Your blueprint for business success

Structuring for Growth

Organisations must perform four essential management roles in order to succeed over the long term:

1. Produce results (P). The P role produces the results that enable the organisation to meet the needs of its customers. It focuses on what needs to be done.
2. Administrate (A). The A role ensures that people do the right things at the right time and in the right manner. It focuses on how things need to be done.
3. Entrepreneur (E). The E role takes the organisation into the future and makes it proactive rather than reactive.
4. Integrate (I) The I role changes the consciousness of the organisation from mechanistic too organic.

At the same time, all companies go through an organisational life cycle that consists of distinct stages of growth and decline. The key to planning for growth involves knowing which management roles dominate in each growth phase and structuring the organisation accordingly. The growth stages include:

Infancy. The business is launched and struggles to survive. Everyone in the company focuses on getting the product out the door. The ideal management profile for infancy is Paei, meaning a strong focus on the P role, with less attention given to the other three.

Go-Go. The business develops a solid base of customers and earns enough income to more than cover expenses. Flush with its early success, the business grows very rapidly and begins to seek new opportunities. The ideal management profile for go-go is PaEi.

Adolescence. The company is still growing, but the lack of systems and procedures begins to cause major problems internally and externally. The company needs to begin focusing on how it gets things done. The ideal management profile in adolescence is PAei.

Prime. At the peak of the growth cycle, the company now has strong, profitable growth and good systems and controls. The ideal management profile for a prime company is PAEI.

Managing the Predictable Problems of Growth

Each phase in the organisational life cycle has a unique set of highly predictable problems that befall all companies who enter it. By knowing where your business stands in the life cycle you can identify these barriers to growth before they occur and take steps to minimise their impact.

Infancy. The primary challenge in infant organisations is survival. This manifests itself in the following organisational problems:

Running out of cash

Making a fatal mistake

Loss of commitment from the founder

Personal problems

To work through these inevitable problems in the infant phase:

Keep the cash flow positive at all costs.

Do not give up control of your business.

Track cash flow before profits.

Avoid premature delegation.

Go-Go. The predictable problems in go-go include:

Lack of controls

Midas Touch syndrome (the owner thinks he/she can do no wrong)

Lack of resources/founder spread too thin

“More is better” syndrome (emphasis on growing sales at the expense of other areas)

As a result of these issues, every go-go company eventually makes a major mistake or encounters a disaster of some kind. If the company is lucky, the disaster serves as a wakeup call. If not, the company goes out of business. To keep damage in the go-go phase to a minimum:

Stay focused on the core business.

Do not spread yourself too thin.

Keep your ego in check.

Adolescence. Predictable problems during adolescence include:

Resistance to the new policies and procedures

Improper organisational structure

Changing goals

Lack of information systems

Role clashes

Founders trap (inability to delegate authority)

In an attempt to deal with the adolescent growing pains, the founder often brings in a professional manager (someone strong in the A role) to implement systems and controls. However,

Do not bring in the A role when the company is in a financial crisis.

Do not bring in the A role when you cannot afford to be distracted from external activities.

Do not bring in the A role without a very clear organisational structure.

Prime organisations have one major challenge — staying there. Achieving this goal involves two courses of action:

Continually redefine what business you are in.

Continuously decentralise the organisational structure.

To stay in prime, you have to keep the E role alive. You do that by constantly redefining the business and by structuring the organisation to reflect each new definition of the business.

Keeping the Growth Alive: How to Avoid the Organisational Ageing Syndrome

• Organisations age when they lose the E role. Four factors cause this to happen:

1. Failure to properly define the business. Defining the business by the product rather than by customer needs.
2. Mental age. Senior management thinks like a declining, rather than a growing, company.
3. Improper structure. The organisational structure is set up in a way that squeezes out the E role.
4. Style of the leader. The founder or CEO has an innate orientation that conflicts with the E role.

To prevent the loss of the E role and keep your organisation young at heart:

Define your market carefully.

Stay mentally young.

Make sure your organisational structure supports the E role.

Check your own management style.

Organisational ageing is not a function of time or size. It’s an attitude about your company, your customers, your market and what you expect from the business. Pay close attention to the E role; make sure the organisational structure supports it, stay mentally young, and you can stay young and growing for a long time.

Financing Rapid Growth

Most entrepreneurs make three huge mistakes when planning for growth:

1. They limit their growth based on access to a common commodity — cash.
2. They limit their thinking to traditional “secured” financing.
3. They attempt to acquire capital in increments rather than getting all they need at once.

The solution? Determine the full extent of your capital needs and acquire the financing all at once rather than piecemeal.

When planning for growth, most entrepreneurs ask, How much capital do we have in the company and how can we best allocate it? In contrast, high-growth companies ask, ‘`What could we do with the business if we had all the money necessary to grow it to its full potential?’

Laying the foundation for obtaining growth capital starts with three basic steps:

1. Develop a credible business plan.

2. Let the professionals structure the financing.

3. Have a defendable strategy.

Today’s capital markets offer a wide variety of financing tools. The most common include:

Secured. A bank or commercial finance company loans the money based on a percentage of APR, inventory and/or hard assets.

Anticipated future cash flow. Mezzanine lenders take an unsecured position based on the anticipated future cash flow of the business. It gets repaid with current cash flow.

Subordinated debt. Also called “convertible” debt, this form of financing gets repaid with future cash flow.

Equity. Equity can include many different forms of preferred and common stock, as well as certain types of convertible debt.

Slow-growth companies generally limit themselves to secured financing. In contrast, most high-growth capital deals contain a mixture of all four types of lending. By creatively applying today’s multifaceted lending tools, you can escape from traditional capital restraints and achieve exponential growth.

When financing high growth:

Do not include a term sheet in your business plan. Instead, let the lenders propose the deal to you.

Give away as little equity as possible.

Do not get hung up on the valuation of the company when the money comes in. Instead, worry about adjusting the ownership based on actual performance when the money goes out.

Currently, there’s a lot more capital looking for high-growth companies than there are companies to absorb it, if you have a good story and you look in the right places, you can find a way to finance your dreams of growing the company.

Six Principles for Financing Growth

Before approaching the capital markets, make sure you know the ground rules for success.

Match your financing needs with the correct financing product. In order to pick the financing products that meet your capital needs:

Do the research.

Get crystal clear about your financing needs.

Get professional help.

Minimise risk. Entrepreneurs often think they have to bet the farm in order to obtain financing. On the contrary, financing your growth should involve less risk, not more. To minimise risk:

Look for lenders willing to structure flexible agreements.

Build in a cushion in case things go wrong.

Do not take out a second mortgage on your house, give any kind of personal guarantee or give up control of your company.

Never give away opportunities to protect yourself.

Adjust your lending agreement for actual performance. Most lenders will discount your performance projections because they have no guarantee you will achieve your business plan. However, you can (and should) negotiate a clause that adjusts the terms should you hit all your objectives in the agreement.

Conduct a very broad search of lending institutions. When looking for growth capital, start with about 100 lenders and work your way down to a final “short list.” In particular, look for lenders who specialise in your industry and type of company.

Never give up control. Many financing transactions require you to give up some equity in exchange for the money. Some equity is okay, but if you have to give up control to grow your company, don’t do the deal.

Write a world-class business plan. The quality and credibility of your business plan has a huge impact on the quantity and qualities of the financing you get. In order to get the best possible deal; create a business plan that lenders can’t resist.

How to Avoid “Growing Broke”

Growing broke — outstripping the company’s ability to pay its bills even though sales are increasing — presents a real risk for every entrepreneurial business. In fact, if you’re growing at a sustained annual rate of 15 to 20 percent or higher, running out of cash probably represents your biggest threat.

Financial deterioration usually occurs when the entrepreneur focuses on top-line sales at the expense of more meaningful performance indicators. Maintaining healthy (i.e., profitable) growth requires protecting your balance sheet, which starts with an understanding of three fundamental principles:

When your business is growing its sales, its balance sheet is also expanding.

Because balance sheets and income statements work together, how you manage your business determines how big a balance sheet is needed to support a given level of sales. Just one more dollar of sales will force an incremental expansion in the assets on the balance sheet in order to support that additional pound/dollar of revenue.

For every additional pound/dollar of “forced” asset growth, a business must find a way to fund it.

Protecting your balance sheet also involves tracking key balance sheet percentages relative to sales rather than total assets. As sales increase, certain variable assets — cash, accounts receivable, inventory and pre-paid expenses — automatically increase. To manage growth, you need to understand how these variable assets change relative to sales and how those changes impact your balance sheet.

The final step in protecting your balance sheet involves looking into the future to see how an increase in sales will impact it. To forecast your balance sheet, simply plug in all your variable asset percentages based upon your projected sales growth. The percentages will tell you how much your total assets need to grow in order to support the new level of sales. From there, you can determine where and how to come up with the funding to support the additional assets.

Smart CEOs and business owners never forecast sales without also forecasting the balance sheet. If you cannot get the funding to support your desired level of sales, either find a way to cut costs (so you can self-fund the growth) or else bite the bullet and scale back your sales objectives.

The Entrepreneur’s Dilemma: How to Get Through No Man’s Land without Blowing Yourself Up

Entrepreneurial companies face many obstacles in their journey from new kid on the block to established player in the market. One of the deadliest is No Man’s Land — that difficult area between when you are too big to be small and too small to be big.

Making it safely through No Man’s Land requires a transition in four key areas:

1. The economic model

2. Marketing

3. Management

4. Money

In the early stages of most growth companies, the value proposition is built around the “cheap, high-performance labour” provided by the founder and one or two senior executives. Making it through No Man’s Land requires developing a sustainable value-added proposition beyond high-performance cheap labour. To determine whether you have a sustainable economic model:

• Study your competitors.
• Project your economic model going forward.
• Understand your cost/revenue relationships.

Manage your business by looking ahead, not backward.

By nature, early stage growth companies are market-driven, which makes them simple to do business with. As the company grows, the entrepreneur becomes less involved with customers, and problems develop symptoms of this inevitable growth problem include:

Customers only want to deal with the entrepreneur.

Margins and sales shrink for no apparent reason.

Sales and operations are constantly fighting with each other.

The entrepreneur turns his or her attention to new products and services to avoid dealing with the growing pains.

To reverse this trend and make the company simple to do business with again, the entrepreneur must do two things:

Institutionalise his or her expertise throughout the organisation.

Build a solid management team.

Even if you successfully navigate the first three transitions, you still need money to grow. Most entrepreneurs manage to scrounge up enough money to get the business off the ground. As the fledgling enterprise grows, however, it runs head-on into the “capital gap.”

The issue with the capital markets is they’re not set up to provide financing until the company needs at least a million pounds/dollars worth of capital. As a result, capital between £250,000 and £1 million costs so much that most growing companies can’t afford it. This capital gap represents one of the most dangerous points in No Man’s Land. In their attempts to close the gap, many entrepreneurs take too much risk or end up giving away control of their companies. They try to raise money by selling the upside of their businesses when they need to focus on lowering risk.

Assuming your value proposition can sustain itself in the marketplace, you can get through No Man’s Land by doing the following:

Acknowledge the issue. Accept that your company is entering a very fragile point in its growth cycle and manage the business accordingly.

Manage the four-M’s. Pay close attention to each transition — economic model, marketing, management and money. Recognise that the correct strategies in these transitions are often counterintuitive.

Never grow just for growth’s sake. Companies do not get large and make money by luck; there has to be a sustainable, bottom-line reason for growth. Never forget that you can grow yourself right out of business.

Surround yourself with the talent to get there. Hire at the senior level first and fill in the gaps in the middle as you grow. When going through No Man’s Land, the organisational chart should look like an hourglass — wide at the top and bottom and skinny in the middle.

Finally, figure out what you do best and position yourself to do it. Sometimes the highest and best use of your time does not involve running the business. If so, hire an experienced manager to run the company so you can focus on doing what you do best. Never forget, however, that the more the company depends on your unique skills, the more you limit its ability to grow. A catalyst and a team approach are the most successful.

“Two little words that can make the difference: START NOW.”

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These basic competencies are considered vital for effective leadership:

Develop a vision. With a competent, motivated staff, the leader is free to develop a working vision of the organisation’s future.

Know yourself. Your actions must align harmoniously with specific values, behaviour and principles.

Connect with others. Understand what makes your employees perform at their best and give them what they need to help the business succeed.

Take responsibility. When your actions or decisions backfire, don’t blame others. Size up the situation; determine realistic solutions and act on them.

Communicate! Keep people informed about what’s going on — the good news and the bad.

Building a Vision

A leader must be able to look unflinchingly at the realities of the organisation and marketplace. To “interrogate reality,” a leader should ask:

What values do we stand for? Is there a gap between the values we espouse and the way our business actually performs?

Do the skills and talents we possess match the demands of the marketplace? If not, why?

What opportunities are available to us in the future? Do we have the capacity to seize upon these opportunities?

The leader’s vision must be both feasible and far-reaching. CEOs should build a vision by expanding their intellectual horizons. Get out of the office and explore the world around you. Attend leadership seminars. Visit with other CEOs in organisations to seminars.

Spend time with key customers. Find out what services and products they’re waiting for someone to design in the future.

Leaders set the tone and pace for change. Their compelling agenda invigorates employees and, if successful, spills over to the customers as well.

“Success is the ability, first to recognise opportunity, second, to form plans and strategies that leverage opportunity and third to develop the necessary skill needed to execute those strategies for success”

–       Colin Thompson

Leadership Styles

All organisational cultures reflect the personalities of their leaders. Every day, in hundreds of ways, the leader demonstrates to others what is suitable — and unsuitable — in the workplace.

The CEO must therefore adopt a distinctive, passionate style of leadership. Nothing done conventionally by the CEO will offer any competitive advantage. Conventional thinking always and everywhere leads to conventional outcomes.

Great leaders make themselves visible. They infuse courage and trust in employees in a variety of ways:

* Tell it like it is. The people who follow you deserve to know what’s going on and will do a better job with the facts at hand.

* Make change exciting. Build on short-term gains and lead employees through following cycles of change.

* Take risks on people. Leaders always persuade people to do more — and to be more — than they ever thought possible.

The Art of Communication

It’s essential to communicate at all levels of the organisation. No other single action is as crucial to winning employee trust and confidence.

My advice is, keeping these principles in mind when communicating your vision:

* Paint a picture. Use metaphors, analogies and specific examples to make your message more vivid.

* Keep it simple. Avoid jargon or “techno-talk.”

* Repeats, repeat, repeat. People absorb ideas only after they’ve heard them repeated several times.

Confront uncertainty. Don’t hesitate to discuss “glitches” or mid-course adjustments the organisation must work through. Let employees know that occasional setbacks are a normal part of the change process.

All forums, large and small. Take advantage of every opportunity to get your message across — through memos, e-mail and personal interactions.

In addition to “what” the change is, be sure to explain “why” the change is coming. Whenever possible, share the various options that were considered and rejected before a decision was made.

Another vital aspect of communication is active listening – listening with purpose. This means hearing a variety of messages, understanding their different meanings and confirming these meanings with significant feedback.

Keep in mind that the leader’s physical presence can be intimidating to some employees. A good communicator neutralises this through some simple techniques:

Pay compliments

Keep negative comments brief.

Take time to listen and explore the other’s response.

Respond, don’t “re-act.”

“Leadership is about successful relationships, not about titles, positions or working long hours. So build your relationships for success”

– Colin Thompson

Team Building

The first step in building a strong senior executive team is hiring the right people. Don’t underestimate the long-term negative effects of the wrong hire. A bad hire wastes time and money, and can collapse morale within the organisation and damage customer relations.

With a strong team in place, leaders work to promote a community atmosphere. I suggest these practices:

Promote learning as an integral part of everyday work life.

Treat people with respect.

Ensure that team members understand the importance of their individual contributions.

Work together as a team especially when things go wrong, identifying problems without blame.

Give people access to accurate information, so they don’t resort to rumours and hearsay.

Assigning important tasks to people that aren’t part of their defined jobs can be an effective motivational tool. Increasing the difficulty of the team’s goals increases the challenge and effort necessary to achieve them — but more difficult goals lead to enhanced team performance.

Motivating Others

Long-term business success depends on having a corporate culture where people are motivated to excel. This originates directly from the leader’s compelling agenda.

High-performance organisations are “purpose-driven,” while others just operate day by day. With purpose comes new ideas — and new ideas remain the most valuable commodity in our world of information-overload.

How can leaders harness their employees’ creative energy?

An inspiring mission

A sense of urgency shared by all

Goals that broaden employees’ abilities

A belief that teamwork can meet these goals

Recognition and reward should follow outstanding achievement. People should be trained, encouraged and offered ample opportunity for advancement. It’s not enough to say, “for a job well done.” Specify the actions that culminated in a successful outcome.

Decision-Making

Regardless of decision-making style, I emphasise one point: Effective leaders use the decision-making process to free up resources that go to keeping things the way they are — particularly if these resources no longer produce results and don’t contribute to enhanced performance.

Strong leaders scrutinise every element of the organisation — products, services, markets, and methods of distribution and value to the customer — because the business depends on it. They decide which elements to preserve and which should be abandoned.

Certain conditions indicate when the right action is letting go:

Products, services, markets or processes that still have “a few good years of life” usually require the greatest effort to maintain.

Products, services, markets, etc. that are fully written off may generate some tax value, but the effective leader asks, “Wouldn’t we better off without them?”

Sometimes the effort to maintain current products, services, etc. depletes energy and resources needed to develop new products and services.

“Believe in yourself, anything is possible, no matter who you are or where you come from. Find your path and stay on it, if you want something, nothing can stop you. Have passion and you will be successful”

– Colin Thompson

Delegating Responsibility

The best way to become comfortable with delegating responsibility is to surround yourself with the best people you can find. With a strong management in place, it’s foolish, even self-destructive, not to take full advantage of their skills and authorities.

I offer these guidelines for delegating responsibility:

Define the task. Don’t tell people how to do the job; describe the results you want.

Offer suggestions. Some individuals take the ball and run, while others are unsure about how to proceed. Offer helpful suggestions that enable them to perform at a higher level.

Don’t hover. Once you’ve assigned a task, give people room to operate and the freedom to be creative in their approach.

Reward and recognise. Some people benefit from praise along the way, while others are more self-motivated. Everyone, however, responds well to sincere praise.

Effective leaders understand that there is more than one way to successfully complete a project. After delegating responsibility, they avoid questioning, analysing and second-guessing each decision made or action taken by the person they’ve placed in charge.

Leaders Building Leaders

One sure sign of effective leadership is the desire to instil leadership traits in your executive management team. CEOs committed to building the next generation of leaders develop and refine their own leadership skills while mentoring others to do the same.

What do true mentors do?

Focus on a person’s strengths and potential.

Convince a person that he or she has greatness within.

Put aside their own agendas to help others express their unique talents.

Mentoring offers benefits for the individual and the organisation alike. For the individual, mentoring provides (1) enhanced people management skills; (2) the ability to set and achieve performance-stretching goals; and (3) the confidence to lead others and serve as an advocate for change.

For the organisation, mentoring benefits include (1) greater resources for accelerating companywide change; (2) assistance in maintaining performance during times of transition; and (3) promotion of organisational stability during periods of restructuring.

In 2026 and beyond, organisations will be obliged to constantly reinvent themselves. The effective leader understands that instilling leadership traits in others is an essential part of making that reinvention successful.

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It has been said that, in the 21st century, the very nature, speed and complexity of change will change. If that is indeed the case, then so too will the nature of leadership. What made the leaders of yesterday will not make the leaders of tomorrow.

What will a 21st century leader look like?

In my judgement, the leader of the past was a doer. The leader of the present is a planner. And the leader of the future will be a teacher. The job of a 21st century leader will be to develop capabilities, not necessarily to plan the organization’s strategic direction. It will be to increase the organisation’s capacity to be focused, agile and resilient. It will be to create, harness and leverage intellectual capital rather than to deploy other assets. This kind of leader doesn’t need to know everything there is to know (because that is a practical impossibility). On the contrary, these leaders will want to be surrounded by people who know a whole lot more than they do but who will trust them implicitly to weigh their competing claims and advice.

It might be surprising but, in study after study about the purpose of leadership in the new millennium, getting results, i.e., making money, doesn’t even figure in the top requirements. What does figure is getting the process right – making sure the right people are talking to one another about the right things and have the right tools to do what they decide needs doing.  When that happens, good results inevitably follow. This is what focus is all about.  The 21st century leader doesn’t focus on results per se. He or she focuses attention squarely on the things that produce results.

There are really only two ingredients required for organizational success: leadership and culture. And, since leaders know how to build an organizational culture of respect, accountability and innovation, nothing of any great consequence can ever be achieved without leadership. Leaders do make the difference.

Today, more than ever before, we need more people who are willing to lead. I can tell you for a fact that there are positions of executive responsibility awaiting you, provided you have what it takes or are willing to learn it. You heard me correctly. I did say “willing to learn.” The ability to lead others is really a collection of skills, virtually all of which can be learned or strengthened. We are not born with leadership qualities; we acquire them through experience – through observation and listening, and through dedicated, conscientious, continuous self-evaluation and improvement.

Learn to lead.

Not just for your own wellbeing but for those who follow you. As you reach the highest levels of organizational responsibility and success, don’t forget to take others with you to become the leaders of tomorrow. Let them be your legacy.

To be a leader, you have to think like a leader. To understand this basic premise of leadership, you need to agree with two fundamental principles:

1.   Successful people think differently than unsuccessful people.

2.   We can change the way we think.

In what way do leaders think differently? In my judgement, leaders are big-picture (not narrow) thinkers.  They search for wisdom more so than answers. They are focussed (not scattered) in their thinking. They are creative (not restrictive) thinkers, driven by an insatiable curiosity for discovery and innovation. They are realistic and strategic thinkers. They are possibility thinkers, reflective thinkers. And they understand the value of shared, unselfish thought.

Your thinking style must be aligned with your leadership aspirations if your potential is to be realized. For example, what if possibility thinking is not one of your strengths? Then you have preciously few options other than to resign yourself to the reality of self-limitation, not just for yourself but for all who work around you. If you think you can’t do something, then it doesn’t matter how hard you try because your assumptions will be self-affirming. Napoleon Bonaparte was a great general with many physical limitations. But mentally, he saw no bounds on his ability to succeed. It was he who said “The word impossible is not in my dictionary.”

What other skills do 21st century leaders require?

Your power and potential as a leader will be founded primarily on:

1.  Your expertise, not your position;

2.  Your reputation, which is amassed through consistent and reliable performance over time but which can be destroyed in an instant by a single, thoughtless act;

3.  Your personal integrity and credibility – which is predicated on walking the talk every day; and

4.  Your ability to negotiate win/win outcomes regardless of the circumstances.

Like everything else, the ability to negotiate is a skill that can be learned and perfected. Trust me, great leaders must be great negotiators – getting your way while convincing people of their worth and dignity … that they too are winners in your presence.

Beyond the ability to negotiate, leaders must be superb managers of their most precious asset – their time.  They must know that the phrase “time management” is a misnomer. For them, time is never a barrier to getting things done. Thinking that it is an obstacle is a self-serving and self-defeating assumption. Self-management, not time management, is the antidote to the reality of insufficient time. Setting priorities, delegating for the sake of empowering others and knowing what not to do are the attributes of leaders.

Understand the importance of the Pareto Principle:  if you focus your attention on those activities that rank in the top 20% in terms of their importance, you will have an 80% return on your effort. Anything that is not necessary for you to do personally should be delegated or eliminated. Reorder your priorities – activity is not the same as accomplishment.

Leaders simplify. Peter Drucker tells us that “If it is not simple, it won’t work” The key to organizational success lies in focus. And this cannot be achieved without clarity. With clarity, borne of simplicity, comes understanding. With understanding comes focus – knowing what’s important among all the distractions, disagreements and myriad choices available. With the right kind of focus come the right kinds of decisions and actions – the right judgements and behaviours that drive the organization to accomplish great things and thereby realize its vision. Leaders must find the simple, compelling phrases that make sometimes complex but empowering notions understandable by those who must “carry the ball.”

Let me suggest two other very simple notions that leaders understand. One is the truism that people will act on their own ideas before they will act on yours. The art of leadership is to get people to believe that your ideas are really theirs, and then to agree with them. Not only are people empowered, they are more strongly committed to ownership and follow-through.

Because leaders understand the power of simplification, they also see through the fads and concentrate on the fundamentals. They are not seduced by quick fixes and instant panaceas for introducing needed changes.  They understand that building organizations and teams requires knowledge of some simple truths which are easily understood. For example, leaders don’t get caught up in the rhetoric and promise of systems replacing competent, motivated people driven by a commitment to an overarching vision and values that encourage individual empowerment, productivity and accountability.

How do you build a leadership resume?

For starters, seek out positions that will equip you with personal resilience, not job security. Be an entrepreneur, not an employee. Chart your contributions to the organization and the customer, not to your position or title. Take a solution focus, not a problem focus in everything that you do.

Point the way, not the finger. Challenge assumptions and old ways of doing things. Ask when you don’t understand (and especially when you think you do). Measure your progress through the ranks, not by the size of your paycheque, but by the richness of the work you do and its impact on others. Find nutritious work and resist work that does not add to your skills.

Learn the art of self-promotion. The day you stop promoting yourself and your interests is the day you stop advancing. Opportunities rarely go to the most qualified but to those who promote themselves the best and who are in the right place, at the right time. This may seem unfair but it is not accidental.

Become a teacher. Indeed, be your own best teacher. To teach yourself, you must first learn how to teach others.  Noel Tichey advises us that “Leaders are first and foremost teachers.” Pick one of the skill areas in which you believe you are proficient and build even further on it. Go considerably beyond your competency – become a master. In so doing, you will become recognized by others for your acknowledged expertise.

Never stand on the side lines awaiting an invitation to the game. Step forward and get involved in new projects and challenging assignments. Get up to bat as often as you can, and practice your swing whenever and wherever you can.

Take responsibility for your failures, and then move on. True leaders blame no one but themselves. They learn through conscientious self-evaluation of their performance. They learn best from adversity and negative outcomes, such as being demoted or fired. The key to your advancement is to learn from your setbacks.  Crisis has a way of revealing who we really are.

All of the above attributes of leadership are skills you can learn – from the writings of others, from professional development courses, from focused observation and, ultimately, from conscientious and constructive self-assessment.

I have been privileged to work through leadership challenges and issues with people holding positions of executive responsibility in the military, universities, the health care and education sectors, professional associations, large multi-national corporations, and small entrepreneurially driven companies. In my judgement, the concept of leadership has become debased by its overuse, much like such related notions as excellence and quality. We often regret the absence of leadership, yet we frequently fail to detect its presence. And to generalize is to lose the essence of what we’re seeking to describe.

Adam Urbanski, co-founder of the Teachers Union Reform Network, has observed that “Leadership is increasingly being used as a synonym for administration” and that “we have always been sloppy in our talk about leadership and management.”  Indeed, many people are wont to suggest that there is little difference between leading and managing – that management is simply another form of leadership. All this does is lead to role confusion.

One difficulty in understanding what it takes to be a leader is that most definitions tend to rely on a leader’s characteristics, not on what leaders actually do. The conventional literature reminds us that leaders are intelligent, hard working, competitive, caring, flexible, trustworthy, and so on. But we all know people who possess these characteristics who are not leaders. Focusing on leadership attributes is therefore not overly helpful. (Holding a high position is not synonymous with leadership. The incumbent may simply be the chief bureaucrat.)

I personally like the notion that leadership is knowing where to go, whereas management is knowing how to get there. I think leadership, simply defined, is the energizing of others to achieve desired goals. I remember my first boss.  Whenever I had a meeting with him –  whether in his office or by chance in the hall –  after that meeting, I knew what to do, I wanted to do it, and I felt I could do it. Yes, he was a leader.  Fortunately, he was also my mentor.

There is an old saying that suggests there are those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, and those who simply want to know “What happened?” Likewise, there are those with energy who can make some things happen.  Then there are those who energize others and, as a result, important things happen.  So leadership must surely be the capacity to energize others.

Is leadership a matter of character?

Of course. Heraclitus, an ancient Greek historian, has told us that “A man’s character is his fate.” It is a simple but profound truth. The essence of a leader’s character, in my view, is her integrity, her curiosity, her credibility, and her daring. On this foundation, she must have a guiding vision, without which a leader doesn’t know what she wants to do with her talent and thus where she wants to go.

The persuasiveness of a message lies in the credibility of the speaker. Every message that people receive is filtered through the messenger who delivers it. If you consider the messenger to be credible, then you probably believe the message has value. I suspect you have all heard of the prescription, know thyself.  For me this means considerably more than a knowledge of your strengths and defining talents. It includes a knowledge of your hot-buttons, prejudices and weaknesses – the things you don’t do well. People who can’t figure themselves out end up making bad, stupid and illogical decisions.

Good leaders begin their career paths as good followers. Leaders and followers share some important characteristics, particularly the ability to collaborate and the willingness to listen. Good leaders and good followers ask great questions. They want to know what and why. That’s how they got to where they are and that’s how they stay on the leading edge of change.

Paying attention to other people, in addition to being the best way to learn from them, happens to be one of the most powerful ways of influencing them. And influencing others is surely what leadership is all about – getting other people to get things done. Listening is more than a courtesy; it is a lethal, strategic weapon in your arsenal of leadership skills. Make whoever you’re listening to feel like the centre of the universe at that moment in time and the payoff will be a fiercely loyal, lifelong ally. Doing so means more than making eye contact, it means making brain contact as well.

What is the biggest mistake a leader can make?  In my judgement, it’s taking too much credit. In fact, a good leader never takes credit. Leaders gain trust, loyalty, excitement and energy when they pass on the credit to those who have really done the work. An ego should not be so big that you lose your colleagues’ respect.  The self-promotion I spoke of earlier never takes precedence over the building of strong, loyal, productive teams – as that will be your greatest accomplishment.

How does a leader gain trust? Without trust, leaders cannot lead. Trust is the fuel that drives agile and innovative organizations. When people trust one another, they take risks, they challenge conventional wisdom, and they dare to lead. Trust is the prerequisite to improving organisational performance and achieving sustainable competitive advantage.

When trust breaks down, communication deteriorates. When communication breaks down, cooperation becomes more difficult.  And when that happens, bureaucracy flourishes and conflicts inevitably arise. When trust is nurtured, teams focus on achieving the mission and in operational zing the organisation’s values.

There is no such thing as instant trust. You already know that trust has to be earned. A leader can’t be phony because people can easily detect phoniness. One of the ways we generate and sustain trust is by caring about the fate of others, by being on their side. So always be true to your word and keep confidences. When leaders say one thing and do another, they quickly lose the trust of their followers.

In a way, distrust is as amorphous but nonetheless pervasive as is carbon monoxide. You can’t see it, you can’t smell it but, in the end, it will certainly kill you, your ideas and your organisation. The pressure created by continuing, forced change and attendant employee uncertainty, for example, has the potential to undermine organizational trust. And this is where, I think, leaders face their greatest challenges.

Clearly, leaders in the 21st century will know how to grow, harness and leverage intellectual capital. They will know how to use more of what people know, give people more to know that is useful, and allow people time to think and do by minimizing meaningless bureaucracy.

Tomorrow’s leaders will create networks, not hierarchies or silos, to both create and share knowledge. They will distinguish between the costs of paying people from the value of investing in them. They will cultivate expertise in the context of strategy, get smart people to work smarter, make tacit knowledge explicit, and understand how to train people as well as the limits to training.

Have you got what it takes?

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The Seagull Management structure is Flying in — Dump all the Changes — Fly Out!! The correct structure is The Management of Change` over a period of time that works for each change that is taken on board. Always share the changes and time periods and allow enough time for the changes to work before proceeding to the next change.

THE MANAGEMENT OF CHANGE = THE SUCCESS FACTOR GLOBALLY

Change is intensely PERSONAL. For change to occur in any organisation, each INDIVIDUAL must think, feel, or do something different. Even in large organisations, which depend on thousands of employees understanding company STRATEGIES well enough to translate them into appropriate actions, leaders must WIN their followers one by one. Think of this as 30,000 people having conversation experiences and ending up at a predetermined place at the same time. Small wonder that corporate and even Small and Medium Enterprises change is such a difficult and frustrating item on virtually every company’s agenda. The Management of Change can be simple, so read on and see why!

The problem (challenge) for most executives is that managing change is unlike any other managerial task they have ever confronted. Most Chief Executive`s and Chief Operating Officer`s have NEVER experienced managing change or NEVER been trained to manage change. One CEO at a large company told me that when it comes to handling the most complex operation problem (issue), he has all the skills he needs. But when it comes to managing change, the model he uses for operational issues doesn’t work. ” It’s like the company is undergoing FIVE medical procedures at the same time,” ” One person is in charge of the ROOT-Canal job, someone else is setting the BROKEN FOOT , another person is working on the DISPLACED SHOULDER, and still another is getting RID OF THE GALLSTONE, each operation is a success, but the patient DIES OF SHOCK!

The problem (challenge) is simple, we are using a MECHANISTIC MODEL, first applied to managing physical work, and superimposing it into the new MENTAL MODEL of TODAY`S knowledge organisation. We keep breaking change into SMALL PIECES and then managing the pieces. But, with change, the task is to manage the DYNAMIC, not the pieces.

The challenge is to innovate MENTAL WORK not to replicate physical work. The GOAL is to teach thousands of people how to think strategically, recognise patterns, and anticipate problems (issues) and opportunities before they occur.

Managing change is not like operating a machine or treating the human body, one ailment at a time. But of these activities involve working with a fixed set of relationships. Most organisations today find themselves under-taking a number of projects as part of their change effort. But the key to the change effort is not attending to each piece in isolation; it is CONNECTING and BALANCING all the pieces. In managing change, the critical task is understanding how pieces balance off one another, how changing ONE element changes the rest, how sequencing and pace affect the WHOLE structure.

One tool that companies can use to provide that critical balances is THE TRANSITION MANAGEMENT TEAM, a group of company leaders, reporting to the CHIEF EXECUTIVE, who commit all their time and energy to managing the change process. When that process has stabilised, the TMT disbands, until then it oversees the change effort. Managing change means managing the conversation between the PEOPLE leading the change effort and those who are expected to implement the NEW strategies, managing the organisational context in which change can occur, and managing the EMOTIONAL connection that are ESSENTIAL for ANY transformation.

The TRANSITION MANAGEMENT TEAM has eight primary responsibilities. This team is not, however, solely accountable for fulfilling these tasks.

1) ESTABLISH CONTEXT FOR CHANGE AND PROVIDE GUIDANCE

The CHIEF EXECUTIVE and other executives establish the company’s strategic vision. The TRANSITION MANAGEMENT TEAM makes sure that everyone in the organisation SHARES a common understanding of that vision and understands the company’s competitive situation. By organising discussions throughout the organisation the TMT spreads the company’s vision and competitive situation so that INDIVIDUALS and TEAMS can accurately align their OWN activities with the company’s new overall direction.

2) STIMULATE CONVERSATION

Most old, larger companies have formalised their operations in such functional ISOLATION that conversations across levels or functions RARELY take place. Instead, people have grown accustomed to presentations followed by inquisitions. Moreover, when resources are scarce and time pressures are severe, conversation often seems a luxury. Yet most change efforts are fundamentally about moving INFORMATION across old and obsolete boundaries. Consequently, organising early conversations between different parts of the company and making those conversations an important, sanctioned part of the change process is a CRITICAL task for the TMT. Early, open-ended conversations often result in the most PRODUCTIVE OUTCOME, conversely, project leaders who press for early results and close off conversation inside the company, usually get to the end of a project with LITTLE to show in the way of NEW insight or real breakthrough thinking.

3) PROVIDE APPROPRIATE RESOURCES

The TMT has TWO TYPES of significant power;

1. The power to allocate resources to make things happen,
2. The power to kill projects that are no longer needed.

The first category, the TMT does command time and budget. Frequently, change efforts falter because the people who are drafted to play important roles in leading teams work only on the margins. As a result, the team never has a real process owner or receives adequate attention. The TMT can change that, it can designate individuals who take on the authority and are given the time and resource to do the job properly.

The TMT can also kill off old projects that no longer have a high priority. In many organisations, the operating maxis is OLD PROJECTS NEVER DIE, THEY JUST GET UNDERFUNDED . Nobody is willing to make the TOUGH decision to cut a project that has outlined its usefulness. The result is a lot of projects that are more dead than alive but still distracting people and using resources. The TMT needs to be the TOUGH-MINDED terminator of these projects.

4) CO-ORDINATE AND ALIGN PROJECTS

As company’s shift into fast-paced change programmes, task forces, teams and projects proliferate. One result is a great deal of enthusiasm, energy, and activity. Another is confusion. Even if every activity is valid and necessary, the problem is that they don’t seem to fit together. The TMT has two tasks;

1. Co-ordinating and aligning the projects into building blocks that fit together;
2. Communicating to the whole organisation how the pieces align so that others can see the larger picture and appreciate that there is a coherent plan.

5) ENSURE CONGRUENCE OF MESSAGES, ACTIVITIES, POLICIES AND BEHAVIOURS

One of the major complaints of people in organisations undergoing a transition is the management does not ” WALK THE TALK “, they say “EMPOWERMENT” and then shoot down every new idea that comes from their employees. The TMT`s job is to be on the lookout for inconsistencies that undermine the credibility of the change effort. The message, the measures, the behaviours, and the rewards must match.

6) PROVIDE OPPORTUNITIES FOR JOINT CREATION

Most change programmes today embrace the concept of EMPOWERMENT , but never get around to defining it. In some companies, empowerment essentially is, ” Do what I say and act as if you like it.” In others, it is interpreted to mean, ” Everybody gets to vote on everything”. My working definition of EMPOWERMENT is a TRUE opportunity for employees throughout the company to create the future TOGETHER.

That means ensuring that ALL employees, whether Directors, Managers, Factory workers, or Technical staff, have the information they need to make CORRECT decisions and take appropriate actions. Clearly, the TMT cannot do ALL the communicating and teaching, it is the Designer, co-ordinator and support source for that learning and creation.

7) ANTICIPATE, IDENTIFY AND ADDRESS PEOPLE PROBLEMS

There is a reason why the guide and the communications and human resources teams are ALL represented on the TMT, PEOPLE issues are at the HEART OF CHANGE. For example, a change that involves delayering, changing job descriptions or compensation also requires advance notification and long lead-time. COMMUNICATIONS and HUMAN RESOURCES are critical to success, yet there are routine shortages of talent, diversity of perspective, pounds and share of mind. Cross-functional teams in communications and human resources represent an OPPORTUNITY for gathering and distributing information, both horizontally and vertically, throughout the organisation.

8) PREPARE THE CRITICAL MASS

Given the complexity of scale-up from creating the pilot to making it the norm, it is important to design into the work from the very BEGINNING the resources and strategy necessary for replication and learning transfer. Most teams will need guidance on how to do this as well as help to make sure that what they are doing FITS with other activities.

The organising element of all these activities is the HARD WORK of EDUCATING, TRAINING and preparing the organisation to think, feel and act differently. In companies where change is successful, the leaders look at the whole mobile and the congruence of operations and emotions. It is far easy to equate change with specific tasks when the TMT manages the content and the process, the operations and the emotions; it provides a powerful lever for change.

The real contribution of leadership in a time of change lies in MANAGING the DYNAMICS, not the pieces.

The fundamental job of leadership is to deal with the dynamics of change, the confluence and congruence of the forces that change unleashes, so that the company is better prepared to compete and to be more successful.

The right People = Performance = Productivity = Profit

Fresh thinking requires a vision to see beyond the conventional. When you combine excellent quality with outstanding value for money you will begin to realise the full potential of creative and well presented business solutions. Together, the sky`s the limit. Have passion to learn and let the knowledge help you to be successful in life

Take on board this great publication for your success: `The Achiever’` https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/the-achiever-dr-colin-thompson/1142883855?ean=2940186720324

Now go and be successful…

As Napoleon Hill wisely noted, “The starting point of all achievement is desire. Keep this constantly in mind. Weak desire brings weak results, just as a small amount of fire makes a small amount of heat.” In the ever-evolving world of business—marked by rapid technological shifts, global uncertainties, and the need for resilient leadership—this principle remains the foundation of true success. I am thrilled to share the full PDF of my book, Create Your Own Success Story.

This guide encapsulates the practical wisdom from my extensive career as a Managing Director, turnaround specialist, and leader in PLCs and private companies. From re-engineering organizations, orchestrating successful mergers and acquisitions, launching innovative products and services, to developing business models that consistently enhance profitability, I’ve dedicated my journey to empowering individuals and businesses to forge their own paths to excellence.

As Managing Partner at Cavendish, former Group Chairman of The Academy for Chief Executives, Professor at the European Business School in Cambridge, UK, and a prolific author of over 35 books, thousands of articles, and numerous educational resources, my core philosophy is simple yet profound: people equal performance, equal productivity, equal profit. But as my friend and colleague Tim Watts, Group Chairman of Pertemps, highlights in his foreword, profit alone isn’t the measure of a person—it’s about unlocking individual potential through application, articulation of aspirations, and a positive attitude that harmonizes personal and organizational goals.

This book provides actionable solutions to “provide the solutions for success,” focusing on strategic business planning (SBP) that defines clear goals, ensures logical flow to implementation, and builds committed teams. It avoids complex jargon, emphasizing common-sense approaches that are even more vital today amid digital transformation and talent wars. Key highlights include:

• Strategy and Planning – The rules of strategy, leadership’s role, strategic business planning, scenario planning, the top five reasons strategy plans fail, and how to plan for success.
• Leadership and CEO Insights – Leadership essentials, the organised CEO, why some CEOs fail, the executive of the 21st century, and winning strategies for a successful life.
• Financial and Business Growth – Financial management as a CEO function, structuring for growth, enterprise business models, management techniques to increase the ‘bottom-line’, negotiating deals, why buyouts and mergers go wrong, building successful boards, partnering blocks, and pricing strategies for continual growth.
• People and Performance – Attracting and retaining the right people, valuing employees at any age, strategy development with middle managers, performance appraisal, customer retention, blended learning, and getting the management balancing act right.

Whether you’re an entrepreneur starting out, a CEO navigating challenges, or a leader inspiring teams—This book is your toolkit for creating a narrative of triumph.

Download the full book PDF here and begin crafting your own success story today.

In today’s fiercely competitive business landscape – where customer demands are ever-increasing, digital transformation accelerates change, and organisational agility determines survival – one timeless truth stands out: the greatest driver of lasting success is investing in people.

I am delighted to share the full PDF of my book, Accelerate with Impact: Your Business and Personal Growth, here on the CEO Worldwide Blog. This guide distils the lessons from my own hands-on journey as a Managing Director, turnaround specialist, and leader in both PLCs and private companies.

Throughout my career – from re-engineering organisations, driving successful mergers and acquisitions, launching new products and services, to consistently elevating profitability – I have seen firsthand that businesses thrive when they prioritise their people. Technology supports us, but it is dedicated, empowered individuals who truly make companies excel.

This book provides straightforward, jargon-free guidance. My core message remains: “Improving the quality of people is necessary to accelerate with impact organisations.” By caring more for your personnel than your competitors do, you create winners. Key areas covered include:

• Change Management and Leadership – Actionable frameworks for navigating change, executing strategies, and delivering real results.
• People Empowerment – Proven tools for coaching, mentoring, training, effective communication, and fostering high-morale teams.
• Business Acceleration – Insights on market forecasting, ROI maximisation, strategy implementation, building effective boards, and developing 21st-century executives.
• Mindset for Success – The disciplines of champions, cultivating positive attitudes, and balancing professional achievement with personal wellbeing.

Whether you are a CEO guiding your organisation through uncertainty, an executive strengthening team resilience, or a leader aiming to maximise your own impact, Accelerate with Impact offers the practical blueprint to unlock the potential in your people – your most valuable asset.

Download the full book PDF below and take the next step to ignite your business and personal growth.

Growing a business faces a range of challenges. As a business grows, different issues/problems and opportunities demand different solutions – what worked a year ago might now be not the best approach. All too often, avoidable mistakes turn what could have been a great business into an also-ran.

Recognising and overcoming the common pitfalls associated with growth is essential if your business is to continue to grow and thrive. Crucially, you need to ensure that the steps you take today do not themselves create additional problems for the future. Effective leadership will help you make the most of the opportunities, creating sustainable growth for the future.

This guide highlights the particular risks and mistakes that most commonly affect growing a business and outlines what you can do about them.

• Keeping up with the market
• Information source
• Planning ahead
• Cash flow and financial management
• Problem solving
• The right systems
• Skills and attitudes
• Welcoming change
• Renegotiating contracts to take account of increased volume

Keeping up with the market

Market research isn’t something you do as a one-off when you launch your business. Business conditions change continually, so your market research should be continuous as well. Otherwise you run the risk of making business decisions based on out-of-date information, which can lead to business failure.

The more you succeed, the more competitors notice – and react to – what you are doing. A market-leading offer one day may be no better than average a few months later.

Apparently loyal customers can be quick to find alternative suppliers who provide a better deal.

As products (and services) age, sales growth and profit margins get squeezed. Understanding where your products are in their lifecycles can help you work out how to maximise overall profitability. At the same time, you need to invest in innovation to build a stream of new, profitable products to market.

Information sources

Published information can provide useful insights into market conditions and trends. As a growing business, your own experience can be even more valuable.

You should be able to build up an in-depth picture of what customers want, how they behave and which of your marketing approaches work best.

Taking the time to talk to key customers pays off. Your suppliers and other business partners can be important sources of market information. You should encourage your employees to share what they know about customers and the market. Effective IT systems can also make it easier to share and analyse key information such as customers’ purchasing behaviour and preferences.

You may want to carry out extra research as well – for example, to test customer reaction to a new product. You might do this yourself, or use a freelance researcher or market research agency.

Planning ahead

The plan that made sense for you a year ago isn’t necessarily right for you now. Market conditions continually change, so you need to revisit and update your business plan regularly.

As your business grows, your strategy needs to evolve to suit your changed circumstances. For example, your focus is likely to change from winning new customers to building profitable relationships and maximising growth with existing customers. Existing business relationships often have greater potential for profit and can also provide reliable cash flow. Newer relationships may increase turnover, but the profit margins may be lower, which may not be sustainable.

At the same time, every business needs to be alert to new opportunities. There are obvious risks to relying solely on existing customers. Diversifying your customer base spreads those risks.

Following the same business model, but bigger, is not the only route to growth. There are other strategic options such as outsourcing or franchising that might provide better growth opportunities.

It’s important not to assume that your current success means that you will automatically be able to take advantage of these opportunities. Every major move needs planning in the same way as a new business launch.

Watch out for being too opportunistic – ask yourself whether new ideas suit your strengths and your overall vision of where the business is going. Bear in mind that every new development brings with it changing risks. It’s worth regularly reviewing the risks you face and developing contingency plans.

Cash flow and financial management

Good cash flow control is important for any business. For a growing business, it’s crucial – cash constraints can be the biggest factor limiting growth and overtrading can be fatal.

Making the best use of your finances should be a key element in business planning and assessing new opportunities. With limited resources, you may need to pass up promising opportunities if pursuing them would mean starving your core business of essential funding.

Every element of working capital should be carefully controlled to maximise your free cash flow. Effective credit management and tight control of overdue debts are essential. You may also want to consider raising financing against trade debts.

Good stock control and effective supplier management tend to become increasingly important as businesses grow. Holdings of obsolete stock may become a problem that needs periodic clearing up. You may want to work with suppliers to reduce delivery cycles, or switch to suppliers and systems that can handle just-in-time delivery.

Planning ahead helps you anticipate your financing needs and arrange suitable funding. For many growing businesses, a key decision is whether to bring in outside investors to provide the equity needed to underpin further expansion.

Problem/Issue solving while growing a business

New businesses often run in perpetual crisis mode. Every day brings new challenges that urgently need resolving and management spends most of their time troubleshooting.

As your business grows, this approach simply doesn’t work. While a short-term crisis is always urgent, it may not matter nearly as much as other things you could be doing. Spending your time soothing an irritated customer might help protect that one relationship – but focusing instead on recruiting the right salesperson could lay the foundations of substantial new sales for years to come.

As your business grows, you also need to be alert to new issues/problems and priorities.

For example, your business might be increasingly at risk unless you take steps to ensure your intellectual property is properly protected.

If you are focusing on individual marketing campaigns, you might need to devote more resources to developing your brand.

Identifying the key drivers of growth is a good way of understanding what to prioritise.

A disciplined approach to management focuses on leading employees, developing your management team and building your business strategy. Instead of treating each problem as a one-off, you develop systems and structures that make it easier to handle in the future.

The right systems

All businesses produce and rely on large volumes of information – financial records, interactions with customers and other business contacts, employee details, regulatory requirements and so on. It’s too much to keep track of – let alone use effectively – without the right systems.

Responsibilities and tasks can be delegated as your business grows, but without solid management information systems you cannot manage effectively. The larger your business grows, the harder it is to ensure that information is shared and different functions work together effectively. Putting the right infrastructure in place is an essential part of helping your business to grow.

Documentation, policies and procedures also become increasingly important. The informality that might work with one or two employees and a handful of customers simply isn’t practical in a growing business. You need proper contracts, clear terms and conditions, effective employment procedures and so on.

Many growing businesses find using established management standards one of the most effective ways of introducing best practice. Quality control systems can be an important part of driving improvements and convincing larger customers that you can be relied on.

Investing in the right systems is an investment that will pay off both short and long term. You benefit every day from more effective operations. If you ever decide to sell the business, demonstrating that you have well-run, efficient systems will be an important part of proving its value.

Skills and attitudes

Entrepreneurs are the driving force behind creating and growing new businesses. All too often, they are also the people holding them back.

The abilities that can help you launch a business are not the same as those you need to help it grow. It’s vital not to fool yourself into valuing your own abilities too highly. The chances are that you’ll need training to learn the skills and attitudes required by someone who is leading growth.

To grow your business, you need to learn to delegate properly, trusting your management team and giving up day-to-day control of every detail. It’s all too easy to stifle creativity and motivation with excessive interference. As the business becomes more complex, you also need to develop your time management skills and learn to focus on what’s really important.

As your business grows, you may need to bring in outsiders to help. You’ll want to delegate responsibility for particular areas to different specialists, or appoint a non-executive director or two to strengthen your board. As you start tackling a new opportunity, someone who has experience of that activity can be vital.

For many successful entrepreneurs, learning to listen to – and take – advice is one of the hardest challenges they face. But it may also be essential if you are going to make the most of your opportunities. Some entrepreneurs, recognising their own limitations, even appoint someone else to act as managing director or chairman.

Welcoming change

Complacency can be a major threat to a growing business. Assuming that you will continue to be successful simply because you have been in the past is very unwise.

Regularly revisiting and updating your business plan can help remind you of the changing market conditions and the need to respond to them. See the page in this guide on planning ahead.

An up-to-date plan helps you identify what action you need to take to change your business and the way it operates, for example:

• Changing to suppliers who can grow with you and meet your new priorities. As your business grows, consistent quality and reliability may be more important than simply getting the cheapest offer.
• Renegotiating contracts to take account of increased volume.
• Training and developing employees. Your own role will also evolve as the business grows. See the part of this guide on skills and attitudes.
• Making sure that you keep up to date with new technologies. 

You need to be fully committed to your strategy, even if it takes you out of your comfort zone. This may involve hard decisions – for example making employees redundant or switching business away from suppliers you have become friends with. But unless you’re prepared to do this, you risk putting your business at a dangerous competitive disadvantage.

I share with you helpful publications below:

Delivering Success – A Pathway to Profits, Passion and True Purpose

`How to Learn, Lead and Grow as a Champion`
Achieving Business and Personal Excellence

Learning – Leading – Growing – Winning Together = Success

`Becoming the Best`
Empowering Employees to Deliver Service Excellence

`Tomorrow You Will Become – What You Choose Today`
Blue Print to Your Success in Business and Personal Growth

“Anything in life is possible as long as you have the passion to be successful”
Colin Thompson

So which is it:

Time for a sharp exit – you need time for your exit strategy to kick-in
Time for a sharp exit  – you need to plan the timing of your exit?
Time for a sharp exit – your exit needs to be swift?
Time for a sharp exit – you need to start thinking about how you are going to exit the business…

Preparing Your Business for Sale

Getting your company in shape for a sale

It’s time to turn our attention more specifically to ensuring that your business is well positioned to achieve an optimal outcome in an outright sale or indeed on a partial sell-down by the existing owners. The ideal scenario sought by business owners often involves a high price, payable in cash on completion, with no onerous terms and minimal disruption during the process. This can often be achieved, but not without prior planning.

All too often business owners are not well prepared when a decision is made to sell and believe their business is worth considerably more than a purchaser is prepared to pay. The timing and reasons for a business sale can be critical to determining the outcome. Unfortunately, the decision to sell is often forced upon the business by circumstances and many business owners fail to unlock the true worth of their business.

Reasons for selling

Common reasons for a business sale fall into two categories – planned and unplanned – and include:

Planned – Retirement.

 Access to capital to fund business growth.

– The entrepreneur that grew the business recognises that the management capability required is beyond his/her skill sets.

– There are no family members to pass on the business Realisation of personal wealth to pursue other business or personal interests.

– Expectation of future profit erosion within increasingly competitive environment.

Unplanned.

– Health issues, such as illness or death.

– Financial difficulties, either within and external to the business.

– Divorce, family split up or other change in personal circumstances.

– Partnership/shareholder dispute or divergent shareholder objectives.

-Opportunistic approaches by potential acquirers.

– Loss of a major customer, comprising a significant part of the business.

Whether a business sale has been planned for some time or is the course of action decided upon in response to particular circumstances, the outcome will almost certainly be better if the business has been well prepared for sale.

In order to ensure that your business is positioned to achieve an optimal outcome on sale, the following eight key issues should be addressed:

1. Establish a clear competitive edge.

The value of your business will be considerably enhanced if you are able to demonstrate a clear competitive advantage in a particular niche or market segment, leading to more sustainable margins, greater customer retention and an increased ability to win new business.

This means understanding where the core capabilities of the organisation and its management lie, aligning these two areas of market opportunity, and repositioning the business if necessary to develop a clear and sustainable competitive advantage within these areas. This can be a major undertaking, which may take several years to achieve. However, in the absence of a competitive advantage, potential purchasers may view your business not as a strategic acquisition, but simply as the opportunity to achieve rationalisation benefits through adding production capacity – a far less valuable proposition in an industry suffering from overcapacity.

2. Ensure adequate strength and depth of management.

Many businesses rely heavily on the business owner or a small management team. If you intend to leave the business following the sale, you will need to ensure that the business is able to operate without you and that the ongoing management has the desire, energy, ability and commitment to take the business forward in an increasingly difficult environment. Generally, a business owner should progressively step back from the business over a period of at least 18-24 months prior to the anticipated date of sale, handing over key relationships and responsibilities to other members of the management team. Also, the reporting line to you must be established on the operations of your company in a regular time frame. By taking this action you will receive a better price for your business.

There is also a need to assess whether there are talented and committed people in the wings to become the next generation of managers, to ensure as far as possible that the business is not reliant on one or two people. If particular individuals are key to the business, it may be advisable to align their interests with yours by offering a bonus linked to a successful sale of the business, or indeed an equity stake.

3. Mitigate risk of customer losses.

If your business is overly reliant on one or two major customers, it may detract significantly from the value placed on your business by a purchaser or investor. This is particularly so if your product or service is not differentiated and/or the customer relationship is not secured through a contract or by other means, such as being the provider of an end-to-end solution closely integrated with the customer’s own business processes.

In order to limit the risk of customer loss on the business and provide a purchaser with greater comfort in relation to future revenues, consideration should be given to entering into contractual arrangements with major customers, whilst greater diversification may also need to be built into the customer base to reduce the financial impact of the loss of any single customer.

4. Eliminate personal transactions.

In presenting financial information to a prospective purchaser, it is advisable to eliminate non arm’s length transactions between the business and its owner (and related parties of the owner), in order that the financial statements reflect the true underlying performance of the business. For example, personal expenditure incurred by the business should cease, any transactions with the business owner or affiliates, should be on an arm’s length basis, personal assets such as expensive cars or yachts, should be extracted from the business, and the employment of any family members should continue only if they are paid a market salary for duties actually undertaken within the business.

The existence of complex or undisclosed arrangements such as these not only distorts the reported financial performance of the business, but also can significantly undermine the confidence of a purchaser in the reliability of the information provided.

5. Ensure robust Management Information Systems.

Having a management information system that provides timely, accurate and relevant information both improves the quality of decision making and provides a potential purchaser with considerable comfort with regard to the way in which the business is managed. It is fundamental to costing and pricing, the purchase of supplies, stock holding, work scheduling and the overall management of profitability and cash flow. This in turn should translate into management accounts ensuring that management keeps its ‘finger on the pulse’.

6. Review the state of financial records.

Of equal importance is maintaining the financial records in a healthy state and making sure that all statutory requirements are complied with within the required timeframes. Yearend financial statements that are easily reconciled to monthly management accounts, debtors and creditors ledgers, tax returns, etc without any surprises provide confidence to prospective purchasers, investors and financiers.

Additional confidence or surety is further gained when a business has been regularly audited. There is certainly a sense of greater corporate governance and acceptance of the figures presented by would – be acquirers.

7. Evaluate tax planning and structuring opportunities.

At the end of the day, it is what ends up in the pocket that matters most. With every sale, there are a raft of structural considerations and taxation implications which, all other things being equal, can make a substantial difference in the net cash received.

Often these considerations are left to the very end, resulting in a less satisfactory result being achieved. Planning well in advance can assist you in ensuring that the business retains valuable tax attributes (such as tax losses), and in establishing a structure which minimises the likely tax liability on sale.

8. Build a track record of profitability and cash flow.

Finally, the most important determinant of a business’s value from a purchaser’s perspective is its future earning capacity and ability to generate cash. Given that past performance is often used as a predictor, in the assessment of likely future performance, it is imperative that the business can demonstrate a track record of profitability and strong cash flows. Therefore, if this has not been the case, sufficient time may be required to rectify the situation.

Warning signs to purchasers

If your business displays one or more of the following characteristics, its value is likely to be impaired, even if there is a strong underlying business. – One or two customers comprise a large proportion of revenue. – All the knowledge and key customer relationships reside with the owner. – No ‘new blood’ coming up through the ranks. – Accounting records in a mess and not up to date. – No transparency between tax return and management accounts. – Extensive personal assets and expenditure within the business. – Fluctuating historical revenues and profits and unclear growth expectations. – No cash flow forecast and profitability projections.

Whether or not you plan on selling your business in the near future, a little planning and preparation can significantly enhance the likelihood of an optimal outcome when the time comes – bearing in mind that it may not be of your choosing. Grasp the opportunity now to make the business more attractive and increase its value to a purchaser you have nothing to lose and everything to gain!

Maximising The Value – in Your Business………

Preparing Your Business For a Successful Sale

Eight Ways to Optimise the Sale of Your Business

`Selling/Buying Your Business Successfully`

Realise – Your Business – Your Future – Your Potential!

Plus, information on obtaining guides on:

`Buying a Business` and `Due Diligence Guide`

“ An Investment in Learning, gaining Knowledge and Skills Pays the Best Interest for You”
Colin Thompson

The printing industry is currently and will continue to experience many transitions in the form of `Digital Printing and Communications`. This also impacts on all businesses globally.

The printing industry will continue to evolve into new and exciting `electronic imaging driven by digital technology`. Digital technology, economic restructuring, global competition, market changes, emerging new media and other market forces are combining to `dramatically` change the operating environment of the Printing Industry. The traditional printing industry is very mature with over capacity in the established countries and also very poor training of personnel and very few people entering the industry. We are in the `emerging information society` driven by technology, where by the very nature of the role of the printer is changing rapidly, driven by `customer demands`.

The major drivers are first, technology, particularly the digitisation of data, is reshaping the communications industries. The rapid experience of the convergence of computers, telecommunications and television, plus the use of `multimedia` and the speed of change in the `information superhighway`.

The second major driver is the changing macro environment, particularly the rapid restructuring of the world economy and global competition.

The consequence of these two major drivers is the movement in print markets worldwide. The emerging `new` countries who invest into the print/communications industries with the latest equipment are global players whom will significantly drive down prices by the economies of scale.

Print companies are redefining their business (or they should be) to one of identifying `customers ‘changing communication needs brought about by the digital processing and storing of information and delivering it through the most effective distribution channel. Since printer’s are/should already well be established in `imagery`, they are well positioned to participate in new channels as they develop. If print companies do not take on board new technology, they will not survive in this rapid changing environment.

Changes to Industry Structure and Profitability

The structural changes to the industry are occurring as a result of `technology` changes and market forces on a global scale. This restructuring and the pace have quickened and the impact on profitability has been profound. Over the last 40 years industry profitability has moved in cycles roughly corresponding to industry investment cycles. With the current need to invest in `new digital technology` coinciding with a slowing of market growth world-wide, printing companies profits will be `squeezed` further in there mainder of the decade as structural change continues on a global scale.

The implications for the printing industry structure and profitability in the future are;

• The number of large printing plants is declining. (costs out way benefits of net profit)
• Large printing companies will become larger by acquisition, at the expense of less well-managed large companies and medium sized companies.
• The less innovative companies will face serious issues in a slow growth business environment.
• The rate of failure for less well managed small companies will be high. This is the majority of the industry.
• Medium size companies particularly those without well-defined speciality niches will continue to be squeezed by larger companies.
• The impact on the printing industry profitability will be a continuation of the pressure on overall industry profit margins.
• The profit leaders will continue to make attractive profits by acquisition/cost controls/economies of scale/skilled and experienced personnel in `all` areas.
• The impact of `Print Management Service` programmes on the manufacturing sector that does not participate in this customer driven environment.

Management without Vision

A lack of management commitment to change and a failure to hold a compelling vision of the future with their employees are holding back global mature print manufacturers when they attempt to make a move towards `lean manufacturing`.

But addressing the attitude and behaviour of an organisation – in addition to the operating system and management infrastructure – could boost production by at least 20%, and improve stock, lead times, quality and capacity. The organisations with skilled and experienced people of any age and training programmes with business models will be the winners.

There are at least 12 major pitfalls which companies must avoid benefiting from making the journey to lean production.

The pitfalls are;

1. Lack of management commitment
2. Lack of share division and objectives
3. Failure to lead by example
4. Initiative fatigue
5. Constant fire fighting
6. Employees` lack of understanding
7. Middle management not engaged
8. Stagnation after pilot
9. Failure in deployment
10. Lack of clarity over the future state of the organisation
11. Failure to build on a change which has been achieved
12. The understanding of Managing the `Management of Change`

All too often failure to make a lean transformation stems from a superficial, piecemeal approach. Lean manufacturing requires a holistic approach transforming not just the technical production system but also the organisations management systems and a comprehensive approach to change which addresses mindsets and behaviours as well as formal processes and structures.

Most common faults are a lack – lustre approach to change by a dividend or uncommitted senior management and unwillingness to properly consult and communicate with the workforce. This is why some European companies claim to have tried and failed to implement lean production systems. Communication, communication of the requirement and a `buy-in` programme by `all` people is necessary for change to be successful.

Lean manufacturing is now almost universally regarded as a panacea for European print manufacturers (also, all UK manufacturing) to improve productivity but, UK owned manufacturing companies are typically less productive than their UK-based, US – owned competitors.

A McKinsey & Company study showed that an average US manufacturing companies deliver a 22%annual return on capital. While UK companies return only 7.6%! (before the recession).

McKinsey & Company experience reveals that middle management and front-line staff are adept at spotting half-hearted support for production process improvements and adopt a `just-enough` attitude to tide them over until the effort is abandoned. Also, senior management (Directors) were complacent to act due to lack of knowledge of `management of change` process.

A typical scenario might be of an UK company undertaking a lean programme. But, sooner or later, after considerable diversion of company resources, they admit defeat and settle for a few small improvements here and they’re rather than a lasting and marked performance improvement. This type of company will not survive.

Having seen the `writing on the wall` for their business before being spurred into a lean transformation attempt, such businesses frequently joins the list of statistical failures.

A lack of a `shared` vision headed the list of failures.

Alignment around `shared` objectives must begin with the `top` team and cascade through the organisation. It must also be seen to go hand-in-hand with visible commitment by `all` Directors/Senior Management so those staff sees their `leaders` are serious about change and play a full part themselves. Middle management are very good at spotting lack of commitment and respond in kind by supplying just the amount of effort they judge expedient until the latest initiative withers and dies. People know what they are expected to say and duly say it. But, it is meaningless if they are just going through the motions. Again, this type of company will not survive.

Failing to lead by example resulted in middle managers and production staff failing to `get onside`.

This most often happens where senior management is `out of touch` with all the employees. Top management must get close to the reality of the `people` to understand the issues the frontline staff are living with, and then take the lead to resolve them as part of the `change process`.

At the same time, management need to be aware of initiative fatigue, the `been there, done that, did not work` attitude. Change targets must be precise and stretching, but realistic and some early successes will galvanise the rest of the effort.

The tendency to fire fight constantly must be stifled and while some managers thrive on fire fighting and build a successful career on it, this only deals with symptoms and not with `long-term solutions`.

Just telling employees what to do is not enough. They must be involved at all levels in solving issues in the change process. All staff expects to see their line managers directing change, so these middle managers must be engaged from the outset.

Even when a successful pilot implementation is over, there are still several more pitfalls to trap the unwary. One is stagnation following a successful pilot as the focus shifts away. Another is the failure to deploy lean manufacturing to the wider business. Never stop looking to improve.

Conclusion – Lean manufacturing requires a holistic approach transforming not just the technical production system but also the company’s management system and a `comprehensive` approach to change which addresses mindsets and behaviours as well as formal processes and structures. The `right` trained and skilled and experienced `People` manage companies and these will be the winners in the future.

Keys to Bridging to the Digital Future

The central message of technological change is the accelerating pace of digitisation. Besides basic matters of understanding emerging printing technology, then integrating it effectively into the business and using it to enable expansion into `new` businesses. Two broad issues stand out as follows;

1. All print companies will have to address the question of how their internal operations are interconnected digitally and how they are also connected to their customers and suppliers. The question involves connecting through data networks to customers and suppliers; the consideration here are productivity, profitability and customer demands for `rapid` service. It also concerns customer demands for fast turnaround and shared data.

2. In the long run, higher growth opportunities will be available in `new` rather than traditional media. Printers of all sizes should be serving specialised markets also have opportunities to experience with new media today; with minimal effort. The greater the penetration of multimedia personal computers, for instance, the greater the opportunities for some printers to move into this medium.

Beyond these general issues, a number of specific opportunities exist. These will become imperative as for future success as customers become more demanding;

• Participate in inter-enterprise systems that connect suppliers, printers and end users with systems for managing activities together and communications for digital data for printing.
• Participate in the development and maintenance of digital databases of text, data, images for printing and other media. Publishers have already redesigned their own front ends to send the same information to their printers and to on-line databases.
• Participate in new delivery options. These include both the use of database and mailing list technologies to enable direct mail and refined targeting capabilities and connection to the cable and telephone company with broadband information directly to end users.

Non Traditional Printing Services

Non-impact, primarily electronic, printing technologies will continue to improve in speed, process colour capability and quality and prices will continue to fall rapidly. Larger and specialised printers are already integrating such technologies into their production systems; quick printer’s basic businesses are based on such technologies. But there continue to be opportunities especially for small to medium size printers to meet growing customer’s needs for non-impact work and to offer convenience as one of their services.

Customer and Printer Alliances

Alliances with groups of customers and groups of other printers will increasingly become critical for small and medium size printers. The point is to bring together different capabilities that no one printer can afford to maintain. Larger printers on the other hand are already moving to ally themselves on a long-term basis with their customers to protect their investments and market share both in printing and emerging media. The Print Management Service organisations are a prime example of meeting customer needs.

Education and Training

The rapid pace of change in printing technology in competing media and in printers markets places a `premium` on ongoing education and training. Printers must ensure that `all` of their employees are up-to-date on the latest technologies and management skills that are required for now and the future. The degree of change expected in this and the next decades also places a premium on educating customers about emerging technologies, systems, media and distribution. We must use people of `any age` to further their education and skills to compete in a global market. Also, people of `any` age with experience and skills of `management of change` will be your main asset!

Customer Needs

The most successful printers will be those who can meet rapidly changing customer needs. Inevitably, that will mean faster turnaround and lower costs in a more competitive business environment. It also means the ability to innovate rapidly either internally or by outsourcing work, provide new services both in front end and distribution areas and as stated above participate on new media. Creating and nurturing the best possible relationships with customers remains a critical success factor. A related issue will be the ability of printers to understand their customers in order to be more proactive in meeting their needs and to focus their `bottom-line` profitability.

Other Issues

The large printers will be driven to `dominating` these they serve trying to maintain the top positions in their business. Smaller printers able to grow comfortably in general commercial printing in the past will have to focus more on `selected` product and /or service niches either alone or through alliances.

With technological and market change, competition for critically important skills will increase across the board, raising the premium on attracting, training, managing and retaining the best skilled workers and managers. Managing technology, capital and costs will continue to grow in importance. Also, age should not be a factor, but the ability to carry out the function at the highest standards, using experience and skills that are required at each sector of the business.

Above all, printers will have to strategically -oriented businesses, be aware of changing technology, markets and other external developments and able to take advantage of them profitably. Indeed, for many printers hiring or developing a `digital champion` to act as a catalyst for change within their company will be a critical step.

The future is a great challenge so please take on board these excellent publications for your success;

`Document Management – Cost Savings Solutions`
`The Hidden Overhead in the 21st Century`

“Nothing is `Impossible`, the word itself says, `I`m Possible` for success in life”
Colin Thompson

Right now, our mission is to provide practical strategies and timely information to protect and prepare you as we slide into a global recession. With that in mind 10 Recession-Busting Solutions for advisors, business owners, and CFOs are here to help you be successful in your task.

1. Re-Evaluate Your Business Model the way you work has to change, make it a change for the better!

`The Enterprise Business Model`

It is Your Time for Success…

Improving the quality of systems is necessary to accelerate with impact organisations in the 21^st century. The competition for customers is getting fierce. Customers want and expect much more from company personnel and their systems. This publication will help you to improve your skills in empowering people to deliver quality service excellence by using a `Enterprise Business Model`  to raise the `bottom-line`.

This publication will help you understand how an `Enterprise Business Model` can affect your business globally and also impact an increase in the `bottom-line`.

Businesses that invest in `people and systems` will `win`, because they care more than other organisations. Each company should care about its personnel and business systems.  The world is about dedication to the people and business models environment, since it is people and business models that make companies work, technology only helps people and the business models carry out their job more efficiently.

“Anything in life is possible as long as you have the passion to be successful”

• Colin Thompson

“In the last two weeks I’ve seen many business owners make panicked decisions and rupture relationships that took years to build.”

In the past few weeks, you’ll probably have had to heavily revise how your business operates, to fit with the global change in circumstances. But change doesn’t have to be a bad thing. Take some time to re-evaluate your business model, really get to the heart of why you do what you do, and ask yourself if there are ways that you can do it better.

Are there changes you’ve made recently that you’ll want to make permanent once things start picking up? Has your team learned to collaborate in new ways that will serve you for the better going forward? Maybe you’ve had to shorten your turnaround time, or started offering new delivery options. Good things can come from bad times, if decisions are made with a cool head.

2. Ensure Your Team is Optimised and Ready

Take care of your team, so they can take care of business. Health and safety doesn’t just mean letting everyone in the office know where the fire extinguisher is stashed. Keeping your team healthy and motivated is key to the survival of your business. Some of your employees will handle the disruption better than others, and should be supported mentally, physically, and emotionally through this time. 

If you have any hard decisions to make to keep the business afloat, make them early. If you have people willing to step up into leadership roles, let them shine. The more your team is on your side, the better your chances for success. 

3. Get Time With Your Accountant or Advisor 

Their expertise might be the difference between sink or swim. There are a number of services your accountant or advisor could offer you right now that could make a real difference. First and foremost, if you’re a business owner, you’re going to need a cash flow forecast. If you’re an accountant, you should be providing one to every client. There’s no point getting through the worst of the slump, only to find that you’ve run out of money. 

Business owners: ask your accountant for help with tax planning, government packages, and compliance and relief strategies. Chances are, this isn’t the first recession they’ve worked through, and they might have game-changing insights that will see you thriving.

4. Understand Government Assistance Schemes 

Most governments are offering financial aid to get local businesses through these stormy waters. Not all of it will be applicable to you, but make sure you conduct a thorough investigation, so you don’t miss out. If possible, ask your accountant/advisor for help with research and applications.

5. Constructive Communication With Customers

Humanity is more important now than ever. Everyone could use a friendly face and voice from outside their quarantine bubble right now. But it’s not just about sales—it’s about connection. Reconnect, reassure, and really listen to what your customers are saying. Relationships rekindled under duress are likely to last well beyond bad times.

Be careful with your communication—quality, not quantity, is key. Make sure that your messaging is empathetic and not tone-deaf, but also, try not to hammer your customer base with crisis comms. We all know things are getting bad out there—how can you help make their day better?

6. Talk to Your Bank and Stakeholders

If necessary, reconfigure and renegotiate. What debt options are they offering? Can they help you with governmental schemes? Are they willing to renegotiate existing debt, and offer you better rates? What advisory services can they provide? Are they a source of capital now, or will they be in the future? What expertise can they offer?

Keep the bank in the loop, so they can help you with things like overdraft availability and other measures. Stay on their radar.  

7. Dive Into Your Numbers

Use them as a guide going forward. As mentioned earlier, you’ll need a cash flow forecast, and a budget. Take your data and all available factors, and use it to plan scenarios: what good, bad, and ugly scenarios are possible in the future?

Your numbers will illuminate both ‘flab’ and ‘muscle’. If you need to trim the fat, now’s a good time to do so, but don’t throw out useful subscriptions and assets with all the nice-to-haves. Keep what’s useful, and it’ll serve you well in the long run. 

8. Update Strategy and Direction

Get your business ready for the new normal. Remember, this is a marathon, not a sprint. The way forward might be clear to you right now, but you need to be thinking about how the decisions you’re making will impact your business in the future. Create a chart of 30/60/90 day priorities and actions, and make sure there’s a balance between urgency and intent.

Put your customers at the heart of your decision making. What’s the best service you offer right now, and are you delivering it in a way that’s accessible to your base?

Take a moment to think about long term goals. What are the top three objectives for the next one-three years? Maybe it’s all about survival right now, but recessions don’t last forever. How will you come out on top?

9. Double Your Support Networks

Reach out to old friends, and make new ones. In tough times, the prepared, proactive and fearless often move quickly from flight/survive, to fight/thrive. These individuals seek new or renewed relationships, networks, and sources of advice that will sustain and guide them on the journey ahead. 

Come out of this time with more connections that you had going in. Make sure you give as much as you take, and reap the rewards of beneficial relationships that will boost not only your business, but your own profile, as well as your wellbeing. Find the people who can support you through tough times, and be that person for others. No man is an island, especially not in the age of technology. 

10. Manage Yourself 

Take care of your physical, mental, and emotional health. If you’re not operating at your best, your team, your family, and your business won’t be able to either. Show compassion and empathy for those around you, but don’t forget to save some for yourself. Stay realistic, avoid burn-out, take some time out to recharge so you remain positive and effective. 

Learn to shut out the 24-hour news cycle, and focus in on what matters. Eliminate sources of negativity from your life, whether that’s people, companies, or news outlets, and focus on the good. In bad times, we often see humanity at its best, and now is no different. Look for the positive, bring it into your life, and share it with others. After all, we’re all on this journey together.

Solutions and Strategy Tips for Success

To help ensure that your business/personal adventure is a successful and profitable one, here are some tips and strategies to make your efforts more fulfilling and focused.

Build a Foundation Based on Your Core Values.
What’s important to you? What are the drivers that get out of bed each day to go to work for yourself? Look to your core values for some clues. Our core values shape how we operate in the world both personally and professionally. The more aligned your work is with these core values, the more satisfying your business will be and the less like work it will feel.

Get Clear on Your Commitment.
What is your vision and mission for your company and yourself? What impact do you want to have on your community and the world? How do you want to achieve your vision? The more you can refine your vision, the easier it will be to set your goals and objectives along the way.

Create Your Plan.
Writing a business/personal plan isn’t just a nice exercise to do, it’s a road map for building your company and your life. It’s a working document to help guide you, stay true to your vision and help you establish the mile markers along the way. It should entail both your short-term and long-term goals for your company and include your plans for the internal growth of your organisation and the external growth of your business. Do not let it gather dust, review and update it regularly.

Determine Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP).
Do your research — what are your closest competitors doing? Then look to see how you can provide your services better, smarter or faster than your competition. This will help you to stand out from the crowd. Use your uniqueness to your advantage — quirks and all!

Build Your Marketing Kit.
Take your USP and use it to create a set of effective marketing materials. To get you started, you’ll need a business card, an “audio logo or 30-second commercial” to briefly describe your business, an executive summary of who you work with and what you provide, and even a small website to get your brand out onto the web. 

Establish a Marketing Strategy.
Now that you’ve got some tools to get started with, it’s vital that you identify the 2-3 different marketing tactics you can do to help grow your business. This can include but isn’t limited to: networking, advertising, online sales, creating a newsletter, speaking engagements, podcasting, writing articles to get published or even writing your own book. Whatever tactics you choose they should all point your potential clients into your sales funnel. The more closely each of these tactics is tied into the others, the more successful your marketing campaign will be.

Create Your Team.
Yes, you are super human AND, having the support of different people will help you achieve your goals more quickly than you will on your own. Does this mean you have to hire a bunch of employees? No, you can create your team in many ways using full-time or part-time help. Consider hiring consultants such as a bookkeeper, FCA/CPA or web designer to help you with areas that might not be your forte. The idea is to work from your strengths and find the help you need in other areas that don’t fall into your sweet spot of skills and talent.

Accountability is Key.
Whether it’s to your staff, your board of advisors or your coach, having someone outside of your head (and preferably not your spouse!) to help you stay in action around your plans and goals is extremely helpful. Establish regular check-in calls or meetings to review where you’re at, where you might be off course and what you need to do to get back on track.

That’s why a coach is so important.

Create Raving Fans.
The least expensive way to attract a new customer is through referrals. And the best way to get referrals is to create raving fans! Under promise and over deliver every time and your clients will be singing your praises to their friends and colleagues. Think of it like a pump that needs to be primed — it takes some work initially to get things moving (through your marketing efforts and delivering great products or services to your clients) but as your reputation grows, you’re business will start to flow more easily!

What You Focus On Comes True.
Focus on what you want to create and achieve, not what you’re fearful of. Fear can easily generate internal negative self-talk or limiting beliefs that get in your way and get you stopped. The more you focus on these negative perspectives the more evidence you’ll find to support your beliefs. Instead, focus your time, energy and actions on the areas that will create your success.

Find the Balance.
Go back to those core values and remember what’s important. I’m guessing that working 24-7 is not your ideal lifestyle. Be sure to take time out for the other aspects that make up your version of a balanced life – time with friends, family, hobbies and exercise. “Down time” is vitally important to recharge your batteries, clear out the brain fog and rest your body.

Celebrate Your Successes!
It’s easy to take note of what hasn’t been checked off your list, what’s missing, or what’s not completed. This can send you into a negative frame of mind in a nanosecond if you’re not careful. Be sure to take time at the end of each day to celebrate your successes no matter how big or small they may seem. By focusing on what you’re grateful for, you’ll raise your energy level, clear out some of the internal noise and go to sleep with a smile on your face.

Quotes

“What a wonderful life I’ve had! I only wish I’d realized it
sooner.”
     — Colette

“There are only two ways to live your life. One is as though
nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a
miracle.”
     — Albert Einstein

“The future belongs to those who believe in their dreams.”
     —  Eleanor Roosevelt

What are your plans?

Other very useful publications to help with your success;

`How to Learn, Lead and Grow as a Champion`

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/how-to-learn-lead-and-grow-as-a-champion-dr-colin-thompson/1144506390?ean=2940185999530

Achieving Business and Personal Excellence

Learning – Leading – Growing – Winning Together = Success

Rising to the Challenge

Finding Ways to Grow and Thrive – take on this publication will lead to success;

`Blending the Right Solution = Success`

THE ROAD TO SUCCESS

Your Business and Personal Growth

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/books/1143973266?ean=2940185969373&hConversionEventId=AQEAAZQF2gAmdjYwMDAwMDE4YS0yMmM0LTQ0YTgtOGQ5Yi05ZjQzNGI1YzNhZTjaACRkMD

“An Investment in Learning, gaining Knowledge and Skills Pays the Best Interest for You”

Colin Thompson