Page 7 - BusinessWest September 5, 2022

Ravi Kulkarni says the Vistage group he leads is diverse and looking to add new members from different sectors of the economy.
and you’re talking corporate, it’s much different from family,” he said. “Family is family; everyone knows what they have to do, and they can talk to each other a certain way. Corporate is all pro- fessional, so you choose your words wisely and explain things in much more detail. It’s a much different structure.”
As for his transition to leadership of his com- pany and how Vistage will ease that process,
Maybury said he intends to be a sponge and “soak up as much as he can” at the monthly meetings with the goal of being more ready to take the helm. He said he benefits from being in a room where people at different points in their careers and different business situations, can thus provide different perspectives.
“Some people in our group are getting to the end of their careers and want to pass on some knowledge,” he explained. “I’m at the beginning, and some are in the middle; everyone is different, and that brings a lot of perspective to the table.”
Overall, Vistage provides value to members by bringing leaders of diverse businesses who are facing common issues and challenges together in a room to share what are usually different thoughts and approaches to those matters.
“People do things differently in their business- es — they have different ideas,” said Graham. “They may have different ways of financing their business that you haven’t considered, for exam- ple, and you make some friends.”
Ryan Clutterbuck, president of Pace Engineer- ing Recruiters in Quincy, which specializes in finding artificial intelligence, robotics, autono- mous vehicle and high-performance and quan- tum-computing engineers, and another member of the local Vistage group, agreed.
“It’s beneficial to have a group of people that you can share ideas within a safe environment, where they’re willing to give you direct feedback,” he told BusinessWest. “You can’t always run your ideas by people below you, so you need a group of peers who can give you honest and direct feed- back, and that’s what I get out of Vistage.”
Such feedback is what Bell sought, and received, when he brought his ‘issue’ to the group
a few months ago.
“This year has been the busiest year in com-
pany history — we’ve set four sales records from January up until now,” he said while setting the stage for the discussion that ensued. “The issue brought to the group was ‘I’m busier than I’ve ever been, my margins are pretty good, but I feel that I may be leaving something on the table ... because a lot of competitors had gone up 10-fold from what I’d done as far as price increases since COVID started.’
“I wanted to make sure I was charging a fair- market price for the service that I’m offering and make sure I’m not leaving a lot of meat on the bone,” he went on, adding, without going into much detail about his actual plans, that mem- bers of the group were able to help him answer those critical questions and others that were brought to the table.
This is the essence of issue-processing, said Kulkarni, adding that members ask clarifying questions and, by meeting’s end, have the mem- ber in question much closer to moving beyond asking questions and acting. And once this action is taken, these same group members will follow up and hold the members accountable for the actions taken, again, similar to the way a larger company’s board of directors would.
Boisselle agreed.
“When it comes to issue-processing, first members listen and then they ask questions and ultimately give suggestions,” he said. “And you start changing your perspective on how you’re going to do things; asking the questions gets
Vistage
Continued on page 44
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