What flavour?

With a background in marketing & strategy this forms the core of my knowledge base. I have experience in both starting businesses and growing them and a particular interest in how one relates conceptually to one's business - how personal or separate it is, the model in one's head as to what business looks like etc etc. This means that the areas I work on with clients most commonly include:

• Structuring a broad vision into bite sized goals for the short and medium term
• Highlighting practicalities that will need to be addressed as they grow and recommending potential solutions – from accounting systems to job descriptions and approaches to hiring staff
• Business plan development – detailed for 12 months, broader brush for 3-5 years
• Conceptualisation of business models appropriate to the way you wish to operate
• Coaching on bridging from Creative work into new sectors i.e. the translation activity that is required to learn to speak and act in different sectors & environments (looking for the difference in use of language & jargon and the different definitions of truth, trust, timeframe, credibility etc)
• Implementation advice & sounding board – a business person to put questions to around implementation, routes to market, client management
• Marketing strategy, implementation (& where relevant launch planning) – making specific use of my marketing background to help in the development of a launch plan
• Undertaking a skills (and if appropriate a board) audit
• Networking coach – guiding individuals & teams in how they present themselves in different arenas and in methods for seeking out new opportunities

Questions to the recipient(s):

• What are the top 3 things you want to work on?
• What are your deadlines in the next few months (by which some of these development goals need to have been achieved)?
• What restrictions on your time might impact the way I work with you?
• What working structure is likely to result in the easiest working relationship?

It is not uncommon for the work that I do in this field to be paid for through one or more sets of Public funds, thus the questions to the funder include:

• What outputs would you like?
• Do you require some form of reporting – final or regular?
• Would you like to see a written business plan as one of the outputs?
• What timeframe are we considering?
• How many days are available?

What impacts progress?

As I embark upon a new coaching relationship I look out for signs as to the working style of the invidual or team and establish a way of working that both plays to their strengths whilst challenging their development. Here are a few of the things I look out for:

• Pro-active vs. co-erced
• Meeting the commitments made (vs. rescheduling tasks ad infinitum) – and if that means setting conservative deadlines rather than aggressive ones it is still more productive
• New vs. familiar concepts – if a concept is new it takes time to understand and internalise it, if it is familiar (however vaguely) then you’ve already worked out a place for it in your understanding of the world
• Constraints from other places (time or resources) and/or alternate foci in your life…and the stability of these elements
• Working styles – sequential vs. circular vs. holistic, whether these are conscious and recognised
• Clarity of vision of the future – being able to make decisions against an outline of where you want the decision to take you
• Prioritisation of ‘business’ elements, particularly in relation to creative activities – if you have identified it as a key route to progressing you’ll treat it differently than if it is ‘must I?’
• Whether or not your internal processes are capable of meeting your expansion/growth plans – e.g. accounting systems and whether you’ve moved on from excel sheets to some form of accounting software (with or without the assistance of a part-time book-keeper)
• Ability to free up some elements via delegation or sub-contraction and having a ready pool of contacts to use for this