To support more organisations being more successful more often, DRG and BusinessFit have created a Leaders Guide Workbook, which focuses on important considerations in creating a successful and sustainable business. This workbook is available to everybody. Contact Lindiwe Bhadi at lindiwe@businessfit.co.za.
Accessing the economy and leading a successful and sustainable business, is as we all know, not easy. A simple measurement of the number of failures that exist in start-up businesses, and in the course of day-to-day trading of more established businesses, demonstrates this fact. Aspects contributing to business failure are multiple and are influenced by changes in micro and macro environments, which include changing customer perceptions, access to raw materials, attracting and retaining able and contributing staff, managing financial resourcing, and much more.
Within DRG and BusinessFit our focus has been in developing constants within a business. Constants that help to form a business foundation that can be relied on to guide the business towards reaching operational and stakeholder measures. With technological advancements being experienced daily through electronic media, communications and systems, etc., nothing external to our business remains constant. Except, of course, that change itself is a predictable norm.
A defined model
Creating a defined model for business leaders to follow needs to include all the considerations of an evolving economy and world, and also the essential aspects of environmental protection and societal development and inclusion. On the face of it, business without an effective governance framework is just too complex – requiring luck to play an influencing role in developing a successful and sustainable business.
We believe that the hope of success through luck can be replaced with the business framework we refer to as the BusinessFit Blueprint, which helps to provide an encompassing governance foundation. This helps to provide business leaders with confidence that their organisation is given its best chance to succeed, to follow its intended evolution path, to guide the business towards its milestones and goals, and to meet operational, stakeholder and sustainability measures.
To ensure the governance foundation is not considered a dynamic structure, able to be altered to suite current demands and market fluctuations, we created the BusinessFit Blueprint template in such a way that individuality can exist per organisation size and industry, and to recognise too that all successful businesses tend to have competencies and structures around the same four pillars of exceptional leadership, integrated functional foundation, clearly defined measurements and metrics, and an engaged work culture and encouraging collaboration, teamwork and innovation.
Building better businesses
It is true that all businesses, small and large, access the economy in a similar way, have similar administrative, reporting and compliance responsibilities, are constantly needing to focus attention on consumer demands and changing customer perceptions and preferences, and in ensuring quality assurance and controls are maintained. Financial and operational measures are also forever being adjusted to meet internal hurdle rates, and to ensure the organisation is maintaining its intended sustainability.
Governance has long been regarded as a necessary consideration to provide the well-intended approach to building better businesses, but often the language of the shared governance structures is only accessible to formally tutored professionals, and as such many of the benefits of these structures are missed by entrepreneurs armed only with a core skill and a will to succeed.
King IV is considered the world over as an advanced governance framework and adopted as a vital framework in helping organisations plan and organise activities to meet organisational outcomes. King IV recognises the critical considerations of ethical, effective leadership, and notes that this organisational virtue is achievable when the organisation leadership and governing bodies focus measurement and effort on ensuring the organisations productivity and it is meeting operational and stakeholder measures, legitimacy through being a good corporate citizen, risk management, and an ethical and engaged work environment.
TCFD (Task Force on Climate related Financial Disclosures) was established by the Financial Stability Board (FSB) and is another incredible tool encouraging the importance of governance, strategy, risk management and metrics and targets. There is no shortage of good advice available to business leaders and entrepreneurs, and to some degree this mountain of information remains elusive due to its sophistication, recommended disclosures of board oversight, and management’s role in assessing and managing climate-related risks and opportunities.
There are of course many other frameworks to guide decision making, and helping organisations meet sustainability objectives, but in our experience many of these models require a deep understanding of business administration and sustainability considerations which is elusive to the majority of entrepreneurs and business owners.
Critical touch points
The BusinessFit Blueprint model combines each of the critical touch points needed in building a governance framework that helps to create a common language for each organisation, and a focus on attracting and retaining staff that believe in the organisations ethos, are comfortable with the culture and outcome intentions of the organisation, and feel a sense of commitment and belonging through being aware of how the organisation collectively interacts to meet its desired outcomes as well as their personal zone of influence contributions.
Each staff member within the organisation essentially contributes within one or a combination of the functional areas of administration, operations, HR, finance, marketing and sales, customer care, legal, and other. These staff members must be competent in their roles, must enjoy their work, must be rewarded appropriately, and have a sense that the organisation’s value creation is contributing to a greater cause other than just profitability and material gain. Staff must also clearly understand the measurements and metrics for the business, and these goals and milestones must reach into the value derived by customers, staff, suppliers, and other stakeholders.
The leader’s role in the first instance is to create a sustainable business, able to meet operational and stakeholder measures. A good leader knows that this is only possible through creating an engaged work environment, where individuals and teams take responsibility for delivering predictable internal value, follow standard operating procedures, and implement corrective action to improve internal processes, systems and communications, to result in a better value experience for consumers and customers.
Although leaders are also employees of a business, with reporting responsibilities their role requires them to provide the vision of the organisation. They must clearly articulate the purpose, intention, value creation, and measurement of the business, and must transfer confidence to the business through a knowing of how the business is able to create and distribute its products and services favourably into the market. Confidence is created through experience, access to critical resources, access to networks, and assembling a team committed, capable and enabled to contribute towards meeting consumer, customer and stakeholder expectations.
Become a sustainable organisation
The BusinessFit Blueprint combines each of the activities contained in well-known and respected governance frameworks, but does so in a simple and organised structure, making following the methodology available to all business leaders and entrepreneurs of all size organisations wishing to ensure their businesses have been given every chance of being successful and sustainable.
We look forward to sharing this governance framework and workbook far and wide, and to ensuring all small, medium, and micro business have every opportunity to become a sustainable organisation, able to meet operational, stakeholder and sustainability measures. Business leaders and entrepreneurs are encouraged to join the BusinessFit quality assurance App, and to profile themselves as valuable contributors to a sustainable world for all. The BusinessFit App is mobile enabled and can be downloaded from Playstore (Android) and AppleStore (iPhone).
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