He has also kindly agreed to blog about his programme experience and you can read the first two installments below.

LOOKING FOR GROWTH

Having grown my business Activity, an information security risk and compliance specialist, to just over a £1m turnover in our first three years, we have not grown far beyond that in the following three years. So, together with one of my other directors, we decided to embark on the Better Business Programme run by Your Business Your Future in partnership with Cass Business School.

“Is it me?”

During those three years of static growth, we’ve managed significant challenges, such as losing key staff to competitors and a reduction in spend in both the public sector and the wider economy. While acknowledging that times are hard, we believe that there are significant opportunities for growth in our business – data losses and cyber attacks are now regular news items in the media.

As with any business, there are a number of challenges to address to achieve that growth. For us, there is a need for us to develop both sales and technical consulting teams while maintaining profitability and making sure that there is enough cash in the bank – a common enough set of problems for any growing business.

I’ve previously grown another consultancy business to £1m turnover and then sold it. So after three years of limited growth at the £1m level, it was not unnatural to consider whether a £1m turnover company is the limit of my talents – perhaps I needed to improve my performance to enable the company to grow further. Hence, I started looking around at courses and other programmes that could help me.

The Better Business Programme

The concept of the Better Business Programme intrigued me because it is entirely focussed on owner-managed businesses. The fundamental message of the programme is that owner-managers have a profound influence on the business – in effect that the business reflects the behaviours and attitudes of the owner manager. As well as looking at how to improve the business, it also considers how to improve yourself both in terms of your own motivation, drive and energy, and your management of your people and your business.

Logistically, the programme consists of four two-day residential sessions (on a Friday and a Saturday), followed by two further days to present the strategy and plan developed during the programme and to review progress in six months’ time. The Friday and Saturday format means that you’re only out of the business one day every two weeks – which works well for us.  In addition, there’s a significant amount of work to do in the business between the residential sessions in developing the strategy and plan and implementing immediate improvements.  All of this is real work that I knew I should have been doing anyway!

What was I hoping for?

At the start of the programme, my objective was to get a clear focus for myself and a strategy and plan for growth for the business that we will go on to implement successfully, and ultimately lead to increased profits.  Simple really!

What’s it been like so far?

As I write this second installment, in early December 2011, we’ve worked through the four two-day modules and had a number of 1-1 coaching sessions to help develop our strategy and business plan for growth. We’re just about to present our plan to a panel of experienced business growth coaches and successful owner managers.  Then, in June 2012, we’ll all get together for a review session to review progress with the implementation of our strategy – and to find out how all our fellow participants have got on!

So what have I got out of the programme so far?

The four Ms – Markets, Money, Management and Me

The programme considers your business and strategy using the “four Ms”: Money, Markets, Management and Me.  The “Me” theme is particularly emphasised as an aspect of the underlying philosophy for the programme is that owner-managers have a profound influence on their business – not just in terms of setting direction, also in their behaviour and the way in which it impacts on the day-to-day running of the business.

The programme has certainly helped me realise that how my team perceive me makes a difference – I’ve heard members of staff saying “What sort of mood is he in today?”! More importantly, having a clear view of what the owners want from the business and aligning the company strategy with that is hugely motivating.  Like many owner managers, I suspect, I’ve been guilty in the past of being more concerned about growing the business than actually focussing on getting the business to deliver what I and the other owners want out of it.

The owners of the business now have a clear agreement as to what they want to get out of the business, in terms of their roles in the business, salaries and dividends, amount of time spent working etc. To deliver this we have a clear strategy, based on an analysis of our markets, customers and competition, and a five year plan to deliver against that strategy. This plan covers all of the “four Ms” and encompasses significant changes to our marketing and the roles that different members of the team fulfil within the company as well as improved sales, delivery and people management based on what we’ve done during the programme.

It’s happening to the whole business

One of the great aspects of the programme is that it is structured so that you take ideas back to your business and work on them with your team. This is something that we have taken to heart, having workshops and discussions back at the office so that the whole company has been involved in developing our strategy and business plan.

So, the programme is happening to the whole business, not just to Dave and I who are going along to the modules.

No silver bullets

The programme is focused far more on doing than on knowing.   So, unsurprisingly, you may well have already heard about most of what is covered on the programme.

Importantly, the programme gives you the time and space to consider what you will do to improve your business with plenty of expertise and experience on hand to discuss how to actually do it.

Some elements of the programme have been more useful to us than others.  And that’s the same for most of the participants – except that the parts that we each find most useful are different!  Even when an idea or a step in the process hasn’t seemed hugely relevant to our situation,  the programme delivery team are so experienced and skilled that they make it interesting and entertaining!

Working with kindred spirits

One of the most valuable parts of the programme for me has been the opportunity to work with other owner managers.  Remarkably, while our businesses and our ambitions are different, the challenges we face are remarkably similar!  Sharing and discussing our thoughts and plans with the other participants, and having them challenge and critique based on their own experience,  has been hugely valuable.  Equally, it’s remarkable how useful it is to listen to other owner managers stories and to offer our help to them.

What’s next?

As I write, we’re just a few days away from Presentation Day when we present our stratgegy and plans to a panel made up of our coach from the programme plus several other people coming to it afresh – a bit like Dragons’ Den but much more supportive and without the prospect of any investment!   In my next blog, I’ll let you know how that goes – wish me luck!

Neil O’Connor is MD of Activity, which provides information security consultancy advice to mid-sized businesses, global enterprises, and the public sector, including the Ministry of Defence and the NHS. http://www.activityim.co.uk.  Neil’s blogs were originally published on the Growing Business website.

As we approach the close of the year, here at Your Business Your Future, we’ve been reflecting on how our business has developed in 2011 and how to continue our growth in 2012. We’ve come up with a checklist of 12 areas we’re going to focus on next year and in the spirit of our mission – to help ambitious owner managers create the future they want for their businesses and for themselves – we’re delighted to share that list with you!

1.Know what YOU want in 2012: what do you want to achieve personally from your business next year? Including, how much reward do you want from the business (both financial and other types of reward), what role do you want to be doing, how much of your own time and energy do you want to be putting into the business, what things do you want to achieve and protect outside your business?

2.Start with the end in mind: do you know where you want your business to be by the end of 2012? Have your clearly articulated your goals and targets to your team?

3.What gets measured, gets done: are you and your team focused on a few key metrics for next year? Do you review your progress regularly?

4.Assume nothing: when did you last challenge your assumptions about how your market and customers behave? When did you last talk to your customers about what’s going on in their world?

5.Be distinctive: are you confident about the distinctive benefits your products/services bring to your customers? Have you articulated these distinctive benefits clearly in all your marketing messages?

6.Mind your margin: do you have a clear plan to maintain and, if possible, increase your profits in 2012?

7.Focus on cash: do you have a clear and regular view of your cash position? Can you anticipate when you might need additional financing and where you might get it from?

8.Deliver through great people: are you recruiting the best people you can afford? And are you engaging them in the vision for your business and rewarding their contribution appropriately?

9.Develop your team: are you enabling and helping your management team to do the best possible job for you?

10.Create space to be a strategist: do you dedicate enough time to working ON your business as well as IN it? How can you ensure you lift your head up from the day to day running of the business and regularly look forward and outwards?

11.Be the best you can be: how will you keep yourself at the peak of performance, maintaining your passion, energy and focus through 2012? Are you a potential barrier to, as well as the biggest enabler of, growth in your business? How will you develop yourself so that you become the leader your business needs you to be?

12.Be a Victor, not a Victim: what do you do when things don’t go quite as you’d hoped? Victims blame outside factors or other people so as to maintain their innocence. And, the price of innocence is impotence – if it’s nothing to do with you, then you can’t put it right. Victors see themselves as integral to the system or process that created the unwanted result and know that they are in absolute control of their own actions, decisions and behaviours. They take “response-ability” – retaining the ability to respond.

Do let us know which of these resonate for you – or if there’s anything you’d add.

Every owner manager knows that they can’t build a significant business on their own.   They will need to build a management team.  Indeed, it’s almost become trite to hear VCs and other investors talk about investing in the “management team” not just the entrepreneur.

And, we also know, from our experience of working with hundreds of ambitious owner managers, that one of the things they find most challenging is finding the right people to be part of their management team.  Typically, they keep trying to recruit a second-in-command or specific senior roles – and it keeps on “not working out”.

Now part of this may be to do with the emotional challenge that many owner managers face in allowing other people to do jobs that they previously used to do themselves and finding that, inevitably, those other people don’t do those jobs in quite the same way the owner manager did.  So, they start to closely monitor the people they’ve taken on and meddle in their work.   Both the owner manager and the other people get increasingly frustrated and, eventually, something has to give.  Usually, the other people leave, either of their own choice or because the owner manager sacks them in exasperation.

This situation, that we see many, many times, means that the business gets stuck and can’t grow.

So, here’s a radical thought…if we want more of the fast-growth businesses which create the majority of jobs in any developed economy, the so-called “gazelles”, maybe what we need isn’t more entrepreneurs at all.  Maybe what we need is more people who can handle the peculiar set of conditions of working for an entrepreneur.  More number 2s who can deal with the high passion and high expectation of the entrepreneur and can implement the entrepreneur’s ideas and visions, sometimes subjugating their own thoughts and feelings.  These paragons of virtue need to be able to challenge the entrepreneur, offer their own ideas and suggestions, and not mind when they get rejected.  They will find themselves having to support the entrepreneur in making the difficult behavioural change described above.  They need to be resilient, positive, hard-working, determined, challenging, supportive, brilliant at solving problems and getting things done, capable of delivering to extremely high standards, accepting that things won’t always be perfect, and self-aware – to name but a few of the personal characteristics needed for this most demanding of roles.

So, all praise the number 2.  Without one, you and your business are likely to get stuck.

Of course, such people are incredibly rare!   And, that’s why so owner managers face such a tough time in finding them.

If you have one in your business, I suggest you do everything you can keep them!  Provide them with whatever resources and skills they need in order to do their job better.  Recognise and reward them for the contribution they make to your business.  Make them into a hero.

Oh, and if you know any one who fits this bill, tell them to give me a call!

With the continuing uncertainty (some might say, chaos) in the Eurozone, these observations remain true and, arguably, even more apt today.

Here are Habits 3 and 4.

Habit #3: Be Distinctive

In tough economic times, some owner managers will scrap and scrabble for any business they can get their hands on just to stay in the game. The danger of this is that you lose sight of the distinctive benefits that your products/services deliver to your customers and you can end up having to compete solely on price.

Winning owner managers can clearly articulate the distinctive benefits their products and services deliver to their target market and what sets them apart from the competition in the eyes of their customers. They know what’s great about their business, what they’re really good at and what their customers value.

Being distinctive doesn’t necessarily mean being unique. Being distinctive can mean having expertise in a specialist area, being more responsive, more flexible, offering a 24 hour turnaround where your competitors don’t, or even just being more friendly and approachable.

Whatever it is that makes your products/services distinctive, the key criteria is whether your customers are prepared to pay for it. If they are, then it’s a benefit to them and they value it. If they’re not prepared to pay for it, then it’s not sufficiently valuable to them.

Once you’ve found your distinctiveness, hold fast to it and communicate it at every possible opportunity. If you lose your distinctiveness, or if your customers aren’t prepared to pay for what you believe is distinctive, then your offering could end up being treated as a commodity and you’ll come under severe price pressure. If you succumb to this pressure and reduce prices, you’re actually giving away profit and it’s very difficult to make up for that lost profit in increased sales. In fact, if you’re clear about your distinctive benefits, then, although it sounds counter-intuitive, you’re probably better off increasing prices rather than reducing them even if it means losing some customers. They’re probably the customers that don’t truly value your distinctiveness and it may actually be costing you money to service them!

If you’re not sure about what makes you distinctive, ask your customers! Identify your top customers and go and talk to them about why they buy from you. You can also take this opportunity to tell them more about what you do and ask them whether they might need any more of anything from you and whether they know anyone else who might want your products/services.

Habit #4: Be strong

Whilst some owner managers may get away with sloppy business management during good times, the current climate is less forgiving. Winners are absolutely rigorous in managing their business and are strong enough to take tough decisions quickly when necessary.

Focus on the things that really matter in your business, manage cash religiously and challenge costs and waste at every opportunity. Make immediate savings by negotiating supplier discounts and reducing fixed costs. Drive down debtor days by making friends with your customers’ accounts payable teams and being fastidious about cash collection. Maintain your margins by insisting sales staff adhere to a tight pricing policy and shedding unprofitable customers.

As the owner manager, it’s unrealistic to think you can have your hands on all these areas all of the time. So, you need a business plan that is robust enough to survive variances and incorporates measures that act as early warning signals and tell you at a glance how the business is faring.

If these indicators show that things aren’t going as well as planned, you may have to make some tough decisions. Be strong and don’t shy away from unpleasant decisions. If you put them off they will go from being difficult decisions to serious issues that threaten the very survival of your business. Unpleasant matters are always better dealt with sooner rather than later.

With all the economic indicators continuing to be sluggish at best, and with continuing uncertain (some might say, chaos) in the Eurozone, these observations remain true and, arguably, even more apt.

The Six Habits are

• Be in Control
• Be Confident
• Be Distinctive
• Be Strong
• Be Wise
• Be Ready

Let’s look at the first two Habits.

Habit #1: Be In Control

The current economic climate remains challenging for many smaller businesses.  And the uncertainty in Europe doesn’t help.  At such times, some owner managers feel at the mercy of forces beyond their control and simply wait for the hand that fate deals them. Others bury their heads in the sand and carry on as usual, hoping that what they’ve done in the past will be good enough now.  Neither of these approaches – passive acceptance nor ignorance – is the mindset of a winner.

Winners take control of their destiny. They recognise that despite everything that is going on around them, they have unconditional power and control over their own actions and what they do in their businesses.

There is little any of us can do about the economic climate or the result of the general elections and votes of confidence in Greece and Italy. Nevertheless, there are some things you, as a business owner, can control. You can still have a compelling vision for your business and communicate it in an inspiring way. You can still be proud and confident about what makes your business great. You can still be strong and rigorous in managing your business. You can still make plans and invest wisely. And, you can continue to grasp opportunities that others are too timid to spot.

Habit #2: Be Confident

In his victory speech, Barack Obama inspired the American people, and millions more around the world, with his clear and transformational vision for a different and better future, even at a time of great challenge for his country and the world.  Not all owner managers will have the oratory skills of the current US president.  At the same time, we can all adopt his “can do” attitude and we can all articulate a longer term vision.

In the uncertain times, it’s tempting to focus exclusively on the short-term – living from week to week and channelling all your energy into immediate challenges.  The problem is that a short term agenda can be dispiriting for you and other people in your business.  So, as the owner manager, you need to have the confidence to look beyond the short term and have a clear and compelling vision of where the business is going in the medium to longer term.

Having created a compelling vision, you then need to articulate it, and preferably in a way which inspires other people to help you bring it about.  That doesn’t necessarily mean delivering a rousing rhetorical speech every morning.  It’s also about letting people see your passion for your business, communicating your plans with authenticity, and helping your people see how they can contribute.

And remember: every owner manager is in show business. You’re on show all of the time, you are always communicating – even when you’re not saying anything!  Whether you like it or not, you are the person from whom everyone else in your business takes their lead and your every action, word and mood will be taken as a signal of how you’re feeling and, therefore, how the business is doing.

These are uncertain times – and they will pass. In the meantime, stay confident about what makes your business great. Stay confident about your passion for your business. Stay confident about the future you will create for your business and for you. Communicate that vision authentically and in a way which inspires other people to help you bring it about. This confidence will spread to your staff, to your customers and to your suppliers. And the effect will be dramatic.

At Your Business Your Future, we’ve  been turning our thoughts to plans for 2012.  So, I thought I’d give you some pointers for how you might go through the same process.

Many of you will be familiar with our Seven Pillars of a Better Business.  When reviewing them recently, I was reminded of the Army’s acronym of the Seven Ps of Planning: Proper Planning and Preparation Prevents Particularly Poor Performance.  The Army uses a word other than ‘particularly’ but I want to ensure this blog gets through any email filters!

How can you prevent particularly poor performance, and achieve particularly positive performance, in 2012?

Past Year: – What are you proud that you achieved in 2011?  Pat yourself on the back for your successes and analyse what went well.  Penetrate the detail of why and how you were successful and consider how you can build on or repeat that performance next year.

Ponder Areas to Improve: – What didn’t go so well last year?  Where did you fall below expectations, what did you fail to complete or not even start?  What problems underpinned that lack of success, are those goals still relevant to you, and what can you learn to give yourself a better chance of success next year?

Purpose: – Know what your own purpose, and that of your business, is.  How can you know whether you are achieving success unless you know why you are doing what you do?  Why does your business exist, what is your personal purpose within it, what impact do you want to create in the world, professionally and personally?  Make sure that your goals and aspirations for 2012 are aligned with your overall purpose.

Parameters: – What are the factors that are likely to affect your business in 2012?  What are the market and other trends that will make it easier or harder to sell, or will lead to better or worse profits, supplier costs and customer expectations.  How will your landscape change in the next twelve months?

Positive Outcomes: – What goals do you want to achieve in 2012?  State clear, positive outcomes as fully as possible.  Ensure that each outcome has some form of measurement, so that you can know when you get there, and some form of timeframe.  Do you want to achieve that positive outcome early in the year, or is year-end OK?

If your desire is to stop doing something, or have less of something, look for the positive equivalent of that negative goal.  Our brain is happier, and more successful, when working towards positive goals.  (For example, aim for 100% customer satisfaction, rather than zero complaints).

Periodic Targets: – Parcel up your annual positive outcomes into periodic targets for the year.  If you want annual profit to be £100,000, break that down into more regular targets – should that be £8,333 a month, or ten months at £8,500 and two at £7,500 to allow for seasonal dips?  If you want customer satisfaction to be 100%, and it is 88% now, can you increase by 1% each month?

Plan: – Knowing your periodic targets should give you a clearer idea of what actions you need to take to achieve them.  This can then form your plan for the year – what will you do each month in order to fulfil your purpose and take you closer to those positive outcomes?  Persistence in taking your actions will improve the probability of success.

I had great fun putting in as many words beginning with P as possible into this posting on the 7 Ps to prevent particularly poor performance.  Perhaps you have been pushed into proactivity by your perusal of the points above.

Whether you choose to follow my seven Ps, or whether you choose to remember the Army’s mnemonic, or whether you choose to ignore my message (how could you?!), I hope that your plans and aspirations for 2011 have been fulfilled, and that your 2012 objectives will also be achieved.  If we, at Your Business Your Future can help you in anyway to achieve that, we would be delighted to do so.

And as John Lennon’s Mum once said over the dinner table, “Give peas a chance”.

McAuliffe, which was established in 1971, beat off strong competition and demonstrated strong family values, product and service development, good governance and commitment to the community.  In short, they were a better business than the rest!

Speaking about the award John McAuliffe said: “To receive this award is a real honour and supports our entire family ethos which runs throughout the business. We have worked hard to establish a company that has strong values and moral principles, which all too often get lost in the drive for profit and success. We see ourselves as different from the rest building long term relationships with our clients and all of our employees work hard in contributing to our success.”

McAuliffe Civil Engineering offers a variety of environmental services, including the remediation of contaminated land, demolition and haulage, to the construction sector.

The Growing Business Awards are the longest established and most prestigious awards for UK entrepreneurs and fast-growth companies.  The gala dinner and awards ceremony was hosted by the BBC’s Declan Curry (pictured right with the Your Business Your Future logo behind him) and attended by Eric Pickles MP, Secretary of State for Communities, Mark Prisk MP, Minister for Business and Enterprise, James Caan, formerly of Dragons’ Den, Julie Meyer, founder of Ariadne Capital and now an online Dragon, Annabel Karmel, of children’s cookery book fame, and Will King, eponymous founder of King of Shaves.

And we were there too!  Your Business Your Future and Cass Business School were the exclusive research partners for the Growing Business Awards 2011 and took a very active role in the whole process.

Izindi Visagie, intern at the Peter Cullum Centre for Entrepreneurship at Cass, identified many high quality potential candidates and encouraged them to enter.  Remarkably, three of the businesses who won awards had entered only as a result of Izindi contacting them!

Your Business Your Future MD, Gerard Burke, was one of the judges and presented the Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award at the gala ceremony.

And the winner of the Young Entrepreneur of the Year was Cass alumnus, George Graham, MD of designer fashion emporium, Wolf and Badger.

George and his brother, Henry, who founded the business together, have built an innovative combination of a designer department store and an incubator for up and coming British designers.  Wolf and Badger is now a multi-award winning destination shop for those with their finger on the fashion pulse in London.

George is pictured here (holding his  trophy!) with, from left to right, Simon Fielder (Bird & Bird), Gerard Burke and Will King.

As part of his prize, George has won a fully funded place on the Better Business Programme.  Participating in the programme will enable George and Henry to develop their strategy for the next stage of growth of Wolf and Badger.  Gerard says, “George is a very talented young man and he and his brother have created something innovative and wonderful which also helps young British designers.  We’re hugely looking forward to working with them and helping them create the future they want for their business and for themselves.”

The Better Business Programme is a sophisticated development programme for owner managers of established businesses, with turnovers between £0.5million and £20million who want to take their business to the next level.  The programme is highly practical and based entirely in the real world of the owner manager’s business. During the programme, each participant works on their own specific opportunities and challenges, developing a growth strategy for their own business and a plan to implement that strategy.

Participants are supported through a wide range of resources, including an experienced business coach who works with them on a one-on-one basis and in small groups with other ambitious owner managers.  The overall aim is that every participant achieves a significant return on their investment by making improvements in their business and by actually bringing about a different and better future.

In the last six years, over 600 of the UK’s most successful owner managers have participated in programmes run by the Your Business Your Future team.  Most have gone on to expand their businesses and subsequently create thousands of jobs including such high profile business owners as Angus Thirlwell of Hotel Chocolat (the UK’s fastest growing independently owned business according the Sunday Times FastTrack 100 2008), Lyn Cecil of Secretaries Plus (featured in “The Secret Millionaire” on Channel 4) and Jeff Coghlan of Matmi New Media (winner of the inaugural British Business Boost).

Tristram Mayhew, founder and Chief Gorilla of GoApe, Small to Medium Sized Business of the Year at the National Business Awards 2009 and in the FastTrack 100 for three consecutive years, says, “Participating in a programme, run by Gerard and his team in 2006, was the key turning point in driving profitable growth for GoApe. It led to us trebling our profit to £1.4M in three years. I believe any ambitious owner-led business would benefit from going through this exercise.”

Tim Nightingale completed his MBA at Cass (or CUBS, as it was then known) in 1996 and is currently participating in the Better Business Programme. On the advice of one of his MBA tutors, Tim started his business, Nisus Consulting, immediately after completing his MBA. Nisus specialises in client research for the major commercial law and professional services firms and has built an enviable reputation. In the last year, Tim identified a major opportunity to build on that reputation to develop a unique benchmarking service which would be based on a subscription charging model. In June this year, Tim attended a Cass community day where he participated in a masterclass run by Gerard Burke, MD of Your Business Your Future and senior visiting fellow at Cass. As a result, Tim concluded that he needed to put some considered time and thought into how to grasp the opportunity he’d identified. to take Nisus to the next level and to build significant value in the business. And that, given the constant temptation faced by many owner managers to focus on today’s challenges, he needed some help to lift his head up and look forwards and outwards. So, he accepted Gerard’s offer of a place on the Better Business Programme which started in September.

“Participating in the Better Business Programme has been fantastically valuable for Nisus and for me personally,” says Tim. “As well as enabling me to develop a clear and robust strategy and plan to grasp the opportunity to develop the benchmarking service, I’m also identifying significant improvements to the business that I can implement immediately. Even though I’d done a degree in business and have an MBA, I still found the programme to be challenging and, on more than one occasion, a real eye opener.”

“The programme is designed entirely around each participant creating the future they want for their business and, most importantly and distinctively, for themselves. You get to mix with a wide range of other owner managers from a variety of sectors and sizes – on my cohort, we had everything from a goat’s milk formula business to a highly specialised IT security business. I’d thoroughly recommend the Better Business Programme to any Cass alumnus who has their own business and wants that business to be better in future – it could change your whole outlook on how you manage and lead your business in the future.”

To find out more about the programmes and the bursaries, Cass alumni who run their own businesses can contact Gerard Burke on 08456 838 818 or gerard@yourbusinessyourfuture.co.uk.

Speaking after the appointment, Gerard said, “I’m deeply honoured to be appointed as a Senior Visiting Fellow at such a prestigious and internationally acclaimed business school.  I think of this appointment as recognition of the work that the whole Your Business Your Future team does in helping ambitious owner managers create the future they want for their businesses and for themselves.

“We already have a great partnership with Cass through which we run both the Better Business Programme and Foundations for Growth.  This appointment cements that relationship and we look forward to working even more closely with Cass in the future.”