THE Oxfordshire recruitment firm Practicus believes that it takes more than
hard work to achieve ambitious growth targets. It takes a clear vision round
which the entire business should be designed.
Having a simple and easily understood statement of intent is vital for setting
clear objectives and targets, according to its managing director, Jason
Luckhurst. “We think it is something you should be able to communicate
simply to everyone, whether a client or a member of staff,” he said.
Practicus’s vision can be summed up in one sentence, said Luckhurst. “We want
to be the best project-management recruitment business and we want to float
on the Alternative Investment Market in the first quarter of 2010.”
Having built the business round a simple idea, the firm’s staff are
single-mindedly working towards this goal. All the planning in areas as
diverse as marketing, branding, financing and training, is designed round
this objective – as are managers’ and directors’ incentives, said Luckhurst.
“We have a detailed road map, but it starts with a simple vision that everyone
can understand and buy into,” he added. “Everything else we do comes on the
back of those goals. In effect, we can reverse-engineer the business to
those objectives.”
The business is firmly on track to reach its 2010 goal, said Luckhurst.
Practicus has grown from three staff and sales of £1.4m on its launch in
2004 to sales of £21.7m in 2007. It employs 50 staff and plans to continue
growing organically with a target turnover of £60m by 2010.
The firm is a good example of the benefits that stem from clearly defining
your strategic intentions and then unswervingly acting on them, according to
Alysoun Stewart, entrepreneurial advisory partner at Grant Thornton, the
accountant.
Many other firms fare badly in this area. Young businesses may draw up a
strategy for growth but too often they let it fall by the wayside as they
concentrate on the day-to-day problems of running the firm, said Stewart.
“Nine out of ten companies in a recent survey said they had a strategic
vision, but fewer than half had managed to turn that into success. There’s a
big gap between the vision statement and the execution.”
One reason for this gap between intent and action is that too many growing
companies remain focused on the business in hand and find it hard to
remember the big picture, according to Graham Royle, serial entrepreneur and
runner-up in the north England region in last year’s competition. Royle is
chairman of GRI, a Sheffield group that makes personal care products.
“Entrepreneurs are visionary by the nature of what they do, but too often they
are stuck in the day-to-day operations of the business to be able to keep
stepping back and saying ‘this is what we’re trying to achieve’. If you do
not step back it is very hard to get the perspective to see the business
objectively.” And when you have created a strategy for your business it is
vital to build a strong group of people round you to help you achieve it,
said Royle. “You need a very good team of people because it is the team that
will make it happen. Train your people and give them the power to make
decisions. Making them feel part of the vision for the company is important
too.
“When people understand the vision, they will start contributing to it,
saying, ‘Hey, we could also do this’ – that can be a very powerful force.”
Articulating and acting on a vision is not the same thing as writing a
business plan, according to Adrian Grace, managing director of Bank of
Scotland Corporate. “I have seen businesses with 400-page documents
outlining their strategy and it’s clear they should have spent less time
outlining the vision and more time thinking about how they will deliver on
it.
“The best strategy documents can fit into a page or two. The danger with a
business plan is that people focus on the process. Outlining a strategic
vision should be about the thought process, not about the act of writing a
document.”
The businesses that do best are those with clear aims and objectives, said
Grace. “Letting everyone know what they are supposed to be doing and having
a dashboard that tracks your progress through key performance indicators is
important. Having good people to deliver your plans is the other hallmark of
successful businesses. Put those things in place and you are well on your
way to success.”
Putting your plans into action is everything, said Grace. “You can have the
best vision in the world but if you can’t put it into effect, you are
wasting your time. If you don’t have such a plan but you know how to
deliver, you might still make it. Success in business is 25% strategy but
75% execution.”
While your strategy should lend itself to concise expression, planning how you
deliver success is where the detailed planning should come in, said Stewart.
“I’ve sat through dozens of presentations with people giving wonderful
overviews of where they want to take the business. But if you ask them how
they plan to execute this plan, they have absolutely no idea.
“Once you have focused on where you are trying to take the business in terms
of its strategic objectives, you can start breaking that down. Where are you
trying to go? What is the business currently good at? Where do you stand in
the marketplace? Do you know what your customers need? How you are
performing against your competitors? How can you move closer to what your
best competitors are achieving?
“The difference between merely having a strategic vision and achieving
strategic success is having a detailed understanding of what that vision
means for every level of the business – how much funding you need, the
branding and marketing strategy, which channels you will develop, how many
people you need in which areas and when and what the organisational
structure will be.”
It is also important to revisit the vision often and be aware of how close you
are to achieving it at any given stage, said Luckhurst. This helps everyone
in the company to stay focused.
“The key thing to strategy is to keep it simple and keep it niche. We have had
opportunities to expand in areas [of the recruitment market] that are not
part of our vision, but we have turned them down to remain true to our
vision.
“Turning business away is the hardest thing to do, but our clients also
respect the fact that we stay focused and remain bloody good at what we do.”
TOP TIPS FOR CREATING A STRATEGY
-Take time out from day-to-day problems to clearly think through and
articulate your strategy and vision
-Remember that creating a strategic vision is not the same thing as writing a
business plan
-Once you have clearly identified and expressed your vision, make a detailed
plan for its implementation
-Revisit your vision and the execution of it often
-Resist the temptation to get distracted by taking on business that is not
part of the vision you have outlined
