A PeerBoard is an opportunity for a SME owner-manager like you of "getting away" and talking to somebody out of the business. With someone impartial to give you ideas, helping you get your thoughts together and clarify the business issues you are facing.

When you are the sole head of the business it's very easy to get quite blinkered and not see alternative view points.

(Small Business Peer Learning)

Common Ground

• Beat that sense of lonelyness and isolation. Not knowing where to learn from, where to get inspiration from, who to talk about problems.
• Discover that you are not alone in having a particular business problem. And that you will not be alone in trying to solve it either.
• Get access to the stock experience of peers to help sort your problems out. Discuss in a protected and supportive environment your critical problems and management issues (organise, manage, set objectives, produce, market, sell, etc.)
• Establish self-confidence in facing problems in business, through observing and benchmarking your own behaviours against the others'. Alternative views trigger you to become open to different opinions, and provoke critical reflection on your own practice.

Broader Perspective

A PeerBoard is a unique opportunity to take time out of the business and disengage to review and assess your day-to-day in the business. Additionally, you will be able to think past the operational and onto strategy, distinguish the wood from the trees and gain a larger perspective, through the eyes of the other participants as well as through critical reflection stimulated by the discussion with them.

Rules

• You meet on a regular basis and form a group of peers with the common ground of being all small-business entrepreneurs.
• Your peers group is a non-competing environment in which you will develop openness and trust to share your own experience with your peers.
• You and your peer group are reciprocally committed to your success and theirs. This is not a sales environment. No selling, nor business among participants.
• Your group is a structured environment to interact with your peers on the critical problems you are facing as the owner-manager of a small-business.
• A professional facilitator drives you and your peers along a structured process to maximise the benefit for your business and your learning.

Research Evidence

Our programmes are developed based on field research conducted over several years on a total of more than 200 owners-managers grouped in 30 peer groups. The results obtained consistently indicate that owner-managers benefit from the opportunity to interact with other SMEs in a non-adversarial way, and the discursive and critical reflection aspects of a peer environment are of great utility and importance for them.

It is demonstrated that a learning process takes place when it focuses on action in the owner-manager context, on reflection particularly upon critical events, and the ability to maintain a social network where such events can be discussed. In fact, some managers remani in a state of "bounded rationality" due to a lack of access to social networks or oportunities to discuss critical events in their environment. Although they often meet with peers in networking events, such as conferences or seminars, owner-managers generally regard these events as opportunities for selling. Hence lack of trust and openness limit the learning possible from such events.