Last week I really enjoyed delivering my new seminar at Mid Yorkshire Chamber of Commerce and Industry.  It was made enjoyable in particular by the input from the broad selection of business people who attended.

As promised during the session, I'm providing a list of some interesting reading here and follow-on activities you might like to undertake if something you heard on the day struck a chord or if you're interested in how you can make successful changes to your business or organisation.

Reading List

The following books are pretty useful.  They may have them in your local library:

• Leading Change, John P Kotter, Harvard Business School Press
• Successfully Managing Change in a Week, George Hardy, Institute of Management
• Managing Business Change for Dummies, Beth L Evard & Craig A Gipple, Hungry Minds inc.

Further Seminars

If you would like to explore any of the topics covered in the seminar in more detail, check out the following options:

• Building Better Relationships at Work (17th August) - all about developing the leadership skills you'll need if you want to change your business without collateral damage to your relations with the people that work for you!
• Secrets of Great Communication (29th September) - to lead successfully you need to be able to communicate with people in a way that they will respond to.  The secret of great communication is that there is no secret! This workshop aims to help you to communicate in a natural way that helps you strengthen your influence over the people that work for you.

Training Courses

Some thoroughly recommended and reasonably priced training to take these subjects into more depth depending on your own particular development needs can be booked through Aspire Business Development by contacting Sharon Mackle at aspire@fsmail.net.  Some of the courses planned include:

• Managing Change (September)
• Leadership and Management Overview (September)
• Introduction to Project Management (October)
• Communication skills (November)

As always, I'm happy to help where I can so do contact me if you've got any questions.

As reported by The Business Desk today, there are tough times ahead, especially in regions of the UK outside of the south east of England.  One of the few business minds to spot the riskiness of the now infamous 'slice and dice' financial instruments such as credit default swaps before the credit crunch took hold is a voice worth listening to. Moulton suggests that one of the last things we should be doing is relying on public sector bail-outs and issues a call to deal with the recessionary problem now rather than later.

Relying on funding is indeed a risky strategy, especially since much of it is drying up (see Yorkshire Forward Suffers funding cuts).  But as I see very frequently indeed, this leaves business owners who are trying to grow their business whilst cash isn't forthcoming in a real dilemma... how do they afford to grow?

Well, it often has to be a gradual process to put the business back into a shape where investors will consider it as an attractive proposition, but there is still some help available to kick-start SME growth by helping owners and senior managers develop their business strategy - a crucial prerequisite fopr growth - and leadership skills.

If your business has between 5 and 249 employees and you haven't benefited from such funding before, then you can claim from £500 to £1000 worth of funding to help you develop and get a head start.  Business Doctors are happy to sign post you in the right direction if you get in touch.

Following yesterday's cabinet meeting in Bradford, it's been announced that Yorkshire Forward has been instructed to cut £40 million from its budget in a move that is undoubtedly set to affect the business support framework in the region, as reported by the Yorkshire Post.  Indeed, in my meetings with Business Link advisors, the news has already started to filter out that some important funding streams such as the Strategic Business Review have now been canned.  The news comes on top of recently announced cuts in council funding, such as the £1.5 million slashed from Bradford's business support budget.

Whilst the political squabbling about who is to blame for the state of the public finances and the economy more generally continues, it's important to recognise that every piece of bad news holds an opportunity for those prepared to seize it.

In this case, there's more at stake for businesses that are prepared to really focus on what they do, the value they add to customers and the way they do business.  In such a climate, it's more important than ever to take a step back from the business and get smart.  By doing so, you will set yourself apart from your competitors, who continue to plug away with the day to day grind of running their business - a risky approach indeed, since, as the above news goes to show, the macro economic environment is shifting rapidly.  One of the messages of the Business Doctors business growth seminars is that if you're a business owner, you'll just get run over if you stand still...

The UK is in recession and it is difficult to see signs of green shoots in the economy. For local SME businesses based in the Gatwick Diamond and surrounding areas, there are opportunities at Gatwick Airport.

We all agree things are tough at the moment for many businesses. The construction industry has been hit hard by the recession and who knows when the economy will improve generally. That is why it is in everyone’s interest that we make good use of all the resources available to us.

Growing a business of any size is about identifying opportunity and being prepared for it. Businesses that want to grow need to have a strategy for growth because growth isn’t realised unless you are prepared. We’ll leave that discussion for another time.

Gatwick Airport was in the news recently. BAA sold the airport to Global Infrastructure Partners, a New York based investment fund, for £1.5 billion. Global Infrastructure Partners have a business strategy for Gatwick Airport that includes re-organising the airport so that it can grow its airline traffic whilst operating only one runway. GIP will invest around £985 million in construction between now and 2013. Who wouldn’t want a fraction of a percentage of that?

Crawley Borough Council, with other local partners, held a joint presentation at the Civic Hall recently to promote opportunities for SME businesses at the airport. The outcome is that on 8 July 2010, the same partners are holding a trade fair with a difference called “Meet The Buyer 2010”. This format has been an annual event for the past 7 years and generated over £8 million revenue for participants.

Looking at the list of buyers attending this event you should consider being there. Winning business won’t be as easy as turning up and will require you to demonstrate your ability to meet high standards, but you may find a niche somewhere in the supply chain.

Let’s face it, even if you don’t win any business this time around, you will obtain access to a network of decision makers that could turn to you at some time in the future to fulfil a particular need, as only a SME business can.

Please contact me at davidb@businessdoctors.co.uk and let me know how you get on.

For those of us familiar with the problems caused in the 1980s in areas of the country that were previously heavily reliant on manufacturing industry, it came as a welcome relief to learn recently of Yorkshire Forward's new manufacturing strategy for the region.

Like all good strategies, it starts with a vision, which is to grow the manufacturing sector until it reaches 20% of the regional economy  in 20 years' time from its current level, which is nearer 12%.

It will achieve this by selecting and supporting strategically important manufacturing sectors to target (not to the detriment of other sectors, it insists, but presumably using something like the 80/20 rule).  These are:

• Advanced Engineering and Materials;
• Digital;
• Low Carbon and
• Healthcare Technologies.

Someone's clearly been doing their STEP analysis (see our Top Tips for Growing your Business), since these sectors are very much in line with where the added value work is in Manufacturing at the moment.  In other words, gone are the days where we should be competing on price, because the 'low cost geography sourcing' as I've heard it called (in other words, shipping stuff out overseas to be made cheaply) will always follow the lowest cost of production (i.e. low wage economies).

So here's a call to manufacturers in Yorkshire to tap into this regional strategy.  Use it as an opportunity to think about what your sustainable competitive advantage really is and get focussed to grow your business in the knowledge that the time is right and the support is in place.

What are your views on where manufacturing should be heading?  Leave a comment below, or if you've a specific business problem you'd like us to address, ask a question.

For me, Daniel Goleman is one of those 'superstars' of thinking about interpersonal relations.  I'm excited to learn today that he's leading a masterclass in Manchester on 13th April, supported by NHS North West Leadership Academy.  The masterclass aims to inspire and challenge leaders and managers across the public and private sectors on practical ways in which emotional and social intelligence - Goleman's specialism - can improve performance.

Full details of the event can be found at http://www.smedoc.co.uk/masterclasses/detail.asp?Classes_ID=4.  I'm told that there is a reduced rate of £495 for bookings and payments made before the end of February.