Having grown my business Activity, an information security risk and compliance specialist, to just over a £1m turnover in our first three years, we have not grown far beyond that in the following three years. So, together with one of my other directors, we decided to embark on executive education.
During those three years of static growth we have managed significant challenges, such as losing key staff to competitors and a reduction in spend in both the public sector and the wider economy. While acknowledging that times are hard, we believe that there are significant opportunities for growth in our business – data losses and cyber attacks are now regular news items in the daily newspapers.
As with any business, there are a number of issues to address to achieve that growth. For us, there is a need for us to develop both sales and technical consulting teams while maintaining profitability and making sure that there is enough cash in the bank – a common enough set of problems for any growing business.
I have previously grown another consultancy business to £1m turnover and then sold it. So after three years of limited growth at the £1m level, it was not unnatural to consider whether a £1m turnover company is the limit of my talents – perhaps I needed to improve my performance to enable the company to grow further. Hence I started looking around at courses and other programmes that could help me.
The concept of the Better Business Programme intrigued me because it is entirely focussed on owner-managed businesses. The fundamental message of the programme is that owner-managers have a profound influence on the business – in effect that the business reflects the behaviours and attitudes of the owner-manager. As well as looking at how to improve the business, it also considers how to improve yourself both in terms of your own motivation, drive and energy, and your management of your people and your business.
The programme requires four two-day residential sessions (on a Friday and a Saturday), followed by two further days to present the plan developed during the programme and to review progress in six months’ time. The Friday and Saturday format means that you are only out of the business one day every two weeks – which works well for us. However, there is a significant amount of work to do in the business between the residential sessions.
So what am I hoping to get out of the programme? I am hoping to get a clear focus for myself and a strategy and plan for growth for the business from the programme that we will go on to implement successfully, and ultimately lead to increased profits.
Neil O’Connor is the managing director of Activity, which provides information security consultancy advice to mid-sized businesses, global enterprises, and the public sector, including the Ministry of Defence and the NHS. http://www.activityim.co.uk