The Leadership Gallery is delighted to welcome Alex Adamo of The Commercialiser® joining as Director of Commercial Development. Alex will help us continue to refine our value proposition and bring to market our Align+® Suite – aimed at executives that need to pressure test their strategy and ensure that their teams are aligned towards effective execution. “I am happy to join The Leadership Gallery and help the team spearhead their commercial expansion to the UK’s corporations and worldwide. I joined the business because I believe in the founders and the clear-cut value their deceptively simple Align+® Suite offers to C-Level executives and I am excited to bring the product to market and build a Business Development function with the support of our team at The Commercialiser®” Alex AdamoRead More
If even a small number of your key strategic assumptions don’t materialise, your strategy could become unsustainable. Does what looked feasible and achievable at the beginning of 2020, now seem dead in the water? Are you in shape to emerge from the crisis ready to beat off the competition and handle the adverse movement in costs? The combined effect of a 1% shortfall in market share (eg 19% vs 20%) and a 1% shortfall in gross margin (eg 44% vs 45%) would lead to a 5% reduction in revenue and 21% reduction in profits (based on a FTSE 250 5-year operating margin of 12%). It’s time to ‘stress-test’ your strategy to determine where are the gaps and weaknesses and what actions are needed to address themRead More
Imagine a time when everything starts to return to normal; how well placed are you to maximise upon the opportunities that “the new normal” will bring? The new normal requires a new mindset. How willing will leaders and their executive teams be to stray from their comfort zone and challenge their traditional ways. History shows others to have been successful in far-more-challenging times. During Great Depression, companies such as DuPont, General Electric, IBM and Procter & Gamble defied the odds, churning out profits, whilst many others went under. Exceptional times are rarely factored into strategic planning explicitly. Those who respond decisively to the challenge, differentiate themselves, and take the risk out of strategic execution, can still expect to grow. Imagine - “the new normal”. Its new realities present a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.Read More
A Harvard Business Review survey conducted with more than 400 global CEOs found that executional excellence was the number one challenge heading a list of 80 issues which included innovation, geopolitical instability and top-line growth. The effect of a 5% shortfall in forecasted revenue would translate to an 18% shortfall in operating profits (based on a FTSE 250 5-year operating margin of 12%). Ambitious or clever strategies are not enough, successful execution depends on asking the difficult questions that challenge you and those around you.Read More
If your strategy and plans are well thought through, making sure that you have the right capabilities in place and the most appropriate structure, systems and processes, may seem like an easy next step. However, to get this right, perhaps some help would be useful? The answer/s are already in your organisation – so don’t let any benevolent management consultants convince you that only they have the answers. However, it may be useful for you to ask the right questions as you go through your ‘re-mobilisation’ planning, in the run up to post Covid-19. You have the answers, we have the questions.Read More
The success of strategies is dependent on three main factors – robustness, resilience and readiness. As the world emerges from the Covid-19 pandemic, how will your strategy fare? Robust – how good are the assumptions you’ve made about markets, competitors, capabilities, costs, regulations and technology? Resilient – are the assumptions you made when the strategy was developed, still viable in a post-COVID-19 world? Ready – are your structures, processes, decision-making mechanisms, metrics and reward systems future-facing?Read More
Most companies have a strategy. Sometimes it’s formal and well documented, other times it’s informal, but well understood. So why do a lot a strategies fail in execution? Often it’s because companies take their strategies for granted and don’t always ask the tough questions before taking the plunge. These questions are particularly important at times when there is a major change of direction or when an unforeseen incident occurs. Now is the time to re-evaluate your strategy. How will it fare in a post-COVID-19 world?Read More
Under normal circumstances ensuring a strategy delivers as you hoped, planned and expected is tough enough; however when the world’s been turned upside down things just got a whole lot harder. Ensuring success in a post-COVID-19 world is dependent upon your leaders having the capabilities required for your strategy to be successful. As the competitive environment changes and the ‘new normal’ emerges, the capabilities required for success will also change. What are the skills, knowledge and expertise required of your leaders going forward, and what help is needed to make the transition?Read More
Does your strategy now require a major change in direction? The Covid-19 global pandemic has probably forced you to look at your current strategy and evaluate all of your previous assumptions. There are key components of your plans that will now need to change when you re-emerge from ‘lockdown’ and begin your ‘re-mobilisation’ plans. In the past, some of the best paid companies have failed, especially where their strategy requires a major change in direction. Most of the time this has happened because there wasn’t the right alignment in the business. Now is the time to review structures, processes, reward systems, culture and behaviours to ensure that you can execute your new strategy effectively.Read More
If even a small number of your key strategic assumptions don’t materialise, your strategy could become unsustainable. Does what looked feasible and achievable at the beginning of 2020, now seem dead in the water? Are you in shape to emerge from the crisis ready to beat off the competition and handle the adverse movement in costs? The combined effect of a 1% shortfall in market share (eg 19% vs 20%) and a 1% shortfall in gross margin (eg 44% vs 45%) would lead to a 5% reduction in revenue and 21% reduction in profits (based on a FTSE 250 5-year operating margin of 12%). It’s time to ‘stress-test’ your strategy to determine where are the gaps and weaknesses and what actions are needed to address themRead More
The disruption caused by COVID-19 has (or should have) resulted in Boards reviewing all aspects of their strategy and the way in which they operate. While senior teams may conclude they have the relevant logistics and processes in place which ensure the business can operate effectively in a post-pandemic world, what distinguishes an OK Board from a great Board are people and culture. Critical for high performing/effective boards is having the right people in the ‘room’ with the capabilities for taking the business forward underpinned by a culture which encourages respectful challenge and open dialogue.Read More
In an article published in Forbes magazine, research conducted by Jack Zender with 50,000 managers showed that poor leaders (bottom 10%) drove losses, good leaders (middle 80%) delivered profits and extraordinary leaders (top 10%) doubled profits. For a business with £100m revenues, this means good leaders can deliver £12m operating profits while extraordinary leaders can add another £10m (based on a FTSE 250 5-year operating margin of 12%). Now, more than ever, it’s important to understand the strengths, gaps and weaknesses amongst the people responsible for helping the business survive, stabilise and grow. Read More
As leaders of our businesses WE are held accountable for the delivery of our strategies. In both public and private sector organisations, it is the leaders who need to ensure the organisation is aligned to deliver its plans. So many strategies do not get delivered properly due to poor execution, shareholders, customers, employees and in fact all stakeholders must be very frustrated by the sheer waste of their money. Leaders have a great opportunity right now to begin their ‘re-mobilisation’ planning, and first must understand where the misalignments are going to be with structures, processes, systems and people as they come back to work. The planning can and should begin now.Read More
The continuing drive to embrace new technology and incorporate digital ways of working, is exciting. It is opening up new business opportunities as we seek to understand how AI, Robotics, AR (Augmented Reality) can help us to transform the way we do things. There is however fear – ‘’why are we so far behind everyone else’’ in our ‘digital transformation’ journey? Our advice to is ‘don’t panic’! Everyone we speak to and those we work with are all determining their own journeys. A key to embracing digitisation is not to forget your people and not to forget your organisations’ culture. Your employees need to be re-assured that you will help them acquire the ‘new’ capabilities as your organisation forges ahead. It is also essential to find ways to develop your organisation culture so that it will embrace these changes.Read More
If only part of a leader’s role is about helping their organisations and teams navigate through the turbulent waters of constant change, then right now, with white water swirling furiously around us all, great leadership is at its premium. If you are not looking at your strategy and working out how your business needs to re-align in order to accelerate out of the Covid-19 crisis, then you need to be. Now is surely the opportunity for you to begin your ‘re-mobilisation’ planning.Read More
Recent years have seen a surge of energy in organisations learning to pre-empt, understand and adapt to the challenges of the 4th industrial revolution. Critical to our role as business leaders is to understand the impact of Industry 4.0 in our respective markets and in this context know how to meet our customers’ changing business needs. During our Covid-19 re-mobilisation planning, as we search for ways to ensure that our business is aligned to our strategies, we need to ensure that our plans for the future take advantage of what we have learnt during the ‘lockdown’. Technology used well can help and be a real differentiator for everyone, enhancing ways of working, enabling communication and building collaborative, sustainable workforce solutions.Read More
I’ve known Rob Shorrick since he led a wide-ranging overhaul of personal and professional development at AXA PPP healthcare, where he was Group Learning and Development Director, making a massive impact on the organisation’s ability to handle innovation and transformation. Before the concepts became mainstream, he championed the benefits of self-managed learning and active alignment between the development needs of the organisation and the individual. Rob’s instinct is never to ask: “how can we get away with the minimum viable solution”. It’s always to push at boundaries and to embed a desire for continual radical improvement – even in organisations that, superficially, are coping on a day to day basis. Rob now runs a fascinating firm called the Leadership Gallery, and over the past few months I’ve been working with Rob and his colleagues on the development of a suite of proprietary diagnostic tools called Align+® which enable business leaders to identify the issues most likely to affect their ability to execute their strategies successfully. The tool is built upon data, ensuring leaders can make decisions driven by facts as...Read More
Published: 19th April 2018 Author: Anish Gupta, Director The Leadership Gallery recently conducted a survey of CEOs and C-Suite executives to understand how they viewed the implications of Brexit for their organisations. The results are in, and they provide an interesting insight into organisations’ priority areas of concern. The majority of respondents (74%) indicate they are already planning for the possible consequences of Brexit, and across the sample, about two thirds of respondents believe that Brexit will not pose a significant threat to their business strategy. While this sounds like a resounding vote of confidence in UK industry’s ability to deal with life after Brexit, a closer analysis of the responses shows there are sharp differences of opinion depending on sector. At a headline level, the UK appears to be confident that the threats posed by Brexit are not huge. However, this masks serious concerns within certain sectors. Let’s take a look at each of the issues polled separately. Threats to revenue 76% of respondents feel that threats to revenue are limited or not serious. However, in the finance and...Read More
Published: 2nd March 2018 Author: Malcolm Lambell, Chairman at The Leadership Gallery “Digital transformation is something new, and something many businesses haven’t done before.” I am not so sure… When people ask me what my first digital transformation was, I’d say 18 years ago, when Internet banking, digital TV and WAP phones were becoming the norm. I was the IT Director behind one of the first online banking services in the UK, and I would argue that Digital Transformation isn’t actually that new. Sure, you need know a bit about the tools; artificial intelligence, apps, blockchain, virtual reality, the Internet of Things, etc. But that’s made easier if you suspend the belief that they are some kind of magic bullet for your business that will change everything overnight. They are just tools that either can or cannot be applied to your business model to improve the way you do business. Maybe they won’t be game changers, but if they can be applied correctly they will add significant value. That’s not to say I don’t see the opportunity in the new tools...Read More
Published: 4th February, 2018 Author: Rob Shorrick, CEO at The Leadership Gallery The culture of your business is often front-of-mind if you’re a senior leader; however, it remains a challenge to understand how to effectively influence it. Good culture is a key pillar of business success; it allows strategy to remain relatable to staff and espouses a set of behaviours for those working within the business. It’s understandable, then, that boards wish to know whether their organisational culture is fit for purpose, and many may even have identified specific areas that they wish to change. However, attempts to affect culture in isolation will often fail to be effective. Culture is the result of many contributory factors, and therefore, business leaders should view it as an 'output' of those factors. Understanding the Contributory factors Vision and purpose A key task for business leaders is maintaining a clear view of the vision, purpose, ethics, values and degree of individual empowerment they wish to see within their organisations when making decisions. If you’re a senior decision maker, consider whether you are able to: Articulate...Read More
Published: 24th January 2018 Authors: Rob Shorrick, CEO at The Leadership Gallery, Jerry Williams and Caroline Pearce-Browne, both Directors at Reps Ltd Successful strategy implementation will only occur when it is carefully constructed, communicated and enabled throughout an organisation. The real estate situation of a company is an integral component of this – ensuring your company’s facilities are set up to allow it to deliver on its goals is key to the success of the wider corporate strategy. Embarking on a significant property project – a wholesale review, consolidation, expansion or upgrade – can be a challenge. To employees, the environment you create for them can be seen as the physical embodiment of the strategy in practice, and a working environment that is fit for purpose has a positive effect on how well structures, capabilities, processes and systems are understood or utilised throughout the business. So, what are typical scenarios we see in success or failure when it comes to real estate strategy? 1. The purpose of the business is inadequately conveyed or understood throughout the company Without clarity over the purpose...Read More
Published: 12th January 2018 Author: Anish Gupta There is a deluge of articles and broadcasts about Brexit. Often, they reflect contradictory points of view. The only consistent thread is the inability of anyone to predict what the outcomes will be. That’s not very useful for businesses who, unlike many commentators, have to prepare for this uncertain future. Every business is unique in some ways, so there is no ‘one size fits all’ solution that applies to all. The actual impact of Brexit will not kick in fully until March 2019. Given the prevailing confusion, this could tempt businesses to adopt a ‘wait-and-watch’ policy. Our advice to all businesses is that they simply cannot afford to wait and watch, because there are a few possible implications which are already visible, and measures to deal with these cannot be taken overnight. It is essential for organisations to look objectively at possible scenarios, assess what the impacts could be, and initiate preparatory actions now. There are four areas that we recommend businesses should look at: 1. Revenue 60% of UK exports currently go...Read More
Published: 20th December 2017 Author: Rob Shorrick The strategy and future direction of your business should always be front-of-mind if you’re a senior leader. In an increasingly unpredictable climate, however, it is a constant challenge to ensure that a strategy is robust, and that all the required components are aligned and working together. Technology and automation, new methods of consumer interaction, political volatility, and directives such as General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR) mean organisations must scan a far more uncertain horizon than ever before when approaching strategy implementation. How can leaders ensure that their organisations have the right capabilities in place to find opportunities in these issues, as well as reacting to the conditions of their respective sectors, in order to attain and sustain success? Here, we highlight some key areas that organisations should consider when (or before) determining their strategy or undertaking business change. Purpose Keeping in mind the organisation’s reason for being is vital to decision making. Before defining strategy and reviewing processes and policies, an organisation should ensure it understands its purpose, and that it is referenced...Read More