Vistage (formerly The Executive Committe)

I'm sorry this has taken me so long. I regret my absence.

I do know Vistage. Nothing special there...they just market to high end executives. Not really known for new ideas. It's just a management development firm. Second tier, probably.

I don't know their pricing, but I bet it's...errr...astronomical. And no guarantees....

Again, my apologies.

Mark

I worked for a TEC (now Vistage) member then chair for eight years. I found the material he bought back from TEC (now Vistage) was only additional ways to manipulate people or ideas to better himself. One of the points he learned at TEC was to simply leave the room if someone is complaining. He also learned at TEC the great idea to not offer a retirement plan for all his employees and just offer an executive compensation plan for a select few in the office (his relatives +1). He learned not to offer jury duty as paid leave and instructed employees to use vacation time if called for jury duty. After working for him for eight years he told me everyone in his TEC group told him to sue me if I didn't sign a non compete contract.

As far as I could tell, TEC never taught him any type of process management or any real management science, just ways to manipulate and hold employees accountable. By the way, he lied on his bio on the Vistage website.

He had another TEC chair consult for the company for a year. The consultant caused so much damage he left after only eight months. He stilll invoiced the company for months he never showed up for meetings.

The following is a humorous response:

So FUNdamental, I'm unclear. Are you saying you wouldn't recommend them? :)

end humor

Seriously though, that's a horrible experience. Imagine the exact opposite. Someone who came in and energized and excited you. Someone who believed in helping people. Someone who gave for free the best advice you'd ever been given.

Wow what would that be like? I sure wish someone would do that...

hehe

Have I mentioned how much I appreciate Manager Tools lately? Thank you Mike & Mark. You guys are truly an inspiration.

[quote="stewartlogan"][quote="FUNdamental"]I worked for a TEC (now Vistage) member then chair for eight years. I found the material he bought back from TEC (now Vistage) was only additional ways to manipulate people or ideas to better himself. One of the points he learned at TEC was to simply leave the room if someone is complaining. He also learned at TEC the great idea to not offer a retirement plan for all his employees and just offer an executive compensation plan for a select few in the office (his relatives +1). He learned not to offer jury duty as paid leave and instructed employees to use vacation time if called for jury duty. After working for him for eight years he told me everyone in his TEC group told him to sue me if I didn't sign a non compete contract.

As far as I could tell, TEC never taught him any type of process management or any real management science, just ways to manipulate and hold employees accountable. By the way, he lied on his bio on the Vistage website.

He had another TEC chair consult for the company for a year. The consultant caused so much damage he left after only eight months. He stilll invoiced the company for months he never showed up for meetings.[/quote]

Wow, that sounds like a pleasant experience.[/quote]

I was actually very good at my job in sales and had performed better than anyone before me or after me. He kept saying "My TEC group told me to hold you accountable for....."

I was his highest paid employee. his only sales rep, and he had me come in on several weekends to do the monthly billings for all the new clients I bought in because the accounting department was too busy (I cant make these things up).

When I started throwing up before I went to work each morning, I knew it was time to look for another job. I was offered one in a different industry after less than two months looking.

After being offered a position with a new firm, they asked me to go home discuss it with my wife, talk with several clients, and to get back to them by the end of the week if I could.

Coincidentally, that week I had my performance review with my boss who was also the TEC Chair. He refused to give me a raise (I was salary only), saying he couldn't afford it, and told me I was to write weekly reports on all activities to him because he was going to hold me accountable for growth in sales, and well as hold me accountable for reducing payroll. He told me he had discussed my review beforehand with all 35 members of his TEC Groups, and they all told him to fire me for asking for a raise after he took away my company car to save money.

I gave two weeks notice right there, and he said I had to give him 30 days notice because it was in the employee handbook. I said "you just threatened to fire me, not give me 30 days notice," so do you want to fire me or is two and a half weeks notice enough." he yelled "I hope you know what you are doing."

On my last day I was handed a non compete contract with penalties of $250,000 if I worked for a company he felt competed or was a client or potential client of his. I refused to sign it, ad he told me "everyone in my TEC Group says you need to sign it.' I knew right then and there I made the right decisions to leave and not to sign the contract.

I have been with another company in a different industry for seven years now, and have been very successful. The company gave me mentoring to succeed, and my biggest complaint is they are always feeding us. He left the company all together and is a full time TEC Chair now.

WOW,

I will never complain about my boss again.

LOL

I am with The Academy for Chief Executives (a friendly competitor) and am interested and somewhat suprized by your experience with Vistage.
Please check out my websites and feel free to contact me.

Malcolm Elvey
International Chairman
535 Park Avenue
New York NY 10065
T: 212 421 5007
C: 646 620 7000
E: [email protected]
www.chiefexecutive.com
www.elvey.com


:)

Another plug....
:cry:
Plugs make the tool cry...

Just a thought... why in the world would Chief Executives need their own academy?

{passing a tissue to aManagerTool} :cry:

My issues with TEC were from my experiences, TEC members and TEC Chairs use TEC as an authority so they can get their own way. Do I think all members of this guy's TEC Group told him to not offer any retirement plans for his employees? No, I don't. What I do believe is TEC gave him the confidence and the self righteousness to feel he can go back to the office and say they did, and use TEC as the hard headed excuse for not offering one.

The company I worked for was a delivery service. The TEC Chair who owned the company went to a TEC meeting on the importance of mission statements. So, he came up with a mission statement for the company that was "Increase delivery, maintain retail, build a viable management team." You see, he got the importance of a mission statement at the meeting, but not the best way to write one. He kept that mission statement for years. How do you proudly put that mission statement on a business card?

A member of TEC who was the Vice president of Operations for the same company wrote that his goals were "to support the management team to work independently," and "to hold manager's accountable." You want a management team in a production oriented environment to "work independently?" I am sure he learned at TEC how to hold people accountable, but TEC most likely glossed over the Vice president of Operations role in dealing with conflicting internal goals between production departments. There became massive fighting within the organization which he easily stepped away from.

I believe TEC, in order to make their members feel like they are getting a lot out of the service, bolsters the "good for the executive" parts of management theory, but minimize the thought of any real risk or top management responsibility. This conditioning of the "executive" leads to, at least the ones I worked with, the TEC member or chair using what he allegedly learned at TEC (a fragmented managerial theory at best) to bully everyone below them to get their own way-a motivation focused on what should improve the TEC member's life now, and not what will improve the company in the short and long term. To me, the later would be the way to go, but for TEC, whose mission statement was "Dedicated to increasing the effectiveness and enhancing the lives of Chief Executives," really didn't allow long term thinking on what is best for the member's company.

I recently was excited to learn about a group where I could network with peers, receive executive coaching and better myself as a professional.  I thought I had finally found a unique group that I was looking for.  After attending one meeting I quit the group.  First I was told the group had 16 members, when I attended my meeting there were nine attendees, two of which we facilitators.

Within a month of joining they called me to ask me to sponsor a meeting which meant paying additional money for food, drinks and a conference room.  When I joined I was told once every 14 - 16 months you sponsor a meeting (based on group size).

The meeting was boring, the issues were remedial and the action items were so basic I was shocked.  This was a colossal waste of time and money and not something I would recommend to senior managers.  Your money would be more well spent (and cost you less) going to see a therapist or simply finding an individual executive coach.

After the first meeting the coaches never contacted me once.  When I communicated that I no longer wanted to join, never heard from a soul.  My company has heard more from their collections department regarding the 90-day cancellation requirement than I did from a facilitator or group members.

I strongly recommend against joining.  Some of the attendees were no longer in business, they had sold their companies and now this was something to fill their time.  Ironically they spent the most time speaking.  

I can see value in the group if the facilitators addressed more relevant topics and offered more creative ideas.  This was a whiny think tank at best. 

"So, he came up with a mission statement for the company that was "Increase delivery, maintain retail, build a viable management team." You see, he got the importance of a mission statement at the meeting, but not the best way to write one."

To be fair, mission statements are pretty universally garbage.  They generally amount to "Do a really good job" or are so buzz worded up they're nearly nonsensical to anyone who didn't help write it.

I'd actually respect "Do a really good job at providing X to our clients" as a mission statement more than any I've read previously, to be honest... at least it communicates the mission in plain English.  I expect he did better than most of his competitors at writing one.

"I recently was excited to learn about a group where I could network with peers, receive executive coaching and better myself as a professional.  I thought I had finally found a unique group that I was looking for.  After attending one meeting I quit the group.  First I was told the group had 16 members, when I attended my meeting there were nine attendees, two of which we facilitators.

Within a month of joining they called me to ask me to sponsor a meeting which meant paying additional money for food, drinks and a conference room.  When I joined I was told once every 14 - 16 months you sponsor a meeting (based on group size).

The meeting was boring, the issues were remedial and the action items were so basic I was shocked.  This was a colossal waste of time and money and not something I would recommend to senior managers.  Your money would be more well spent (and cost you less) going to see a therapist or simply finding an individual executive coach.

After the first meeting the coaches never contacted me once.  When I communicated that I no longer wanted to join, never heard from a soul.  My company has heard more from their collections department regarding the 90-day cancellation requirement than I did from a facilitator or group members.

I strongly recommend against joining.  Some of the attendees were no longer in business, they had sold their companies and now this was something to fill their time.  Ironically they spent the most time speaking.  

I can see value in the group if the facilitators addressed more relevant topics and offered more creative ideas.  This was a whiny think tank at best."

I was a member of Vistage 2015-2016 and the above is exactly the same experience I had. It was a very expensive waste of time. As others have mentioned, all I got out of it was, "Hold people accountable, bla bla bla." I was forced to be a member by my boss. I’m no longer at that job and the one thing that always brings a smile to my face it knowing I never have to go to another Vistage meeting again.