Advisory and corporate finance
“Culture eats strategy for breakfast”, someone once said. Based on extensive research, Groysberg, Lee, Price and Cheng reported in the Harvard Business Review that: Their findings are not surprising and are consistent with many other studies. What is more surprising is how little leaders understand about their culture, the values and behaviours that are understood … Continue reading Is your business culture holding you back?
A recent report by Be The Business that compared productivity in the UK compared to other G7 countries noted that the UK fell far behind (sixth!) most other countries when it comes to undertaking employee engagement initiatives. Given the importance and clear benefits of employee engagement, the key issue is why wouldn’t leaders seek to … Continue reading Four barriers to employee engagement
The benefits of creating an innovative culture in the business context are recurring themes for fast growing companies in that it promotes; Despite its importance, according to a McKinsey Survey, 95% of executives are dissatisfied with the innovation performance in their business. At a high level, the positive behaviours to encourage innovation are just not … 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
If you are a scale up business, you will already be familiar with the challenge of growing with limited financial resources. Our article ‘Considerations for Scale-ups when raising funds’ outlines some of the common solutions in addition to fundraising support we provide clients. Do you lack financing to sufficiently scale? The Scale Up Institute notes … Continue reading Access to Finance 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
Leaders read articles like this one, but if you do, you’re probably alone. The Scale Up Institute’s last report identified one of the biggest challenges for leaders as ‘the solitary nature of leadership.’ So what does it mean to go it alone? There are a variety of approaches to developing personal leadership skills, from peer-to-peer … Continue reading Common pitfalls for high growth business leaders
While there is extensive analysis available on how boards of established companies should operate, especially those in the public interest or publicly traded shares, there is very little guidance on how to make venture boards (for fast growing scale up businesses) work effectively. Most companies have a set of obligations in their Articles that are … Continue reading Five steps to creating an effective Venture Board
‘Only 4% of UK businesses grow to have more than 10 staff’ is the worrying statistic released in this year’s Scale Up Institute report. Whilst the UK typically ranks highly when it comes to the level of entrepreneurship, James Anderson of Baillie Gifford’s Scottish Mortgage Investment Trust acknowledges that ‘the UK culture doesn’t celebrate the … Continue reading Top five reasons why businesses fail to scale