Peer advisory board business founder eyes regional growth

A Yorkshire businessman who founded and grew one of the region’s biggest IT businesses is preparing to expand his latest venture across Yorkshire and the North East with the recruitment of a number of peer advisory board chairs.

Richard Doyle founded Esteem Systems in 1985 and grew it to a £30m technology business, before selling it in late 2004.

Since then, he has served as an non executive director on over a dozen boards, before developing his own peer advisory board business – Pabasso, a collaboration of peer advisory board associates.

He is now on the hunt for chairs to help him replicate his model, which provides support for regional MDs and CEOs through Pabasso peer advisory board membership.

Doyle said: “Being a Pabasso chair offers a full or part-time role as an alternative to the traditional non-executive route that ex-CEOs and MDs often take when they step back from the full-time role of leading a business.

“I have personally found it incredibly rewarding working with multiple business leaders helping them on their journey and sharing the expertise and experience of the other board members.”

Each Pabasso chair will operate as a commercial business, in an exclusive territory supporting a board of up to 12 regional business leaders who meet as a group monthly to discuss and resolve leadership challenges and once a month with the chair for an individual 121 meeting.

Doyle said: “Chairs are responsible for developing the board, facilitating board meetings and holding their monthly 121 meetings with their members.

“By creating a board of business leaders, each with their own diverse businesses and individual challenges, the chair will find themselves at the heart of a dynamic process, facilitating cross-industry collaboration and transformative strategic insights.”

He has developed the franchise model in collaboration with Franchise specialists the Lime Licensing Group.

Doyle is recruiting retired or semi-retired CEOs, MDs or business coaches who want to run their own peer advisory board on a part-time basis, with a time commitment of approximately nine days a month.

Those looking for a fuller time commitment have the option of running two boards.

The expansion will create new peer advisory boards in exclusive areas including West Yorkshire, South Yorkshire, North Yorkshire, Humberside and the North East.