Home to roost
Nick Bettes Consulting | Business Coaching Blog
by Nick Bettes
2y ago
Is low productivity built-in to UK small businesses? If there was any sense to Brexit then perhaps forcing UK business to address its woeful productivity was it. Particularly in the SME sector our productivity is far worse than that of our competitors and there is a school of thought that says ready access to cheap labour contributed to this (although opinions vary of course – these are economists. In particular, countries such as France and Germany have had the same access to labour without it depressing their productivity in the same way). Be that as it may, many UK businesses are now facing ..read more
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Unknown Unknowns
Nick Bettes Consulting | Business Coaching Blog
by Nick Bettes
2y ago
I help business owners make their businesses easier to grow and run. I am working with a copywriter to develop some new marketing collateral and he asked “What have your clients tried that hasn’t worked before they come to you?”. A thoughtful question that required a thoughtful answer. Having spent time producing one, I thought I would get a blog out of it and so I reproduce it below: What have my clients tried that hasn’t worked before they come to me? Many business owners believe that the stress, frustration and limited growth they experience is just the way it is – it comes with the territo ..read more
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Business Owners, Drivers and Lovers
Nick Bettes Consulting | Business Coaching Blog
by Nick Bettes
2y ago
Research by HBR1 shows that many managers (and by extension, business owners) are unable to judge objectively how well or poorly their business is run. In fact, the research found zero correlation between self-perceived management quality and actual performance. The same report finds that only 6% of businesses are well run, and that the difference between them and the worst-run businesses equates to 25% in growth rate and 75% in productivity. Now it could be that, like Captain Mainwaring, you are a pretty shrewd judge of these matters. This delusion does not apply to you and you really are one ..read more
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Formulating your beliefs
Nick Bettes Consulting | Business Coaching Blog
by Nick Bettes
2y ago
If asked what is critical to their business, most leaders and managers will include “employees” in their reply. They understand that business is about people.  With the right people, a clear and worthwhile aim and good leadership you can achieve anything. If business is about people, how can it be reduced to formulas?  More to the point, why would you want to do such a thing? Well of course business is measured using formulas; profit margin, growth, return on investment, customer retention and so on.  Used with intelligence and insight as key performance indicators these measure ..read more
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Marketing Strategy as Comfort Blanket
Nick Bettes Consulting | Business Coaching Blog
by Nick Bettes
3y ago
I have been working with a client on their marketing strategy. Their work on systemising and scaling their business has meant that for the first time they have time to get their head up and think longer-term and strategically. Historically, like many businesses, work came to them from a small number of repeat customers and, occasionally, out of the blue. This won’t support a scalable business, where marketing and sales have to be altogether more focused, routine and repeatable. One way of addressing this would be to get in a marketing agency and ask them to produce a marketing strategy. This w ..read more
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Generalising from the Specific
Nick Bettes Consulting | Business Coaching Blog
by Nick Bettes
3y ago
An old client contacted me recently. He was feeling stuck again and thinking about getting some more coaching. Thanks to his drive and ability his business has grown by about 500% since we last worked together three years ago. He has overcome the barrier of just expecting employees to know what to do, and has sorted out his back office structure, processes and systems so he can delegate, let go and focus on growth. So why more coaching? It seems as if his operational stuff is performing inconsistently and lacks visibility compared with his improved back-office. One of his long-time employees i ..read more
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Leadership Traits?
Nick Bettes Consulting | Business Coaching Blog
by Nick Bettes
3y ago
Traits as a leadership model is a bit passe but… I was talking to a business owner recently. She wants to improve her leadership skills. She asked a bit of a googly: “What inspired you about people who led you?” All the great managers I have been lucky enough to work for flashed in front of my eyes and I said, without thinking too much about it: “They were all passionate about what we did. They were all good at what they did. They were all funny. They all let me know that my contribution was important and that I was doing a good job.” So perhaps behaviours rather than traits. Nothing very com ..read more
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All That HR Stuff
Nick Bettes Consulting | Business Coaching Blog
by Nick Bettes
3y ago
I was talking recently to a client about delegation and helping staff take more responsibility. Like many owners, she has become something of a bottleneck in her business, with most decisions and some critical activities reliant upon her. I explained how implementing things like organisation charts, job descriptions, processes and objectives helps to empower employees, by making their responsibilities and authority clear. Her immediate reaction was “I can get our HR consultant to do that.” I commended this piece of delegation but had to point out that, while an HR consultant was exactly the r ..read more
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A Simpler Business Growth Model
Nick Bettes Consulting | Business Coaching Blog
by Nick Bettes
3y ago
Whilst preparing a client proposal recently I referenced an HBR paper on the stages of business growth (The Five Stages of Small Business Growth by Neil C. Churchill and Virginia L. Lewis link). It’s rather old but remains, like all good management models, relevant today. It provides a useful tool for gaining insight into an individual business, its stage of development, strategy and challenges. It also remains somewhat inaccessible to the owners of small businesses, who might see it as theoretical or even corporate. Their small businesses are not big enough to afford the shamens required to ..read more
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The Formula for Business
Nick Bettes Consulting | Business Coaching Blog
by Nick Bettes
3y ago
Quite a lot of my time is spent helping business owners develop their management team. In a small business, my client may have had limited management training and the potential managers even less – so they are coming from a long way back in terms of becoming capable and accountable managers. The effort is worthwhile. Not only are the people concerned loyal and passionate about the product but it avoids the huge risk of hiring senior people from outside the company. Managers from larger businesses in particular can be fish out of water when they move to a more senior position in a smaller busin ..read more
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