Advisory & corporate finance
The cash shortfall, the senior hire, the deal that went elsewhere, the spreadsheet nobody else understood, the margin that drifted. Five different functions, one underlying condition.
You sent your commercial director and they came back without the result. Not because they did anything wrong, but because the other side wanted you. At 10% growth the founder sales bottleneck stops being an inconvenience.
The CV was strong and the board was reassured. Six months later there is more process but not more progress. This is one of the most common scaling challenges founders face, and one of the least discussed.
Leading a business in a stable market is management. Leading a business when the market is collapsing and reinventing itself? That is transformation. Many established businesses today are facing their “Netflix Moment”—the need to pivot to digital without killing their core cash flow. In this interview, Richard Spilsbury talks to Robert Price, a veteran CEO … Continue reading The Secrets to Successful Business Pivot Strategies
In short No one culture works better than another More staff, and a recent influx of new joiners New managers with different experiences and perspectives Less identification and contact with the founding team Purpose and focus less coherently understood A different strategic focus that has not landed “Culture eats strategy for breakfast”, someone once said. … Continue reading Is your business culture holding you back?
In short Why leaders hesitate, and what the data says instead Fear of a deflating response to the survey Cynicism about what different generations want A belief that it only creates pressure on pay Not knowing what would actually help A recent report by Be The Business that compared productivity in the UK compared to … Continue reading Four barriers to employee engagement
In short 95% of executives are dissatisfied with innovation in their business A business focus on finding better ways to do things Engagement and the creative capacity of employees Infrastructure that supports collaboration and learning Deep contextual understanding of the marketplace Willingness to act, learn and fail fast safely The benefits of creating an innovative … Continue reading Five behaviours to promote innovation
If you are a scale up business, you know there is some market fit and you will have felt at times that “sales is working”, so it can be very frustrating when sales growth stalls. The Scale up Institute states that the “markets gap” is one of the key barriers to further growth, their focus … Continue reading Unleash Your Sales Potential: Overcoming Growth Hurdles in Scale-Up Businesses
If you are a scale up business, you know the challenges of aligning the development of talent and productivity. The Scale Up Institute lists access to talent as one of the key “significant pain points and barriers to scale further”. To resolve the issue they focus on the education system in lobbying the Government. Without … Continue reading Talent and productivity gap: Solving the challenges for scale up businesses
The Scale Up Institute’s last report identified ‘infrastructure’ as one of the key challenges for scale up businesses. While not clearly defined, the term appears to refer to the ecosystem of local hubs and enterprise agencies available. If you are a scale up business (sales growth > 15%; hitting sales of £10m or more; or … Continue reading Time short entrepreneurs understand that a reliable infrastructure scales their business