Modern companies need modern thinking. Having spent the last ten years advising commercial and non-commercial organizations helping them strengthen their position in marketplace, my experience could help you prepare for growth when the business up-turn arrives. Success can only be achieved through a combination of management structure, improved internal and external communications and an agreement on long-term strategy.
Small organizations expand in stages. First, the founder grows the company using their specialist skills. Business comes in, usually by working hands-on all hours. It is not difficult to grow and cope, for a while.
Then stage two sets in. This is when eight out of ten companies show signs of failing.
It is a difficult period. Management skills are stretched and we see the first signs of tension. With growing pressure on time, new clients and customers demand more attention. They start saying, “I don’t see you as much as I did”. This is when serious decisions are needed for the future. Unfortunately it is a time when any shortfalls in management experience start to show.
Just when the head of the company should be concentrating on the long term, time pressures man only short-term decisions are taken and the rudder falls off the ship.
So many companies hit a ceiling at that time and either grow no further, or they attempt to expand with the wrong management structure.
This is the point when someone who has been through it all before, working alongside the owner/manager, can take the strain.
Time to call in a company adviser. Fortunately I know most of the answers from my own experience:
• As a former CEO of Burson Marsteller London, one of the largest communications and marketing consultants in the UK, I founded The Watts Group plc, I sold it and recently as a non-executive director of many smaller companies my experience has grown, especially now as we face a period of economic change.
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This is an interesting blog. I intend to be a follower.
ReplyDeleteAlthough my opening blogg concentrates on the general management of small businesses I have found lately that because of my involvement in contemporary art I get invitations to advise art galleries on their marketing, a more specialised area.
ReplyDeleteThrough the Contemporary Art Society I visit 10-12 small galleries a month and it suprises me how unbalanced are gallery owners skills. They always their art world, have many close friends as artists and may well have completed the Royal College of Art's curator and art administration degree. But their knowledge of management and the marketing of their art is sparse to the point of total ignorance. In fact few if any get past invitations to their friends to attend their private views. As I told one gallery owner. "you do not need to fill your gallery on private view evenings with people who already know you and can pop in any time. The skill is to build up a data base of suites, people with money or who have senior positions in companies who could use art to strengthen their company's position or who want to live with art" at their company's expense!"
In later bloggs, if anyone shows interest, I will talk about the basic rules of marketing an art gallery regardless of the economic climate, and more importantly what to do now while things are quiet.
Reginald
Any art followers of my blogg who would like an outsider's or management view of the Venice Bienale, I will be there from
ReplyDelete25-29th June and can report back
Reginald
Just returned from the Futurist show at Tate Modern. With the tube strike and my belief that the visit would need postponing, I suddenly realised a bus to Tate Brit and then the boat to Tate Mod was an alternative. A great way to travel. What a pity we cannot develop a regular boat service from say Putney to Tate Mod or further, rather like the regular service on Venice's Grand Canal.
ReplyDeleteWe will never move travellers onto the river until the service is regular(say 15 minute intervals). This morning I walked to Wandworth pier as the media kept talking about using the river for the longer distances during the strike but there was no service listed except the meagre one early in the morning and later in the evening.
However, the Futurist show is an eye opener for someone like myself who only saw their rather naive politial beliefs...for war, against woman.
In artistic terms it is a vibrant show that projects all the energy of 21st Century London or New York
It stimulated so much excitement for me that I bought far too many books afterwards on the movement that will now sit reproachfully on my desk as I allocate myself a tight reading schedule. This is a show truly worth a visit.
Reginald