The best business advice I’ve ever received.

Photo credit: Douglas Jones for Look magazine, 1970. Mary Tyler Moore Show.

The business advice came in the form of a question… and that was, how are you spending your time?

Are you spending the majority of your time working IN the business or ON the business? 

If it’s the former, this might highlight a problem. Unfortunately, I had to admit to being in the “working in” camp - but that wasn’t always the case.

This was back in 2013 and I had just started the Cranfield School of Management Business Growth Programme. Four years earlier, I had purchased a luxury design and print business with a prestigious but ageing customer base, few processes, almost zero web presence and declining sales. In other words, a business ripe for modernisation.

I got to work right away on my improving my business’s growth potential. 

The first thing I did was replace the ageing computers with new Macs and the latest design software to make it easier and quicker for the team to produce top quality designs. 

I introduced stricter quality controls and new order documentation procedures reducing costly product errors. 

I installed backup procedures to insulate the company from damage and theft (yup, before that we had no backups). 

I removed under-performing and unmotivated staff - this was a tough one but once we had the right team in place the change in the office atmosphere was palpable  - it became a happy, buzzy and more creative place. 

I also updated the office environment creating a new, inviting customer area, a separate area for staff and a separate area for packing orders. Before everything was merged together higgly piggly and clients sat at the edge of staff desks looking at other people’s orders. It lacked privacy and frankly it was a mess! 

I also renegotiated the lease agreement mid-year resulting in a 20% reduction of the annual rate. 

And finally, as a team we completely redesigned the website to represent the breadth of product available and make it easier for customers to find and personalise products online.  

The results were almost immediate. I was 100% working on the business and the results showed, our staff were happier and more productive, customer issues were way down and sales were up by more than 20%.

Well that sounds amazing you might be thinking so why did I need to go on a Business Growth Programme?

The short answer is that after a few good years, the business stalled and I wasn’t quite sure why. We had great clients who loved us, products that we could be proud of and a solid albeit thinly stretched team. 

Like many business owners, I was working long hours and trying to juggle work with home life and the demands of young children. My problem, I soon realised was that I had become totally enmeshed in the day to day operation of the business. I was doing everything from client sales to ordering office supplies and managing the books. I wasn’t carving out enough time to think about the future of the business and growth had slowed as a result.

Does this sound familiar? Sometimes this is called busy work. Work that keeps you busy but doesn’t actually drive the business forward. 

(Related Article: How to Reduce Busy Work as a Small Business Owner) 

BGP helped me step away from the business and see it through the eyes of others - business academics, professional entrepreneurs and small business owners like myself. The programme was intense. It ran over 11 weeks including 4 weekend sessions running all day Saturday and Sunday. In between the modules, we had to work on our business development plans for a final presentation at the end of the eleven weeks to a panel of independent business consultants for their review. It was a bit like being on The Dragon’s Den.  

What did I learn on The Business Growth Programme? 

I learned the most common reasons businesses fail to grow. These include:

1. Planning Vacuum. Research shows that owner-managed businesses with strategies and plans grow sales and profits faster than those that don’t. Makes sense. You might be surprised to learned that two-thirds of small businesses with turnover less than £10 million have no plans.
   

2. Muddled Marketing. Basically companies that lack market focus with an ill defined customer base and an unfocused product offering. Businesses that do best “stick to their knitting” by focusing on their core products and markets.
   

3. Mismanaged Change. As businesses pass through different growth stages they require different management approaches. Problems arise when business owners try to run their businesses in the same way as they did when they first started.
   

4. Wrong objectives. Too many businesses grow turnover at the expense of profitability.
   

5. Medding and misspent time. Essentially too much time spent on day to day operations, interfering with the work they are paying others to do and not enough time working on the future strategy of the business.

This list can be found in the excellent handbook Growing your business: A handbook for Ambitious Owners-Manager. You can often find a second-hand copy on eBay. 

I am happy to report that No. 2 Muddled Marketing and No. 4 Wrong Objectives were not my issues. No. 3 was more of a flashing warning sign to remind me that I might need to change my management style as the business grew and the staff evolved.  

My problems lied in No. 1 - Not Enough Planning and No. 5 Too Much Time Spent In the Business focused on day to day operations. And of course they are related - because I was spending so much time working in the business I wasn’t spending enough time planning our future and putting measurements in place to track our success and flag when we might need to adjust course. 

So what did we do to improve our business growth potential?

Pinpointed our best opportunity to build a bigger “economic moat and that was with a renewed focus on the local market (one of the most affluent in the country) and an in person shopping experience where clients had the ability to see and feel our product. With the emphasis on our physical location, we shifted our focus and investment from the pure online players who had more feature-rich sites and deeper online marketing budgets. 

Created a purpose, values and set of guiding principles that resonated with our clients and staff. We add five customer personas to the package. Together these documents created a powerful tool to keep us focused on the needs of our core market and create a principled roadmap for growth.

Committed to our plans and to monthly reviews and quarterly assessments. As they say what gets measured, gets done.

My biggest lesson is that small businesses need to think big by planning for growth and seeking out help and partnerships along the way. Plans, processes and partnerships are the foundations of growth - it doesn’t matter if you are a company with turnover of £10k or £10m - neglect at your peril.  

Recommended reading: 7 Key Steps to a Growth Strategy That Works Immediately