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Free thoughts, tips and tools for operational business leaders with 50 - 500 staff
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My material and approach will be relevant to you ...
If you are an operational business leader running a business:
Beyond startup, where your greatest challenge is to get a team of people working together to achieve an ambitious vision
Below corporate, where you are the practical leader responsible for deciding the detail of how to achieve results by coordinating marketing and sales, operations and supply, product development, finance, HR and IT.
You typically lead 10 - 500 staff and the buck stops with you for delivering against budget and loan covenants by growing revenues, making profits, managing cash and developing people and products.
If as a person:
You got promoted to the top job because you were good at (or built the business by being good at) something else
but are are at heart an engineer, a salesperson, an accountant, a marketeer. And that’s what you know really well. But now you are now accountable for all manner of things that you’ve never managed before.
You are smart and have been around a while so can make a reasonable go of it but there are times when you have to busk it.
and find doing so a bit stressful sometimes especially when things don’t go the way you want, or more likely people don’t do what you want how you want it to be done.
You are not always as confident as you appear.
know you need as a leader to appear confident, competent and motivated, but the reality underneath is sometimes quite different.
... if you are like me ... as I was 35 years ago
When I’d completed an MBA and had just become an operational business leader.
When I thought I knew all about business and leadership but in reality didn’t.
I now know that I knew too much theory and made it all too complicated. I have now learnt to keep it simple with some tips, thoughts and tools that help the leader, and their team, to understand the best strategies and execute them effectively
... if you are NOT like me ... as I was 35 years ago
… and like many of the successful operational business leaders I’ve met and worked with over the last 35 years. Most of whom don’t have an MBA. And in many cases never went to University. Indeed many of whom rebelled and left school at 16.
(My view today is that many of the best entrepreneurs are entrepreneurs primarily because they are unemployable rebels.)
I can still remember the first time I realised had a lot to learn from people NOT like me
I was a member of a business leader peer group. And I remember this guy (he was) opening and closing a business and writing off about £10k in about 6 weeks. I’d previously asked him about the business plan and the market. He had neither. What an idiot I had thought … at first!
And then I looked out of the window at his Aston Martin parked alongside my smart Merc. And for some reason it occurred to me - hold on - he owns his car - mine is owned by my employer. In fact he owns his business with a few £M and takes home a pretty nice dividend. My decent salary, bonus and options don’t match that. So who is the idiot? Me, the salaried MBA graduate, or the street smart entrepreneur?
In the end we became good friends. I know I learnt a lot from him about driving revenues and cash. I hope and believe he learnt a lot from me about the value of a clear strategic direction, proper planning and consistent execution, especially as you scale up - which most don’t achieve!
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