Every business, no matter its size requires strong leadership and strategy. Businesses are facing increasing pressure to be able to adapt to the way they work in a post-covid world. Without strong leadership and strategy, many companies can find it difficult to succeed. Multiple changes to our everyday life such as the recent lockdowns and Brexit have caused many businesses to have to think again about what their future looks like and whether their plans fit in with that.

In the second of our 2-part chat (see the first part here) with Peter Quintana, Business Consultant and Founder of hgkc (High Growth Knowledge Company) we asked what a company should be doing to see where and how they may need help.

Step back and look at the bigger picture

‘People often form a business to do something they’re good at, but they’re not always good at running the business itself. You can set up a company without any training or knowledge on how to run a business and the idea of strategy and planning is not something that they have a great deal of experience of.

So, a third party coming in and facilitating them through a process that gets to a plan and identifying some things that they can do to achieve their business goals can be quite helpful.’

Take time to work on your business, not just in it

‘Many business leaders don’t have the time to work on their business. Working on the business is about planning and thinking about the wider context that the business is operating in.

Sometimes a third party is needed. When people engage with us for strategic planning, we expect them to make time for workshops, so, we make them make time to work on the business.

We help them run their businesses better by providing tools and techniques, processes, and most importantly the time to work on their business.’

As you learn how to devote more time into your business, you spend more time learning about the people you work with whether that be internal or external. Using DISC will strengthen your teamwork by helping you build better relationships through learning your team’s preferred way of communicating. This, ultimately will lead to an increase in productivity and performance.’

hgkc use Catalyst, a learning platform that can help business leaders delve more into their own DISC styles, understanding more about how their own work preferences and developing new skills which all help towards improving the running of their business.

Get A Plan

According to Peter, the biggest sign that indicates that a company is lacking strategy and strong leadership is: No Plan! He says “People will often have a plan in their heads, but the real questions are:

• Have they got it written down?
• Did they work with other people in their organisation to help build that plan?
• Have they communicated that plan to everybody in their business?

If they haven’t done any of those things then, they need our help.”

To find out more about hgkc and leadership and strategy, read their excellent blog page.

hgkc are a DISCsimple partner and they use many of our products both internally and with their clients on an almost daily basis. Get in touch discover@discsimple.com to find out how you can become a partner.

To learn more about the DISC tool and how you can learn to identify different DISC styles. Come along to one of our free lunchtime sessions. They are full of powerful insight into the world of Everything DiSC® (part of the Wiley group) and in just 30 minutes you will learn something! We run a learning session every Monday and a Pro session for professionals already working with DISC every other Thursday.