Haines Watts’ survey focuses on strategy and shared vision
A recent study carried out as part of the Haines Watts ‘For Love or Money’ survey has indicated that business owners who are able to step back and focus predominantly on strategic planning are twice as likely to run fast-growth businesses.
Developing a fully-formed, strategic plan ultimately frees up more time to drive towards a common purpose and innovate along the way.
Jane Gregory, head of client services at Haines Watts, said: “It’s crucial that business owners make time to identify the aspirations they hold for the business they’ve built. Once identified they can strategically look towards the future and place their management team at the centre of that vision.”
Successful business owners manage to achieve this and our 2017 HWYE young entrepreneur award winners are shining examples. Lauren Prentice of Sense Theatre made changes to her business after careful market analysis. She said: “I’m not afraid to step away from something which I don’t see working in the long term and involve my team. I think as an entrepreneur it’s important to be honest.”
Bruce Casalis, director of Bruce’s Doggy Day Care, another HWYE winner, added: “To grow responsibly, we need to remain personal and friendly to each customer, but have the back office administration, logistics and operations behind the scenes to minimise operational risk while functioning at scale. “To help drive this, we recently created a new operations director role and recruited an experienced board-level team member for it. We’re serious about achieving our goals.”
This doesn’t always happen though. In fact, our Haines Watts survey of business owners found that many didn’t share information with their managers and did not plan strategically, which prevented cohesive leadership across the business.
Owners need to take the initiative, involve senior managers in the planning process, share their fears and future vision and then hold their team to account for taking the business forward.
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