Could one CEO CF Challenge be worth €20K?
We often hear a version of the same thing from leaders considering CEO CF. They can see the value of coming. They would like to get involved. But first they need to get a few things sorted: more time, more headspace, a quieter quarter.
It is an understandable position. It is also worth examining, because the pressure that makes it hard to step away is often the very thing a Challenge is designed to help with.
The problems are the reason to come
A CEO CF meeting asks for a little under two days. Members typically arrive on the first evening and leave in the middle of the last afternoon, with travel on top. The programme varies by summit, so the exact commitment is always worth checking against the published schedule.
What those two days offer is time outside the daily pressure, with people who understand the responsibility of running a business.
If you are waiting for a difficult situation to resolve itself before you make space to think about it, you may be waiting for the thing you need help to do. In our experience, the leaders who most need that space are often the ones with the least of it.
Where are you getting your balcony time?
When you run a company there is always something in front of you: a conversation you need to have, a decision somebody is waiting for, something that has gone wrong and needs your attention. It is easy to spend the whole week responding.
The idea of getting on the balcony, associated with Ron Heifetz, describes gaining enough distance to see what is happening while you are still involved in it. Harvard Business Publishing describes that shift in perspective. It is a useful way to think about what a summit is for.
So the practical question for any leader is where that time comes from. Where can you describe the situation plainly, including the parts you have not worked out? Who will ask whether the problem you are solving is actually the right problem?
Books, videos, conferences and consultants can all help. A Challenge offers something more specific: a group of peers working with you on the situation you are actually facing.
For 75 minutes, the room works on your Challenge
Picture 13 leaders in a room, including you. The other 12 bring their experience of leading businesses, making difficult decisions and living with the consequences. Some will recognise a situation like yours. Others will notice something you have stopped seeing.
You have prepared your Challenge with a coach. You explain what is happening. The group asks questions before moving on to observations and recommendations. You then work through what you have discovered, what you have rediscovered and what you are going to do.
For those 75 minutes your issue receives sustained attention. You have to participate, and you have to let people understand enough of the situation to be useful. It is a sit-forward event, and it asks something of everyone in the room.
Group sizes vary. Our Trust Groups typically have 8–14 members, drawn from non-competing businesses across Europe.
What would that much CEO time be worth?
One way to think about the value of a Challenge is to ask what it would cost to buy that much attention from experienced CEOs.
There is a useful benchmark in Heidrick & Struggles' 2025 survey of private equity-backed CEOs. Its Europe table reports average total cash compensation of €750K. That describes the survey group; it does not tell us what CEO CF members earn.
Assume 2,000 working hours a year. That allocates €375 to each hour. Twelve peers giving 75 minutes each contribute 15 hours of combined time.
12 peers x 1.25 hours x €375 = €5,625.
With 12 people in the room including the presenter, the figure is about €5,156. So the illustration gives roughly €5.2K–€5.6K, and a higher assumption for working hours would reduce it.
This is a way to picture the time being contributed. Compensation is not a consulting rate, and the calculation is neither a quote for hiring these people nor a valuation of their advice.
The €20K question is about the decision
The value to your business depends on what changes afterwards.
Consider a hypothetical €200K commitment. If a better decision avoided 10% of that cost while still delivering what the business needed, the difference would be €20K. That is an illustration of the arithmetic, not a reported CEO CF result.
A useful Challenge might help you examine a commitment like that. It might equally help you recognise that the difficult conversation you keep postponing is the work you need to do first, with no immediate saving to count.
Could one Challenge be worth €20K? Potentially, if it changes a consequential decision enough to create that value. The result has to come from what you learn and do. It cannot be established by adding up the salaries in the room.
For many leaders, the more immediate value is simpler: somewhere to work through the pressure they are under, with people who understand what it means to carry that responsibility.
You also give your time
Pure peer collaboration works because everyone contributes. When another member brings their Challenge, you listen carefully, question your first reaction and think about what from your own experience might help.
That often makes you examine your own business too. Somebody else's situation can put a familiar problem in a different light.
Groups come together three times a year, with contact between meetings. The relationship continues. There are people to come back to, to tell what happened and to ask for another perspective.
There is energy in being able to open up, contribute and spend time with people who face the same responsibilities. That part of the value was never going to fit neatly into an hourly calculation.
Practice makes permanent
Doing something repeatedly makes it familiar. It can also leave your assumptions unexamined. If you keep responding to the same difficulty in the same way, being busy does not tell you whether you are making progress.
Practice makes permanent. Challenge, reflection and feedback are what turn practice into better judgement. You still own the decision. You still have to act, see what happens and learn from it.
There are times when stepping away really is difficult. But if the reason you cannot come is the very problem you need help thinking through, it is worth looking at that decision again.
Ask yourself where you are getting your balcony time, who is challenging your thinking and how long you want to keep carrying this particular problem on your own.
If CEO CF sounds like the space you need, speak to our membership team about fit and an approved guest meeting. A guest attendance fee applies. Bring a real issue, and be ready to contribute to somebody else's thinking as well as your own.
You do not need to arrive with everything sorted. The unfinished problem is exactly what you can bring with you.
Sources and notes
The financial examples are illustrations, not measured CEO CF outcomes. Sources checked on 15 September 2026.
