The Journey
Five days. Eight CEOs. One circle.
The schedule we send you before you arrive tells you when we are together and when your time is your own. It does not always tell you what we will be doing. Some sessions work best when you walk in without knowing what is coming, and we leave their detail out on purpose. What we can tell you is the kind of work it is.
What you will actually do
The spine of the week is the Forum, a peer method CEOs have used for decades. Each of you brings one real, unresolved dilemma, agreed with the Founder before you arrive, and the circle gives it a full session: seven peers who listen, question and reflect back what they see, with no advice and no stake in your answer.
Around the Forum sit structured exercises built for people who run companies. One puts you and the room under sudden, realistic pressure and shows you, and the others, how you actually lead when the ground moves. Others train the things a CEO is rarely taught: how to listen for what is not being said, how to read a room, how to put the title down and meet a peer as a person. Each is followed by honest feedback from people who have sat where you sit.
There is a half-day workshop in behavioural science, on how leaders think, decide and act under pressure, run by a specialist in the field. There is physical work in the landscape every day, because the body shows patterns the boardroom hides. And on the fourth day you draw your 8 North Map: who you are as a leader, what your company needs from you now, and where the two have come apart. That Map is what you take home, and the sixty days of one-to-one sessions that follow turn it into decisions.
The shape of the week
Arrive
Early afternoon arrival. You walk into the landscape together, move, meet the Forum for the first time, and agree in person what stays in the circle.
Open
The first Spotlights. In the afternoon the work leaves the room.
Pressure
More Spotlights, the behavioural science workshop, and an afternoon that lengthens the view beyond the week.
The Map
The last Spotlights, then the week turns inward. You draw your Map, and in the evening the circle commits, out loud, to what comes next.
The Turn
An early morning, a final hour together, and time one-to-one with the Founder for anyone who wants it. You leave before lunch.
Every morning begins with movement, Qigong or breathwork with qualified instructors. Every evening ends at a long table. The free hours are yours, and they are real.
What your company gets
A CEO who returns with a written map of where they and the company have come apart, two or three decisions already named, and sixty days of structured follow-through to see them hold.
Boards and investors who fund a place receive confirmation of attendance and nothing more; what is said in the room stays there.