Managing High Growth: Using Your Culture for Competitive Advantage

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In my earlier piece about the importance of culture in high growth businesses I talked about how culture is considered a soft skill and that most business people tend to ignore it, mostly because there is no imm

Aleutian Cultures (Photo credit: Travis S.)

ediate quantifiable benefit and of course because it involves dealing with people. That's for HR people isn't it?

What I wanted to share in this post was the idea that culture can be a potent weapon by giving you an important competitive advantage. If implemented and understood it can help significantly in promoting a company's growth. Your culture establishes how your company and its staff interact with one another and with the outside world (your customers and prospects). It reflects your core values and your ethics.

So how is this a competitive weapon? Well lets look at two areas where High Growth Businesses experience problems. Finding and keeping the right staff and dealing with new problems. 

All high growth businesses face many challenges which are outside the experience of the owners or the senior staff. There is naturally a high degree of risk involved in making decisions in this environment. However as a business owner you don't want to be the only person who makes these decisions and by getting your staff to face these issues it in turn develops their skills. In order for your staff to be confident about making these decisions you must have the right culture in place. That is firstly to allow them to make decisions and not be afraid of making mistakes; and secondly a culture which support risk management so decision making can be shared across the management team and moves away from blaming individuals. Having the kind of culture which supports this kind of decision making will give you a real competitive advantage.

The other area is the strength of your culture. One of the major growth inhibitors is not getting enough of the right kind of people together with the time taken to integrate them  into your business to become fully productive. Having a strong culture creates what I have termed a cultural wall it works like this.

A company'as cultural wall uses a strong culture to ensure that only those potential employees who align with your culture will stay with the company. Those who are not fully committed or are trying to change it will bounce off the wall. That is either deliberately not join or leave soon after joining. Those who align with your culture will cross the wall and feel protected. This affinity leads to significantly lower attrition and a quicker absorption of new staff bringing them up to full productivity quicker, not to mention the increased likelihood of staff putting in more effort and extra hours into something to which they feel fully committed. 

By contrast those organisations with a weak or poorly developed culture suffer from inherently higher attrition as left unchecked people develop pockets of competing cultures, which results in a generally high level of attrition, and an increased chance that new employees will take longer to get up to speed. 

It should be obvious from the above how important Culture is to a business, the quicker companies get to grips with this the better their chance of longer term high growth.

Exigent Consulting provides specialist services for High Growth Business , Business Turnaround, and Mentoring to the Small and Medium Business. We help business owners improve the profit performance of their business. 

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The 6 Signs of Dysfunctional Company Boards

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I have written in the past few weeks about the problem with board meetings and the problem with sales meetings. It was suggested to me that it might be helpful if I explained what particular issues with a dysfunctional company board and how a well run company board would operate. In this article I intend to concentrate on dysfunctional boards or boards in crisis. 

Image via Wikipedia

So lets remind ourselves what issues should be addressed at board meetings? They’re the meeting that set the direction for the company, confirm policy, and directs the business response to unforeseen events either external like for example a significant change in market conditions or the arrival of a new or stronger competitor. The unforeseen events maybe internal like the loss of key staff or a major issue with sales or production. To get the best out of these meetings they should be held regularly and it should involve a review of the company’s performance.  

So, if that's what a Board meeting should cover what do we typically see in a dysfunctional or crisis board.

Number 1 is not understanding the importance of a board meeting. As individuals and owners we tend work and think at an operational or detail level and it takes some effort and often some training to start to look at strategic and policy issues at a high level. Because operational issues tend to be more immediate and therefore urgent they get in the way of longer term but no less important considerations. Boards meetings are vital to the long term health of a business and are a necessary condition if you want a business to be successful over the long run. I have seen many situations where Board Meetings have gradually been dropped because well meaning owners and managers confuse them with operations or management meeting. Often its only when a crisis hits the business that the management team understand its importance and by then it can be too late.

Number 2 is where day-to-day operations dominate meetings. This is the most common situation and is a result of the first symptom.   Typically the meeting will have no agenda and the participants will have made little or no preparation, consequently what gets discussed is what is on peoples minds at the time (management issues).

Number 3 is not having external advisers. In order to understand and address strategic issues, and probably any issue, it is beneficial to get external advice from people who are not intimately involved in the business. These people can be Non Executive Directors or external advisers.  This separation gives them the ability to make key insights  about the business and its relative performance that would not be possible from internal managers and directors, who often "cant sees the woods for the trees".


Number 4 is hearsay management. This is a situation where the business owner/ CEO makes decisions based on their gut instinct or impulse and without proper evidence. In these situations boards are often seen as a hindrance because board meetings are a forum where   members can question and review key decisions. This type of situation is often coupled with number 5 where the CEO/MD has a low opinion of the management team and doesn't see great value in their input or they don't want to be challenged. I have found this later situation common in family run businesses where the control is kept within the family irrespective of capability and the unwanted scrutiny of a board meeting is something to avoid.


Number 6 the  festering issue/disruptive director. These two often go hand in hand and the disruptive director is often a result of a long running issue that has been ignored, where he or they consider that a poor or no decision has been taken on a subject of great importance to them and despite numerous attempts the problem is avoided leaving a disgruntled board member. The result is that they will go to great lengths to try to raise the issue whilst everyone else will do their best to avoid it, as a result issue and those connected issues are not properly discussed and frequently board meetings are delayed or cancelled as part of the avoidance process. This situation is especially common where you have strong characters who will be persistent in the cause to the point of absurdity and in the long run is very damaging to a team. Often a climate of distrust will develop and worsen team relations the longer the issue is not openly discussed and some form of conclusion reached.


Whilst there are many issues surrounding board meetings don't let this list put you off, many companies have a well functioning board. My next blog post will look at what a properly functioning board look like. I would also like to take the opportunity to give my thanks to Ivor Middleton who assisted in the preparation of this article.

Exigent Consulting provides specialist services for High Growth Business , Business Turnaround, and Mentoring to the Small and Medium Business. We help Business Owners improve the profit performance of their business. 

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Managing a High Growth Business: Getting your Vision Right

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Image via    Wikipedia

Getting Your Vision Right 

I have worked with many high growth businesses and contrary to much of the published research it is clear that many owners of successful and high growth businesses do not have a clear vision of where they want to go or indeed and why they should need  to know.  Many of the business owners I have worked would describe themselves as accidental success stories. That is to say they can't explain why their business is consistently successful or what actions they put in place got them to where they are now. However what is common, they all recognise that this is not a satisfactory state of affairs. Formalising their thoughts into a vision is not just an academic exercise it is important to be able to articulate why you are business. 

A vision is not about targets or goals, it is about the reason you are in business for example Disney's vision is simply "To make people happy" Whilst Google's is "Make internet advertising better - less intrusive, more effective, and more useful" Kelloggs is  "To be the food company of choice"

You will all have some kind of vision in your head but to communicate it effectively to your staff and the outside world it needs to be put down on paper, in doing so it will help you clarify your vision. You will see from the examples I have shown that a company vision is not about targets or goals but why you do what you do and how you do it. It should not change and it should be just as valid whether you are a 5 person company or a 5000 person company. It should be timeless.

Getting your vision right is important for any business, but for a fast growing business it is essential. Having a vision will provide the common sense of direction that will focus peoples’ activities to the benefit of the business. This common purpose is vital for the maintaining of consistent fast growth.

Related articles

• Three tips to clarify your vision (iowabiz.com)

Exigent Consulting provides specialist services for High Growth Business , Business Turnaround, and Mentoring to the Small and Medium Business. We help Business Owners improve the profit performance of their business. 

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Developing a structured approach to sales pipelines - The Issues

Of all the activities in the sales area this seems to be the most difficult for businesses to implement. I have to say I’m at a loss to understand why. Having consulted with organisations from very small to large, there appears to be a blind spot where building a structured sales pipeline is concerned. So what is a structured pipeline and why is it important?

Let’s go back a step and see what most commonly happens with pipeline reporting.

For many businesses, particularly small companies, it’s simply nonexistent which leaves them hopelessly exposed when business hits a downturn. They have no idea what shape they’re in or, more importantly, be able to quantify what sales they need to get back on an even keel, how much activity needs to take place to generate the requisite sales, or the length of time it takes to get from first contact to order. This lack of knowledge is a major contributor to why many smaller businesses fail.

Very many companies have sales reporting and even have pipeline reporting but these are often completely ineffective. They tend to be unstructured and soon degenerate into “a jolly nice chat” allowing sales people to waffle and produce lots of information which is partial, biased and is ultimately there to justify the salesman’s position whilst at the same time giving the sales(or company) management little useful information. I can’t tell you how many long, tedious and ultimately pointless sales meeting I’ve had to endure on a client’s behalf. Many lasting 3-4 hours when they could and should last about 1 hour. What you get is a long narrative from each sales person talking about who they’ve seen, why it was an interesting and/or important prospect and then at the end the sad unexpected of surprising reason why this company is no longer a prospect or at least why they won’t be making a decision to buy this month. Worse still each in turn feels it necessary to talk for longer about his or her prospects than the preceding salesperson.

Consequently the pipeline is just as unstructured with a loose general format being used which allows the salespeople to view their pipeline using their own judgement rather than a standardised approach. Typically under these circumstances the quoted pipeline is huge and the amount of business closed is a very small percent (less than 10) of the total. This is made worse because there is little or no correlation between the size of the pipeline and the sales closed thus making very difficult to predict future revenue streams.

So what should a structured pipeline report aim to achieve?

Firstly, it should enable you to view each sale in a consistent manner.

Second, it should clearly identify if a sales opportunity has progressed or stagnated.

Thirdly, it should contained a factoring index which will more accurately reflect the true value of the pipeline

Fourthly, it should provide sales and/or company management with a consistent and reliable prediction of business that should be closed in the forthcoming period.

Fifth, it should be simple and relatively easy to complete (salespeople as a breed are poor at filling in reports).

Sixth, it should be focused on numbers rather than opinions.
A subsequent article will give you a simple format in which to achieve all this so making your sales function more effective

Exigent Consulting specialises in providing Business Turnaround, Sales, Marketing and Mentoring to the Small and Medium Business. We help Business Owners improve the profit performance of their business.