whose biography and likeness would appear connected with your company if it sponsors an award or is part of an industry group that does so. These recipients are often lower profile than C-suite executives, which can present a different set of challenges since they may only be well-known within a smaller context. Yet researching the details of their lives — from the admirable to the difficult — is the best way to ensure that they present the perspective your company is seeking to convey.