Articles

Quick Introduction

I love what I do! Its the first time in 20 years that I’ve realised I can say that again.

At the back end of the 20th century I was living my dream. A golf professional based at The Belfry and The Celtic Manor, I was following my vocation. I loved competing, but I also loved coaching and teaching too.

As we moved into a new century I became disillusioned with the game and felt like I had fallen out of love with it. (With the benefit of hindsight I can see that I hadn’t fallen out of love with golf, I was just subject to poor leadership and management.)

This was the birth of my journey into the corporate world and a career that spanned two decades working for large international organisations and privately owned SME’s. I have worked for British companies, American companies, European Companies and during this time was privileged to be identified as “High Potential” resulting in me being enrolled onto numerous talent management programs and benefiting from lots of professional training & development.

It was through these past 20 years that I progressed from B2B sales positions through to Sales Leadership and then since 2012 into Business Leadership & Managing Director roles reporting directly to either the executive board (in the publicly traded corporates) or the majority shareholder (in the privately owned SME’s).

It was whilst working for the majority shareholder of a private company that I started to question the value I was adding? Yes I was delivering financial returns, I was improving processes, implementing strategy and developing talent, but something was missing. I was frustrated at delivering these results and creating shareholder return but still feeling that I wasn’t adding any true value.

That’s when it hit me. I was exhausted chasing the corporate ladder. It felt too cut-throat, full of politics and most importantly, what good was it me having this fantastic tool-kit and skill-set if I was unable to share it with others?

So here I am now, there are lots of title’s for what I do. Business Coach, Advisor, Mentor, Consultant. Pick the one that resonates most with yourself, as they are all appropriate, but I see myself as I did 25 years ago.

I’m a facilitator or enabler, helping people to achieve their objectives, goals & aspirations. The audience may be different, being Business Owners or Leaders rather than keen golfers.

The important thing for me, is that I’m doing what I found so rewarding 2 decades ago. I’m sharing my specialist knowledge and imparting skills to helps others improve in specific area’s that enable the achievement of results and aspirations they never thought possible.

The Challenges Businesses Face

The more clients I work with and the more I reflect on the businesses I’ve led over the years, the more I’ve come to realise that the problems or challenges we face are actually quite common. They may manifest themselves in different ways unique to that particular business, but the problem or challenge itself is seldom new or uncommon.

That doesn’t mean they require the same approach or solution, far from it and that’s what makes us different at CMC. We don’t come in with a standard playbook, but look at each client individually.

We understand the culture and maturity of the business, the type of individual the leader is, and the journey both have had to reach this point, then we adopt a uniquely bespoke approach to support and guide them through the next leg of the journey. (We won’t fix what’s already working.)

To best articulate where I help business leaders I’ve identified 5 problem areas and all the challenges that business face normally fall under one or a combination of these problems.

1. Growth & Scaling
2. Sales
3. Employee Engagement
4. Operational Efficiencies
5. Succession Planning

There will be many people I’m sure who will be suggesting I’ve missed financial problems, especially following the 12 months we’ve just suffered with Covid-19.

Yes these are very real, cash liquidity, profitability, revenue decline, cost management, weak balance sheets, are all real issues for business leaders to contend with and mitigate. They are the lifeblood of a business.

But when you start to explore these concerns, they are never the root cause of the issue. They are the outcome of problems encountered in other areas of the organisation and what I call lagging indicators to the health of a business. (Being overweight isn’t the problem, its the outcome of a problem in diet & exercise.)

So now I have listed the 5 problems, over the next few weeks I’m going to take each one in turn and try to put a bit more meat on the bones in terms of explaining the problem, how to identify it and some high level ways to address it.

I hope they are of use, and if you’d like to talk to me about your particular challenge, please either message me on jon.corns@cmc-partners.co.uk

or simply book a time in my calendly,

Problem Number 1. – Growing and Scaling a Business

“Jon isn’t this the same as increasing sales?”

I’m afraid not although they are linked. I’ve deliberately separated them, as there are many challenges when it comes to increasing sales and this will be the subject of my next article.

There aren’t many organisations that don’t want to grow their sales. (There are some, and for valid reasons, in fact there are some actively seeking to reduce sales, but this is normally to address an immediate problem, such as profitability)

First we need to understand the difference between Growth and Scaling.

Growth = adding more whether that’s costs, resources or revenues
Scale = multiplying, so improving efficiencies to get higher outputs from the same costs or resources.

Growth and scaling can be a reactive necessity as a result of increasing sales, or it can be predetermined investment to drive the increase of revenue, but both carry challenges and risk.

If we look at it reactively first. Normally more revenue (sales) comes as a result of growing our customer base. As our the number of customers increases, there comes a point that our capacity to serve them becomes the constraint and unless we grow this capacity the business becomes stressed.

So the alleviate the stress the business needs to scale. This is across a multitude of areas;

• more customer service capability to handle the increase volume of communication
• more inventory, or service delivery (depending upon your offering) and therefore space or scale to handle it.
• more invoices to handle, so in turn more effort to collect the cash
• more manufacturing, or development, supplier management, purchase orders to place
• more credit checks, more risk management, etc, etc

You get the picture, so more resources are added to accommodate the growth in workload, and suddenly there’s more people to manage. Now unless this is planned and designed with key milestones and actions to build scale, what tends to happen is the Business Owners / Leaders end up trying to run an organisation that is too broad and flat. They themselves become the bottle neck. There are only so many hours in the day. They can’t possibly work any more, so the growth rate plateaus and we get that well know phrase of “working in the business, rather than on the business.”

This is a double edged sword, because many people in this scenario will recognise it, but now are too busy to either do something about it or engage the help of someone to assist them manage their way out of it.

At the other end of the spectrum is the need to build some scale early to drive the growth in revenue, but this is where risk around profitability and cash liquidity is high. What if the results are too slow? How much capital is there to invest in the first place?

These concerns are not restricted to less mature business, who are looking for the first stage of growth, they can just as easily apply to more mature business looking to entering a new geography or market.

There are of course some speedier ways to grow, such as a merger or acquisition, but here you are generally buying growth and not scale. The scaling then comes as you try to integrate two businesses, that have been separate legal entities, perhaps have different financial reporting, IT systems, and processes.

So how do you build growth and scale?

Well it starts with product & market fit, why would you want to grow and scale where the products or services and market don’t fit together?

But assuming this already exists, I like to observe the following framework.

I think it provides a good walkthrough of what is the end game or the journey the business is on? How long will it take to get there? How is the business going to get there and who does it expect to encounter on the way?

This first couple of steps forms the basis of a strategic plan. This is the roadmap with milestones that guide you on when and where to invest.

The next 3 steps help you design the structure & infrastructure to scale the business as it grows, again in a planned manner so that its proactive, timed appropriately and fit for purpose.

Of course there are many ways of implementing each of these steps and that is where the bespoke, tailored approach is required. For example would your business allow you to scale through franchising? Can you grow from a single location or do you need multiple locations?

These are just a couple of examples of the many questions that you need to consider when it comes to growing and scaling your business.

Growth & Scaling also goes hand in glove with your sales strategy, your employee engagement and your operational efficiencies and that’s why I’ll be taking the time to explore each of those areas next.

I’d love to hear from you, please comment and let me know your thoughts. If you think this could be insightful or useful to anyone in your network please like and share.

I also love to learn about other people’s businesses so if you’d like a no obligation chat, please contact me via the form below or feel free to book a slot in my calendar.