My 6 wishes for your great 2019
I’ve produced a short video with my 6 wishes for your great 2019. Whilst they are principally for my tourism & hospitality clients I suggest they can apply to all sectors. What do you think?
Get to the Point BrexFit video No 2
Get to the Point BrexFit video No 2
This is Video 2 in our Get To The Point series with Hugh Morgan-Williams and Malcolm Gallagher. In this video, Malcolm asks Hugh if an external communications campaign at this time in #Brexit negotiations may hurt the business.
How would Labour handle Brexit? Sir Keir Starmer Interview Video 1
For our BrexFit channel we recently video interviewed Sir Keir Starmer, Shadow Brexit Secretary. Hugh Morgan-Williams asked the questions and, myself, Malcolm Gallagher filmed the interview and produced five short videos. In video 1 Sir Keir says how Labour would go about the Brexit
challenge.
New “Get To The Point” Brexit video series launched
New “Get To The Point” Brexit video series launched by Get BrexFit team
by Malcolm Gallagher
When we’ve been out and about with our Get BrexFit podcast and filming, a host of small and medium-sized businesses have been giving us their “Brexit feelings”. Some of it has been quite strong (take note politicians!). And others very perplexed, unsure and looking for sensible guidance. I say sensible because there’s a lot of narrow-thinking out there and its likely to get worse and possibly harmful to you so beware! To help we’ve taken a selection of your questions and comments and made them into a #GetBrexFit video series we’re calling “Get To The Point” – because that’s what you seem to want, not the self-centered waffle that’s out there! Anyways you can try us out with below Video One in the series. More will be posted over the coming weeks.
The idea is that we take one of your key questions which I narrate. Then it’s over to my BrexFit co-presenter, Hugh Morgan-Williams, to give you our answer. Hugh spends nearly two days a week just researching Brexit so he has bountiful knowledge as well as being a sad person doing that!! But it’s sound knowledge you need along with sound advice – and that’s our aim at #GetBrexFit.
Watch the video below – Video 1 is on the need for financial resources – listen to the weekly Get BrexFit business podcast and contact us if you want to see, size and seize the Brexit opportunity.
3 steps to great decision making
You want to make the right quality and timely decisions. You can’t afford to wait and see so your decisions need to have velocity alongside quality.
I was intrigued to read recently that the Consultants, McKinsey, said that businesses who make decisions well use 3 ingredients. How are you performing in all of the following 3?
McKinsey found first of all that winners use SPEED as part of their process. Those winners will often make a decision with just 80% of the necessary information rather than waiting for it all and possibly lose out to a competitor.
Its sensible here, as the business leader, to identify what decisions ONLY YOU can make and delegate the rest. Make sure your decision process allows you to move good ideas forward quickly.
The second ingredient of decision winners, says McKinsey, is that they favour interaction amongst themselves over the process of deep analysis. Good interaction sparks off great ideas and it also has the extra benefit of heading off biases with the result that everyone is in tune together.
And the third ingredient is to what they call “Choreograph the decision process”. Hey, if you have been to a stage show or even watched Strictly Come Dancing you know how effective and impressive good choreography can be. Without choreography, your decision making could become turgid with countless reviews and approvals. Craft it so the decision process is made in one place.
So that’s a brief look at a key soft skill of decision making. Sharpen your process now and you’ll be more fit to compete for any business opportunity. Are you using all 3 steps?
Ready for business growth? 6 key questions
Ask yourself these 6 key questions to see if your timing is right for growth
says, Malcolm Gallagher of BizVision,
A key question at the moment should be “Is your business ready to grow”? Irrespective of what is happening in the bigger “Brexit” picture at the moment. In growth, timing is crucial.
You need to decide if your business is in what I call a sensible position to journey on a growth strategy. To help you make this decision, coming up are just 6 deep dive questions to ask yourself.
- How is your business performing against your budget in sales, and costs? I hope you are using some key ratios here. If not then email me mg@bizvision.co.uk and I’ll send you the top 3 ratios for small businesses
- Thinking of your available resources, how is your business using those resources to generate profit? Or is it not? Sometimes resources such as assets are bought and they lie unused or underutilised. Also, have you sold off old equipment (say on eBay)) – a few pounds is better than nothing
- Is your market sector expanding or contracting? Or where is it changing? We have seen horror stories about retailers recently and problems about construction businesses. But these changes usually mean there is opportunity elsewhere. Are you missing it? Is your radar working to seek out opportunities?
- How are your competitors behaving? Rationally or not? What are they saying publicly? If you don’t know, you need to start what I call a Comp Set. Take your top 5 competitors and monitor them, benchmark your elf against them, keep a watch for news on their website with RSS feeds or use services such as Mention.com or Talkwalker.com to get a hold of what they are both saying and doing.
- Ask yourself the truthful question of how much cash have you got that is readily available to fund growth. Likely it is not enough so you need to go searching for funding. Do it soon not last minute.
- How well do you use your working capital? Funders will want to know but you should know this NOW not when you want more money.
Okay, there’s your six key questions to get you truly ready for growth. Armed with the answers you can make your growth decision. Which are the most relevant to you? Have I missed any key ones?