Stanley 1913 chief keeps five advisers who have never met
Matt Navarro tests hard decisions on three chief executives and a couple of former bosses, none of whom know each other. The separation is the point.
Most founders have a board. Matt Navarro, chief executive of Stanley 1913, also keeps a second one that never sits in a room together.
It is made up of three chief executives and a couple of his former bosses, according to an account of his practice published by Inc. None of them have met each other.
That detail is the practice, not a coincidence. Advisers who do not know one another cannot converge on a house view before the founder has heard them out.
A formal board is a governance body. It approves, it minutes, and its members have obligations to each other and to the company. A private circle of former bosses has none of that, which is why it can be told things a board meeting cannot.
Former bosses are a particular choice. They have already watched the person make decisions under pressure, so they need less context than a new adviser and are harder to impress.
The mechanics are worth copying even without the details. Pick people who have run something, keep them separate, and go to them one at a time rather than convening them.
The cost of the alternative is familiar. A single trusted adviser becomes a single point of view, and a group that socialises together produces one answer in three voices.
For a founder building the same thing, the test is whether your advisers would give you different answers to the same question. If they would not, you have one adviser with a mailing list.
How often Navarro calls, what he asks and how the five were chosen has not been set out in the account of his practice.