In episode 5 of Inside the Director's Circle Jason Langford-Brown, our host, changes the topic from effective communication to start exploring strategy.

Jason hosts three members of our business leader community, Kevin Watson, Managing Director of NEC Group, Ben Towe, Group Managing Director of The Hadley Group, and Richard Price, Founder and CEO of Tickd to discuss the blueprint for scaling their businesses.

Kevin Watson starts by outlining how important having an externalised strategy is for his business. By that, he means that the strategy should be dictated by the needs of his customers and the market. This is opposed to the needs of, what he calls the 'Ivory Tower', the board and how they want to be perceived. Kevin goes on to explain that he develops his strategy using two simple tools that make a significant impact. Listen to the episode for his explanation of these.

Ben Towe agrees with Kevin that customer insights should be the foundation of any company's strategy. However, he explains that when he is developing a strategic plan he makes sure his team put as much into what they are not going to do as what they are going to do. He said:

"I've studied it a lot and the companies that I've seen grow quickest generally haven't necessarily been the ones with the biggest aspiration and the most ideas in the tank. They've been the ones that have been super clear on what they do and what they don't do so that all the focus can be put into 'this is what we do'. If somebody else is over here is distracting us, our customer wants us to do x or our shareholder or whatever it may be. If the answer is no then no more resources, that's it, cut it and run. That's what you've got to do and I would argue that that is where we've seen some dynamic movement with some fast-growing companies"

Richard Price also gives his take on what the difference in strategy is at different levels. Richard helped grow a startup to a multimillion pound scale-up business but is now starting his own business. He says the difference within a startup is that you have to be versatile and flexible, and go where the revenue is, but for a scale-up, he reiterated Ben's point of doing what you do well and not letting your teams get distracted by other ideas or avenues.

Next episode Kevin, Ben and Richard join us again however, they will be discussing how to implement a strategy at scale. Subscribe to our mailing list to be notified as soon as future episodes are released.