CEO is a lonely job. One of the major causes of loneliness is self-induced and is known as the Founder's Syndrome symptomized by lack of communication with other people about their problems. The intensity of the CEO's job, coupled with the scarcity of peers to confide in, creates potentially dangerous feelings of isolation among chief executives. However, if you want to succeed, you'll have to find ways to tackle this problem head-on.
Leader's actions reverberate and therefore leader's feeling of loneliness becomes a larger problem for many other stakeholders. For a leader, feeling lonely in their post negatively affects their ability to do their jobs leading to poor decision-making, negativity, fatigue and frustration. After all who wants to work with an unhappy person?
Isolation limits opportunities for increased self-awareness and blind spots develop. Stanford management professor Bob Sutton explains a situation in which people who gain authority over others tend to become more self-centered and less mindful of what others need, do, and say. The problem is compounded because a leader's self-absorbed words and deeds are scrutinized very closely by his or her followers. Combined, these tendencies make what he terms as Toxic Tandem.
It is very difficult to break this toxic tandem if the CEO doesn't have trusted sources to rely on for holding mirror up to them and shedding light on their blind spots. This makes it important for the CEOs to find one or two trusted sources who will provide the CEO with unvarnished feedback. Trusted board members or peer CEOs can often play this role. This precisely is the need that a CEO Peer group like Mavens has been founded to fulfill.
Mavens is a ‘CEO Peer Group’. The objective of Mavens is ‘enrichment’ and ‘holistic development’ of its members and we achieve this collectively and through many varied initiatives.
The cornerstone for our initiative is the Chinese proverb “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” We try extending this proverb to entrepreneurship.
To start from the beginning, Wikipedia describes a maven as a trusted expert in a particular field, who seeks to pass knowledge on to others. The word maven comes from Hebrew, meaning 'one who understands', based on an accumulation of knowledge. Malcolm Gladwell used the term in his book The Tipping Point to describe those who are intense gatherers of information and impressions, and so are often the first to pick up on new or nascent trends.
It is more fruitful & meaningful for entrepreneurs of similar caliber, business standing, and size of business ('peers' in true sense) to meet & network with each other though some of our initiatives help us connect with very senior folks too. Besides, the entire idea has an 'intellectual base'. We therefore do not take pride in number of members but instead in the value that we add to each one of our member.
Two of our star initiatives are Mavens School of Organization Development (MSOD) and The Senate Talk Show.
As part of MSOD, we conduct full-day workshops on business topics like Strategy, Innovation, Growth, Risk, Culture, Governance & Control, Branding, Marketing, Sales, Organization Development, Money, and so on. These are followed by full-day advisory sessions on the same topics.
Mavens has been arranging Talk Shows, conducted in an interview format, with successful entrepreneurs who lead large & successful organizations. We held our first ten Talk Shows with first-generation entrepreneurs who built successful organizations from scratch. We are now running our PRIDE OF PUNE series with those iconic brands from Pune who have not only managed to hit the sweet spot with Puneites, but are also highly regarded across the country & beyond! Our first eleven (11th to 21st) Talk Shows under this series have already been conducted with Dr. S.B. Mujumdar, Ms. Meher Pudumjee, Mr. Prataprao Pawar, Mr. Kishor Patil, Mr. Atul Chordia, Mr. Satish Magar, and so on.
A wonderful culmination of these Talk Shows is a recently published book called Guideposts authored by Mavens founder Vikrant Vartak. Guideposts uses the 21 The Senate Talk Shows as the foundation. The book (around 385 pages) is meant to serve as an essential management handbook for entrepreneurs & intrapreneurs. It is written with an objective to expose readers to a wide array of thoughts and ideas derived from our 21 Talk Shows. The book is a commentary on the experiential insights, wisdom, and knowledge of our guests on which the readers can ruminate on.
Unlike many other books on entrepreneurial success & failure stories, Guideposts follows a multi-dimensional approach. The book presents the content in a 3-dimensional (3D) form. PART 1 of the book doesn't merely narrate stories, but extracts fantastic 'usable' management learning in the form of rich & informative essays. This makes it 2D. However what makes the book highly value-adding is its PART 2, which adds yet another dimension; thus making it 3D.
The following is a list of our other initiatives (indicative but not exhaustive):
Mavens
Vartak Heritage,
100 ft Riverside D. P Road,
Vartak Baug,
off Karve Road,
Erandwane,
Pune - 411052,
India.
contact@thesenate.in
+91 9225619416
