The Next Phase

Last week I woke up to a text message from one of my followers….Good morning, I haven’t seen your blogs in the last two weeks! I started explaining to him why and then realized that I have a following and need to explain to all of you why I have not been blogging.

From this month of October, I am shifting gear. Going forward, I plan to share my coaching experiences and challenges on this blog which will now be monthly. I will give you highlights from the Breakfast Round Table, a monthly event tailored towards helping you grow your business through team discussions. I will also direct you to activities, events and articles that may be of interest to you as you grow your business.

I will also be contributing in a leading business magazine, SMEs Today, through a monthly article, Ask The Coach. The idea here is to provide a platform where entrepreneurs can discuss their challenges and more importantly learn from other entrepreneurs through their questions and challenges that they share on the platform. This month, SMEs Today will feature an article on me, please grab a copy!

Ask The Coach will give readers an opportunity to ‘Ask the Coach’ specific business related questions they may have. As the Coach I will respond by giving answers based on my many years of experience and depending on their specific challenges, they will see how best to implement. They will also have an option of enrolling to be coached to systematically work on those challenges. This will be a glimpse to what you would get when you let me walk the coaching journey with you.

Having said that, I look forward to travelling this journey with you all …..I know that I will learn a lot even as I try to share with you what I know and practice on a daily basis.

My big dream is to see many small and growing businesses meet their vision of being transformational not only by increasing their income but by contributing to the economy of this country.

Keep following, I’m counting on you!

Why you need a Business Scale-Up Coach

This week I'll be illustrating the most likely crises using the business growth cycle as explained in the clip above.

Every business is unique and not all businesses will follow all of the paths suggested and may in fact appear to be a hybrid of two or more stages.

The four crises points are however a good pointer to what may happen before the next stage of development. It is the anticipation of these crises and the successful management of the change that they cause that ensures the survival of growing businesses.

Stage 1 - Inception                                             

Most likely crises:

•  The emphasis on profit

The necessity to generate a positive cash flow in order to survive. This requires a different management attitude and concentration of effort on new and different aspects of the business

• Administrative demands

The push for profits increases business activity and a need for some formalization of systems and record keeping. On many occasions the business does not have people with all the skills required at this stage and a crisis arises when the need for additional skills is ignored.

• Increased activity and its demands on time

Many entrepreneurs are unable to delegate even when increased activity demands become excessive. This tends to create backlogs, bottlenecks and confusion. A change of management style and structure many be required for the business to survive.

Stage 2 – Survival                                                                                                           

Most likely crises:

• Expanded distribution channels

As the drive for sales growth increases so does the existing customer base. There may be need to operate in new geographic areas or sell to different type of customers. This would require a change in the way business is done.

• Change to survive competition

If new competitors enter the market and the business wishes to maintain market shares and relative competitive strength, changes will be necessary

• Pressures for information

All of the above crises will put huge demands on the business’s information systems. This will bring a change in the management system.

Stage 3 – Growth

Most likely crises:

• Entry of larger competitors

As the business moves through its life cycle and starts to consolidate and attract larger competitors the basis of competition changes once again. Large businesses often compete on the basis of economies of scale and the result is pressure on price. To succeed the business may require additional investment of time and resources in product or service development. This is the reason why many businesses stay for long in stage 3.

• Demand of expansion into new markets of products.

There is usually need for a strategy to expand into new markets and/or new products. Both of these will stretch both the managerial and financial resources. Key issues facing the business is financing growth and maintaining control of operations. This calls for yet another change to management style. At this point the entrepreneur should relinquish some of his/her power base if the firm is to grow further.

Stage 4 - Expansion

Likely crises:

• The distance of top management from the action

If growth is maintained, decentralization continues apace and the entrepreneur/founder finds him/herself getting further and further from action. This is often completely against his/her nature – the nature that allowed him to set up the new business in the first place. The professional managers get more power

• The need for external focus

As the business matures and consolidates so does competition for sales growth and product differentiation. To maintain a competitive advantage calls for greater external emphasis and an adaptation of yet another management style.

As your Business Scale-Up coach I will work with you to manage these crises that come up during the transition of your business from one stage to the other thus ensure success. Feel free to contact me for your initial free consultation or for any clarifications on wwmahinda@gmail.com

Coaching and Mentoring: What's the Difference?

People often confuse coaching and mentoring. Though related, they are not the same. 

Coaching is action oriented. The focus is on concrete issues, such as managing time more effectively, speaking more articulately, and learning how to think strategically. This requires a content expert (coach) who is capable of teaching the coachee how to develop these skills.

A coach is trying to direct a person to some end result, the person may choose how to get there, but the coach is strategically assessing and monitoring the progress and giving advice for effectiveness and efficiency

Mentoring is relationship oriented. It seeks to provide a safe environment where the mentee shares whatever issues affect his or her professional and personal success. Mentoring is a process in which an experienced individual helps another person develop his or her goals and skills through a series of confidential one on one conversations.

A mentor is like a sounding board, they can give advice but the mentee is free to pick and choose what they do. The context does not have specific performance objectives. 

In a nutshell, I have listed some of the most distinct differences between a coach and a mentor below:

COACHING	MENTORING
Action Oriented	Relationship Oriented
Short Term	Long Term
Performance Driven	Development Driven
Easily evaluated and measured for ROI	Less easy to measure for ROI
Coach gives feedback on progress	Mentor may not give feedback
Coach paid for services	Mentor receives no compensation
Focus is more on business issues than personal	Focus on both personal and professional development
Coaching is done one-on-one	Mentoring is usually done on a one-on-one basis but other models may be used as well
Content expertise is more important in coaching	Interpersonal skills are more important in mentoring
Coaching is one–directional	Mentoring is bi-directional
Coaching is focused on the business person	Mentoring involves the whole person
Behavioral transformation	Personal transformation
More structured in nature	More informal (no formal structure in place)
Agenda set on achieving specific goals	Agenda set by the Mentee

I hope this clarifies any misconceptions you had about coaching and mentorship.

Get in touch with me for your first free consultation: wwmahinda@gmail.com
 

The Coaching Process

My clients, CEOs of growing organizations accept that coaching is important. They freely talk of the many different balls they are juggling and how focusing on the important things can sometimes be challenging.

When asked why they haven’t sought the services of a Coach; some CEOs say they don’t have time to be coached, others say they don’t have a budget line to pay a Coach, others say it’s not top on their priority list and others say they haven’t found the right Coach.

CEOs of growing organizations, I want to address you and say that Coaching is an investment, the same way you invest in a good computer to work efficiently or pay for advertising to ensure your products are known in the market place or attend a training workshop to build your capacity.

When I Coach you with business scale up as our focus, we start by having an overview of the life of the business, what are the milestones, what are you proud about, turning points (the ups and downs) etc.

I am interested in your Vision and Mission and your key goals, I’m interested in understanding how your strengths will help you achieve the goals. My work as your Coach is to help you focus on your goals.

As your Coach it’s important for me to understand how you view your business and your involvement in it. I will ask you questions to stimulate your thinking and make our work together more productive.

Along the way, we shall review both the Business SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunity and Treats) as well as your personal SWOT. In Business and in life, the area where we have the most opportunity for improvement and growth is not our weakness but our Strength. The question is: How do I use this strength to take my business to the next level?

The other important exercise is nailing the business goals. According to Gerald Westerby in his book, In Hostile Territory;  

You cannot focus without an object to focus upon. You cannot arrive somewhere unless there is a ‘somewhere’ to arrive at. You cannot achieve a goal unless there is a goal. And you cannot have a goal unless a goal has been defined. Therefore, to achieve your goal- define your goal.  

He goes on to say that when you cannot define a goal, you consequently cannot define the path toward that goal. Thus, without a goal you expend a great deal of energy pursuing multiple ‘fuzzy goals’

My experience with CEOs of growing businesses is that a majority of them have set goals. The challenge is clearly defining those goals. Defining goals is not an easy task as it forces one to consider where they will be after they have accomplished those goals. Yet if you are unwilling to engage these thoughts and facts, if you are unwilling to define a goal and consider your life actions after the attainment of that goal, then your goal is fleeting; it is one that you do not truly seek and one that you will therefore certainly never achieve. 

After the goals are clearly set the Coaching process proceeds to personal productivity, personal effectiveness and life-work balance.

As your Coach I will walk with you and we shall keep evaluating the progress.

My coaching process is in six sessions that take about three months. The first consultation is free, as it gives the CEO an opportunity to decide if they want to proceed with the Coaching process to the end. A Coaching process is demanding on all fronts as it must produce tangible results. It is however equally rewarding.

Get in touch with me for your first free consultation: wwmahinda@gmail.com