Talking SME Podcast: Bitesize plans to drive SME growth

Our latest guest on Ten2Two’s Talking SME podcast is Chris O'Riordan, Founder and MD of Firestarter Business Solutions. In this episode we discuss speed planning and how it can be the answer to your SME planning woes, why the best plans never exceed a single A4 sheet of paper and how not to get lost in a jungle of KPI's.

A bit about Chris

Chris is a specialist in sales excellence, organisational structure & design, sales training and change management programmes with over 30 years’ experience in sales management and business leadership.

Since 2012, Chris has been the business leader of Firestarter Business Solutions, working across a broad range of clients to drive sales performance improvement, growth initiatives, change management, organisational development and sales productivity programmes to deliver tangible sales results.

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Transcript

Tracey (00:01):

Hello and welcome to Talking SME, our quick fire chat with business leaders. I'm Tracey Adams from Ten2Two. We're experts in flexible recruitment and consulting, and I'm very pleased today to welcome Chris O'Riordan Founder and MD of Firestarter Business Solutions, who provide business growth solutions to SMEs and corporates. Welcome Chris, and thank you so much for joining me today.

Chris (00:28):

My absolute pleasure Tracey.

Tracey (00:31):

So, by way of an introduction, to put this into context, this is our first podcast of the year, and it felt appropriate to cover a topic that resonates with it being the start of the year. It's a fresh start. Business owners and leaders may be coming back with that clear headspace, teams feel ready to hit the ground running you know, it's let's get out 2024 and all that positive stuff about starting to deliver on the plan. Oh, but wait, where's the plan? So I'm sort of being a bit flippant about it, but with all the best will in the world sometimes, and I understand this, the day-to-day operations and challenges of a business, particularly an SME, can consume your every waking hour and planning can get deprioritized. So in your experience, 'cause I know you work with loads of SMEs, you know, is it common place to be planning at the start of the year, either intentionally or unintentionally?

Chris (01:32):

So, excellent question, and I think the answer is, um, that many different businesses have many different approaches to planning. So I think everybody perhaps has this romantic notion that like proper planning processes start kind of four months before the new year commences and everybody's going through deep thinking. Uh, and often that happens, especially in large businesses, people get into quite rigorous planning processes. But, I think the reality in a lot of SMEs is, as you say, that's just not something that gets enough airtime. Um, just because the day-to-day is getting in the way, and I, I always have a slight chuckle to myself when you find yourself on the sort of 20th of December and people are saying, well, we really need to start thinking about our kind of planning for next year. And I go, "well, yes, it's literally two working days away", uh, <laugh>. Uh, so thats the thing. And then actually it's not uncommon, um, for people to find themselves at the beginning of a new year, um, moving into some kind of planning process, just because they've had a bit of a break and they think Right now's the time I really need to get my head into gear.

Tracey (02:54):

Yeah, yeah. Okay. So, so it is quite common then. Um, so yeah, for anybody listening to this, they might well be in this situation. So If they have left it to January, is there something to be worried about? Is it too late to have an impact in your business? You know, because it can be an involved process usually, so by the time you've done all of the planning, the thinking, the processing, the data, the putting it together, it could be into February or March.

Chris (03:22):

Yeah. And I think it's, it's just worth considering exactly what you're trying to achieve with your planning as well. And I think people often run the risk of making it into a much bigger thing than they need to. Right. And one of the consequences of that, which I know we'll touch on a little bit later is that by the time they've gone through the planning thinking and the planning process, they're so exhausted that actually doing something with it is just not really that interesting to them, or more to the point, they spend so much mental energy doing the planning stuff that they've gotta get back to the day job and therefore the planning stuff just gets put to one side. So I think there's a mental kind of lens that you have to look at your planning process with and try and challenge yourself: What am I actually really trying to achieve with this? There is certainly things you can do andI'm happy to share some thoughts if that's useful.

Tracey (04:28):

Have you got a simple model or framework just to get going, just to get that foot over the starting line, if you like, just to get going with it.

Chris (04:38):

Yeah. I mean, there's one model that I've seen used lots of times really successfully and certainly something that, that I've used myself on many occasions and it plays out with a few different variations, but, um, I like to sort of call it a strategic intent exercise, as opposed to a business planning or a major strategy kind of exercise. But the way, the strategic intent exercise works is, it's something you can literally do however often you want to do it, but annually is a good thing to do, but it's quick. I always kind of refer to examples of people like Winston Churchill, who wrote whole War and Battle strategies on the single side of A4, <Laugh>and my mindset is, if that was good enough for that, then probably most SMEs can write the fundamentals of their business plan on a single side of A4.

Chris (05:39):

Okay, the way the strategic intent exercise works is, there's five topics you just need to get some clarity on in your own mind. And what you do is, my favorite window to do it for is a three year window, because I think three years is a good window to think about what your strategic intent is, because five years people often talk about five year plans and things like that but five years is a little bit too far away to feel real. One year is sometimes a bit too close to be realistically achievable. So doing a three year strategic intent exercise is a really powerful thing to do. And all you do is you pick five topics which are: financial, product, team, process, and leadership, those five topics, and there's loads of material on this we can share with people.

Chris (06:35):

But those five topics, all you do is you just challenge yourself, um, to answer what is my strategic intent? What am I actually trying to do in each one of these five areas in the next three years? So, for example, with financial, people tend to do something like, um, I want to have turnover of this size in three years time, or I want to have this amount of money in the bank, or I want to be making this amount of profit. So it's something you can do quite straight-forwardly. With product, people start to say, "well, actually at the moment we're selling marketing these type of things, um, to these type of people, but actually in three years time we want it to look like this". So "we're selling lots of system A, but in three years time we don't wanna be selling system A, we wanna be selling system B". For team,

Chris (07:27):

It's kind of, "at the moment my team looks like this in three years time, I want it to look like this". For process, It's "at the moment I haven't got very good systems, I haven't got very good processes in three years time I want it to look like this". And then for leadership, that's usually for SME leaders, Founders, that's the question about themselves which is like a real big challenge for most SME leaders and owners that they are hugely involved in lots of elements of their business, and most SME leaders and owners have aspirations to not absolutely operate like they do now. So with the strategic intent, it's "what do I want to be doing in my business in three years time?" So generally speaking, one or two sentences on each one of those five things gets you massively advanced.

Chris (08:18):

Generally speaking, you can do that exercise in half an hour, 45 minutes, and it gives you real, real clarity. The next thing to do, Um, a simple, simple, simple exercise is to take that three year strategic intent and just say, well, if I want to achieve that in three year, what do I need to have done by the end of this year? Okay? And that pretty well does your plan for you, because it pretty well gives you that kind of direction of travel everything else can hang off. Um, and it's such a simple exercise, it really gets people motoring.

Tracey (08:57):

Okay. So in, I've got in my mind the picture of anA4 piece of paper with five boxes, and just a few words, a few sentences, = that's all you need. Which is probably a nice feeling that you've got something on paper. Yeah. And we'll maybe come onto sort of that data gathering exercise shortly as well. Yeah. Um, but I think, I think with planning there, you've touched on it, I've talked about it, you know, I think it's really common that you do that bit, you get it all on paper, and then it just gets, puts aside while the day-to-day operations business as usual kicks in and it gets deprioritized again. Yeah. And I know you say, look, it might be your three year vision, but actually just assume you're looking at what you wanna do by year one, is there, have you got any tips on how someone can make themselves, it's almost a behavioral thing, I think almost, you know, how do they get to stick to that plan? How do they start implementing or executing some of that? Um, because that's often the hardest step, you can do. If in half an hour you can do the thinking, it's the actual doing.

Chris (10:05):

Yeah. So I think there's sort of two things I would, or two or three things I would kind of throw into the mix here. So the first thing is this concept of, if you get your strategic intent straight, which is what we've just been talking about, what you can then do is think about, and again, it's an exercise you can do relatively straightforwardly. So I I just explained, identify your three year strategic intent, then think, "well, if I want to achieve that, uh, in three years, what do I need to achieve in the next year?" But you can go again, like you can go, "well, if I want to achieve that this year, what do I need to have achieved by the end of June?" Yeah. Okay. And "if I want to achieve that by the end of June, what do I need to achieve by the end of March? "

Chris (10:49):

Yeah. And "if I want to achieve that by the end of March, what do I need to achieve this month?" Yeah. Yeah. And actually that's sort of big tip one, which is break it down and almost you've done the thinking on your big plan, now all you want to do is think, "well, what, what are the one or two things I absolutely need to do this month that are gonna move this forward?" So that's going to big tip one. Um, yeah. The, other thing is that you have, in my opinion, you have to create some kind of accountability framework for yourself, and there's loads of different ways you can do that. So I kind of, and I still do it to this day, I have an accountability buddy for want of a better expression. Yeah. Um, and every week, I do a 60 minute call with someone who is my accountability buddy to hold myself to account.

Chris (11:39):

Yeah. Yeah. Um, and that's really powerful. And that can be anybody. Yeah. Yeah. Frankly, it has to be someone you kind of trust and whose opinion you respect. Because one of the challenges for most SME bosses and owners is the accountability sort of algorithm is a bit, um, diluted because they can go, "oh, well I didn't do it, but it doesn't really matter". Yeah. Yeah. But if you create someone that you are accountable to, it makes a big difference. Yeah. The other thing is, depending on size of business, we do this, we've seen lots of clients do this, you create a sort of a distillation of the, the few things, the vital few things that you must execute in your business this year that are gonna make the real difference.

Chris (12:34):

So that connects really closely, generally to that strategic intent. But like if you've done the thinking properly, again, not in a long period of time, you can look at your strategic intent and you can say, "this year, if we're gonna achieve this, these are the vital few things we must execute". And then you can, hopefully, depending on the size of your business, you can deploy that out amongst three or four different people. So everybody has got a kind of thing that they own. And then you, again, you create a kind of an accountability forum where once a month, everybody who owns one of the vital few has to sing for their supper and sort of say, well, in the last month I have done this, and in the next month I'm going to do this. Yeah. And you create this whole accountability culture amongst yourselves. Yeah. Yeah. Really works, honestly. Yeah. Yeah.

Tracey (13:22):

That, that's, that's really helpful because I think often a plan could sit there on a desk and be in your head, um, and you might be accountable to someone externally. Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. But you haven't brought the team into it yet, you know, you haven't communicated with the team. And, like you say, putting in that time and you mentioned earlier about regular reviews, it might be a threemonth/ quarterly/monthly review, It is, again, it's that internal accountability. So it's visible. Everybody is aware.

Chris (13:49):

Yeah. I'm a sort of big fan of, um, Stephen Covey, um, and the Seven Habits book. Yeah. Which if people haven't read, like you can either read it or Google it and you get a very nice synopsis of it. But one of the things that always struck me from that book is, there's a description that says the difference between effective people and non-effective people is that you average Joe kind of spends a lot of time prioritizing their schedule. Yeah. Whereas the people that make a real impact schedule their priorities. And that's, that's the point. Yeah. So they kind of say, we are gonna make time every month to do this because this is the thing that's gonna move us forward. Yeah. Yeah. And it's that little bit of nuance that makes a big difference. I think.

Tracey (14:41):

So far I, I think, you know, recapping what we've got, we've got a simple way, a one side of A4 to get some thoughts onto paper. Correct. And this accountability, this setting time aside, you know, putting those monthly meetings in place in the diary for everybody. So there's accountability there and, and your own. But, but those are two simple, straightforward, it makes it sound so simple.

Chris (15:03):

<laugh>. And also knowing yourself as well, like knowing yourself. So another principle, I use is the first things first principle, which is kind of i will make time, not every day, but certainly on a weekly basis to say, I'm gonna spend two hours, I don't care what chaos happens in the rest of the world, Yeah, yeah. 'cause the work will come again. Like the chaos will come again. I'm gonna spend two hours, I'm gonna do this work, come what may Yeah. Yeah. And it's just having a little bit of that discipline but also understanding that I think one of the benefits of the accountability, making yourself accountable to other people and making other people accountable to you to do this, is it forces you to put that time aside and actually the worst case output from it, which I know this with my accountability buddy, is that if I haven't done the work that I was supposed to do, I do it at Monday, five o'clock, I have my session with this guy, every Monday, if I haven't done the work, then we will use that hour to move the work forwards.

Tracey (16:11):

Yeah.

Chris (16:11):

Yeah. And so we're still moving it forwards. Yeah,

Tracey (16:13):

Yeah. Yeah. Absolutely. Absolutely. Okay. So, we've sort of got a picture of the plan and, and a way of making it accountable. Now obviously plans require data information. Yeah. You know, it, it's fine having your sentences, but I guess we know that you need to have measurable objectives. And I, I think this can sometimes be a bit daunting for business owners to gather the data. It may be in an SME it's a bit harder to gather data. Yeah. So, um, any tips with, with that any sort of, you know, focus on specific measurable targets to make it feel a bit more achievable, a bit more of a shorter process, a quicker process?

Chris (16:54):

I mean, I think my go-to sort of position on this is that obviously firestarter is a business that focuses on improving sales performance. So I come with a sales bias, but my go-to kind of position on this is that actually all businesses are just, um, without devaluing all of our life's work, all businesses are just a sum of the things that they sell. Yeah. So we sell this kind of thing. We sell this kind of thing, we sell this kind of thing, we sell this kind of thing. And actually, most businesses, by the time they kind of distill it, have have frankly got four or five different groupings of product grouping, product lines, solution lines that they sell. And actually most strategies are based on the evolution of the paths of those various different sales lines.

Chris (17:56):

So kind of at a really high level, people either wanna sell more of this and less of that. Yeah. Or the same amount of this, or expect this to go up that to go down. Yeah. And actually, when you start looking at it like that, you realize that everything is connected to that. So the profitability of your business is connected to the mix of stuff you're selling, 'cause something are more profitable than others. The people you've got in your business are connected to what you are selling, 'cause you need people that are able to sell this thing, people that are able to deliver this thing. Um, and actually when you start to realize that, it becomes relatively straightforward because frankly your progress is gonna be dependent on the execution of your sales success. And so I'm a massive believer that most trends can be kind of captured in two ways.

Chris (18:52):

Quarterly trends. I love a quarterly trend. Okay. Because like, if you track trends quarterly, like this quarter, we sold this much, next quarter, we sold this much, the next quarter we sold this much. Like you, you start to see the slower moving trends in your business. And that's a really nice thing to track. Mm-Hmm. The other thing I'm a massive believer in is that most things that you are trying to influence in terms of behaviors and trends, six or eight weeks of going at i,t will tell you like, what's going on. Yeah. So like, I think businesses get themselves into a, um, a bit of a spin with metrics and KPIs sometimes, like, if you're tracking your slower moving trends, your quarterly trends, it really tells you what the underlying thing happening in your business is. And if you are trying to change something and make it happen, and you track it forensically for a short period of time. Mm-Hmm. It will like, we wanna be reaching out to a hundred people a week. Right. Week one we did 20 week two, we did 25 week three. Yeah. Right. It starts to tell you stuff. Yeah, yeah. It affects the way you do stuff.

Tracey (20:02):

Yeah. And, and, and absolutely. If you think about it that way, it makes it, it really distills it into almost one figure. You know? It, it's sales. It's sales. Yeah.

Chris (20:12):

Really <laugh>. And also, like one of my all time, all time, I don't know who said it, but it made me laugh massively, is like, people talk about KPIs and kind of go, what are your KPIs? And they say, well, we got this one, that one this one that, and before you know it they've listed 25 KPIs. And I remember somebody who once said, well, they're not, they're just PIs because they're not KPIs. KPIs is three or four things. Yeah. Yeah.

Tracey (20:39):

Mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. Yeah. Okay. Uh,

Chris (20:40):

And that's it. Pick three or four things to, to track.

Tracey (20:43):

That's it. Yeah. Okay. Fabulous. So, so I think, um, hopefully in the sort of the past 10, 15 minutes, that's a bit of speed planning. Yep. Advice, tips. But if you could finish with one final tip today, what would it be? In one big takeout?

Chris (21:03):

I think probably for most businesses, not just SMEs and it's sometimes hard to think like this, but for most SMEs especially, it is a marathon, not a sprint. Yeah. Yeah. I think mm-Hmm. <affirmative>. So slow and steady wins the race. Yeah. Continuous improvement wins the race. Understanding what you want your business to look like, and accepting that you are gonna move marginal gains. You, you've gotta constantly move forward marginal gains. But if you just, you know, there's all kinds of like, rhetoric isn't there. If you improve by 1% a day, you've improved by 365% in a year, all that kinda stuff. Yeah. But that is it, I think. Yeah. Yeah. So, um, don't, I, I would not confuse business planning with kind of something too over grandiose. Yeah. I think it's kind of like nail your principles, nail your strategic intent and then just slow and steadily execute it and you'll get there.

Tracey (22:09):

Absolutely. And I think it's what we were talking about before the podcast, wasn't it, that in, we are talking about this in January 'cause it feels like January is the right time to be talking about it. Although some business businesses will have done this back in September, October, you know, but actually what you've said is a process that should be applied regularly, repeatedly, but could be started at any point. Yeah.

Chris (22:32):

And it's a New Year's resolution myth, isn't it? Like I must make seven New Year's resolutions <laugh> because it's a new year and it's all gonna be brilliant. And you know, we all know that the reality is in most cases, they're, they're sort of out the window within three weeks. So you fall into the same track with business planning actually and it's much more important to be there on where you're trying to go and then be repeatedly executing to move towards it.

Tracey (23:01):

Yeah. Perfect. That's, that's fantastic, Chris. Thank you. I think we, that's a whistle stop tour, a speed tour of speed planning, so I think, you know, there's nothing more I want to ask at this point. You've given me a top tip. So all that's left to say is thanks for joining me this morning, and it's been a pleasure talking to you. Likewise. Thank you Chris. And to our listeners, I hope you've enjoyed the podcast. Look out for future episodes coming soon.