leadership

How can a business be supported to get an Uplift?

There have typically been five ways businesses, and their owners have been supported to grow. However, there is one way that is often overlooked because it is done internally. We look externally at the other four, but why when it comes to the fifth way, it is thought that it can bring the desired results when not employed the same way?

In the following blog we discuss the five ways that businesses are typically supported, and offer a 6th way that can give the uplift that requires less management time, elicits cultural as well as commercial change, and with that more sustainable results: Strategic Facilitation.

Business Coaching

Coaching is a powerful tool. By coaches asking provoking questions, the person being coached guided through their answers to provided clarity through greater awareness. The output of this can be improved performance, leadership growth, and mindset shifts. However, coaching requires permission. People need to be ready and willing to be coached. Results, can take time to embed, meaning this is often an ongoing activity.

Best Used: Individual performance and mindset shifts

Business Mentoring

Having been there and done that a mentor provides advice and support based on their past experiences, which can provide confidence through new perspectives to the mentee. However, mentoring is less structured, outcomes less measurable, and is dependent on mentor quality.

Best Used: Developing leaders, succession planning, career growth

Business Consulting

Business consultants can provide valuable strategic support through expert solutions and recommendations. Their approach is typically fast, problem-specific solutions with clear deliverables. However, this approach is less likely to build internal capabilities while being charged at a high cost to the business. Dependencies can also occur.

Best Used: Technical issues, strategy, restructuring, specialized problems

Business Training

Training is used to build knowledge and skills. This may be when staff join a company or are learning a new process. It offers an efficient process to embed ways of working, that is structured and measurable. However, it is limited in its personalisation. Every business and person has different needs, and a clear skills gap needs to be identified first. Behaviour change is not guaranteed meaning cultural issues may persist and results can be short-term.

Best Used: Skill gaps, onboarding, compliance, system rollouts

Business Facilitation

Facilitation is phenomenal for alignment and guiding group processes. It encourages collaboration and improves decision quality. Done internally within organisations, however, it can resemble training and staff often comply or reject the process as the process requires neutral leadership. When done well, commitment from staff is cultivated having an impact on cultural as well as commercial approaches to the business.

Best Used: Strategy sessions, conflict resolution, team alignment

But there’s a sixth way…

Strategic Facilitation

Taking the provocative questions from coaching, the acumen and speed from consulting, the experience of mentoring, and recognising the skills and knowledge in the room, we channel this into facilitation. The result, an uplift in strategy, relationships, and profitability that becomes embedded into culture and commercial delivery.

Upliftin6 works with your teams to capture their energy (thoughts, experiences, knowledge) and drive this back into your business to create impact. The chances are you don’t need more coaches, consultants, training, or mentoring… you need strategic facilitation.

Upliftin6 offers a free business mapping session to identify the blockers in your business and receive a road map that you can playback to your team. If you are interested in trying this, email chris@upliftin6.com.

The Business Scorecard

The concept of having a business scorecard was developed to provide businesses with an overview of how they are performing. Scorecards typically look at the company’s finances, how they interact with their customers, internal processes, and organisational learning.

The idea of a scorecard is extremely useful, but like a profit & loss statement, it has its limitations: only looking into the past. This means if it is used for business planning, while seeming like a good idea, it produces a strategy that fills gaps in the past, rather than innovating for the future.

Furthermore, traditional scorecards, aggregate a score of the business based on different areas, without connecting those areas together. If a conscientious business owner was to use one, they may run the risk of trying to fix the area lagging in their business without looking at how these impacts upon other aspects of their organisation. This means that when the next scorecard is completed, they fix the next lagging area while putting pressure elsewhere in the organisation. (A metaphor of someone taking medication to cure an illness only for than medication to cause a side effect, which requires another medication comes to mind).

Attending to one lagging aspect of the business at a time when its flaws are exposed is firefighting – and a very reactive way to run a business. Think of the emotional effort you would need to run a business like this… how does this feel?

Emotionally, this breeds insecurity, anxiety, and wishful thinking.

Surely there is a better way; one which gives a business owners more freedom to develop their business with foresight & confidence.

Let me introduce you to a scorecard that looks to build assets into a business that creates revenue, improves its scalability and profit margins, and increases its valuation. This scorecard is a diagnostic tool that takes reactivity out, and directs business owners to fast return on investment extending further into the future.

How do you think running a business like this would feel?

You can access more information on the diagnostic tool or book a meeting with me to go through the tool and see what it can do for your business, by emailing me directly using chris@upliftin6.com.