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Structure sets you free

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My client, the new Managing Director of a specialist PR firm, had sent me some documentation in advance of a strategy workshop I was running for them.  Unfortunately, it seemed as if one of the files was corrupted; when I printed off the organisation chart the boxes with job titles were there, but the connecting reporting lines were missing. I mentioned this to the MD in our brief meeting before the workshop and asked him if perhaps someone could print me a copy complete with lines. He seemed surprised. “Oh, we don’t have reporting lines. We think that would make us inflexible and unresponsive to customer requests.” One of the issues that emerged in the workshop was that staff below the Board lacked innovation and never took responsibility or made decisions for themselves. I suggested that clearly defined accountability, authority and reporting lines meant staff could innovate and take responsibility within the areas that belonged to them. Conversely, they were unlikely to take ownersh
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Do you even measure productivity?

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Is low productivity built-in to UK small businesses? One benefit claimed for Brexit was forcing UK business to address its woeful productivity.  Particularly in the SME sector our productivity is far worse than that of our competitors and there is a school of thought that says ready access to cheap labour contributed to this (although opinions vary of course – these are economists. In particular, countries such as France and Germany have had the same access to labour without it depressing their productivity in the same way). Be that as it may, many UK businesses have faced labour shortages and wage increases.  The news bulletins run interviews with under-pressure business owners, most of them saying: I cannot get the staff so I am limiting capacity and turnover I have had to raise wages to get or keep people and I can’t pass that on in prices I am paying higher wages but that doesn’t translate into more productivity The gist of these opinions (from albeit a tiny and edited sample) is t
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What do scalable sales processes look like?

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Growing a sales team is a challenge that every business must overcome if it is to become scalable.  Success means hiring into a proven process and managing performance. I analysed the sales process of two of my clients - both are growing fast. I thought it would be useful to try to learn from any similarities in their approach. They are in entirely different sectors – one selling software (transactional up to complex solutions sales) and the other a builders’ merchant (almost entirely transactional sales). Both sectors are highly competitive, which makes their performance even more impressive. The things they have in common are: They are both run by people who did not found the business. One was brought in to take over as MD and the other progressed internally from a junior sales role. They both use internal telesales teams supported by field sales as their primary sales method. They both include a mix of account and new business sales in everyone’s target. The account element has a st
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It's about the management, stupid

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To paraphrase the famous US election slogan "It's about the economy, stupid.", research (1,2) has yet again shown that the most important factor in business performance is the quality of management. Not how much the company spends on technology. Not how much digital marketing they do. Not even how much is spent on R&D. Just how well the business is managed. Really simple, doable stuff.  A clear purpose.  A usable orgchart.  Useful job descriptions.  Repeatable written processes.  Measurement and regular review. None of these are difficult to do, although implementation does take time, determinationa and resilience on the part of the owner and there are some basic techniques to learn. If you would like to learn how to apply better management techniques to your business then take a look at this website . 1) What Drives Differences in Management Practices? Nicholas A. BloomErik BrynjolfssonLucia FosterRon JarminMegha PatnaikItay Saporta-EkstenJohn Van Reenen, American Ec
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You need to be political

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Sometimes business owners decry “the politics” they see as being inherent in bigger businesses. The implication is clear: smaller businesses are free of that kind of skullduggery and self-seeking. The fact is that many business owners get stuck because they don’t understand that, past a certain size, they need to include political thinking in their growth plans. Most owner-managed businesses get stuck once they have grown to between 5 and 25 employees. They reach the limit of what the owner can manage on his or her own. There are only so many employees, customers, sales and transactions that one person can deal with. You could hink of it as reaching your plate-spinning capacity. Unfortunately, most businesses (over 99.5% according to the ONS) get stuck like this – even when the market opportunity for more growth is there. They reach this revenue ceiling and there they stay. It doesn’t matter what the owner does, how many hours they work, what fancy marketing they invest in. They have g
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Clowns for managers?

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One of my clients was sceptical about the quality of his managers. Like many business owners who have become the bottleneck in their business he was desperate to get out from under all the things that, apparently, only he could do and the decisions that, apparently, only he could make.  He didn’t see his managers as part of the solution but as part of the problem so he hired me originally with the idea of finding some “big hitter” from a larger business who would help him achieve his ambitious growth targets. I asked him how he knew that his managers weren’t up to the task.  As is usual in these cases the answer was a series of anecdotes about failures to do x or inability to understand the importance of y or how they didn't take the success of the business seriously.  A little probing however showed that he had never really explained to them where the business was going, what their role in this was and what success in the role looked like. Every time someone came to him with a pro
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What have you tried that hasn't worked?

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As a business owner trying to systemise and scale your business, what have you tried that hasn't worked? Many business owners believe that the stress, frustration and limited growth they experience is just the way it is – it comes with the territory. They don’t know what they don’t know and so don’t think about changing things. Others, perhaps more enlightened or more unhappy with their working life and business performance, try to change things when they come across something that looks like a solution. Here are the most common: Vision-building sessions with staff. Often these result in a mission statement or pictures on the wall of people rock-climbing and so forth. These efforts lose momentum quickly as staff engagement and belief are low to zero from the outset; they have little say in the vision, little impact on the outcome and little stake in its achievement. HR initiatives. Implementing job descriptions, appraisals, team meetings – maybe even Investors in People. After the
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