How to build an agile business | Issue #227
Five ways to make your business more agile (and help it grow through uncertainty)
Volatility is the ‘new normal’. Think back to the heady, pre-pandemic days of 2019. The job market was burning hot, and it was a struggle to hire talent. Then COVID struck with full force, and there was a wave of redundancies. The market was flooded. Fast forward a year or so, and things have bounced back. Suddenly it’s tricky to find good people again. We’ve had wage inflation, quiet quitting, warnings of recessions, and global supply shortages – it’s been challenging, to say the least.
In our conversations with clients, one thing is true. People can’t say with any certainty where they think the economic indicators will be in the next 6 to 12 months. So it’s impossible to make any concrete plan or prediction. Our advice? To plan to be agile. Put in an org structure with the flexibility to cope with the shocks and bounce back.
Agility is a mindset. There are things you can do to futureproof your business and make it more resilient. Let me take you through them.
Leading the Twice Microsoft UK Partner of The Year with Neil Marley
How do you find enough qualified people to deliver on the revenue opportunities that your business comes across? This is a problem that might be familiar to many professional services organisations, particularly within the cloud space. Our guest this week Neil Marley, came across that challenge whilst he was working at New Signature.
There are two things that Neil is excited about. The first is helping people build an exciting new technology career, regardless of their background or previous opportunities; the second is building long-term partnerships with growth organisations, offering services to help fuel their growth. He has now taken his experience doing that to make Qualyfi a positive force for the world.
In this episode, he shares his journey working in public cloud technologies with Microsoft, moving from working in a big organisation to a small team, and he and his small team managed to become one of the leading partners for Microsoft. He also talked about the challenges the business faced along the way, the secrets to New Signature’s success and the impact coaching had on the team dynamics.
Download and listen to learn more.
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Recommended Reads
Meetings Suck by Cameron Herold
We all know that meetings suck, right? You hear it all the time. It’s the one thing that almost everyone in business can agree on. Except it’s not actually true. Meetings don’t suck—we suck at running meetings. When done right, meetings not only work, they make people and companies better. In Meetings Suck, world-renowned business expert and growth guru Cameron Herold teaches you how to use focused, time-effective meetings to help you and your company soar. This book shows you immediately actionable, step-by-step systems that ensure that you and everyone in your organization improves your meetings, right away. In the process, you’ll turn meetings that suck into meetings that work.
News From The Farm
Dissatisfied with the status quo?
Then, this book is for you. Whether you’re a team leader looking for more meaning in your job or a CEO struggling to build a positive culture, understand there is a better way, and I’m here to show you it. I’ve been in jobs where every day’s a grind. It’s pure misery! But when you reach the end of this book, you’ll sense the possibilities for the future.
Dominic Monkhouse has written a no-nonsense guide to help you challenge your assumptions and demystify the barriers to business growth.
Pre-order your Kindle today and get it for just 99p/99c!
Quote of the week
“Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.”
Dwight Eisenhower
Dominic Monkhouse
Dominic offers business coaching and management development, strategy planning and organisational change, using tried and tested methods to launch your organisation onto an unparalleled growth trajectory. His programme is a function of his broad experience, his deep expertise and a proven process used by over 2,700 firms worldwide.