Trying To Tip Toe Through A Minefield

General Consultancy

Trying To Tip Toe Through A Minefield

One of the hardest things to do is grow a business!  We have all read the book, seen the video or been at the seminar to hear about how others have done it successfully.  In my experience however, it often comes down to the following critical issues


  1. Having a clear vision of what you wish to achieve with the business.
  2. Understanding of the opportunity’s and the competition
  3. Acquiring or growing the talent
  4. A system of measuring the journey
  5. Courage to drive the change

Me and my team have worked with a lot of businesses from a wide range of sectors and at very different stages in their development. The challenges I have mentioned above are partly strategic and partly people focused.  Nearly all organisations have an ongoing tension between operations and delivery, and this can be more acute in terms of the visible aspects of the business -  operations, sales, marketing and finance (the list can go on depending upon the nature of the business).


Today’s business challenges can appear to be more complex with increased volatility, increased regulation, digitisation and much more.  The simple fact is that businesses need to be more agile than ever before.


Organisational agility is a vogue business term but it is often misunderstood as being largely an operational issue concerned with outsourcing or contracting capability.   The agility is more about people, skills, organisations of talent, all of which, together, can transform the business approach.


We have worked extensively within the supply of marketing support services to growing company’s and have witnessed a huge development of the variety and complexity of the marketing discipline.   Functional stagnation has often been due to lack of data insight. This is not to say companies don’t have the data, rather they often do not access, augment, analyse and fully utilise the data within their organisations.


The utilisation of knowledge (data combined with insight) should not be confined to messaging functions but be placed at the heart of the organisation and used to make the business proposition customer centric.


This transformational approach has significant benefits for organisations that embrace a whole company approach; however, the journey is not easy. With a myriad of confusing messages and competing agency spends it can be hard to prioritise where to spend your marketing budget. The answer is never simple but a route map is nevertheless essential for guaranteed success.


We have worked with businesses to support them on their journey and worked with a wide range of agencies, often with exceptional knowledge of a specific sector of the knowledge economy.  The big wins however, are in standing back and taking a broader view; applying the critical lessons and developing a clear plan with distinctive measurable priorities.

Leave a comment