Learnings for our recent conference.

I just spent a great few days at the Oceania Scaling Up Conference in Melbourne, Australia. I learnt a great deal including and heard from some brilliant speakers. As always Verne Harnish shared thought provoking materials and challenged us to be better. Verne reinforced 3 key points for me:

1. Valuation is the key success metric for Mid Market companies. It is THE reflection of how well we are growing and scaling a business. If you are looking to sell your business then this is obvious but even if you are not it is a critical proxy for how well an owner/Board and a CEO are running a business.
2. The primary responsibilities of an owner or a Board is to drive valuation and select the CEO.
3. The 4 responsibilities of a CEO are strategy, culture, capital allocation and hiring the senior team.

These are critical for us all to remember and gaps I see in so many of my clients.

Tom Reich reminded me of the importance of cascading priorities through an organisation by planning annual goals and measurements and then quarterly goals that also have measures of success. The need for a regular meeting rhythm to keep these on track and the use of a miro board to work with an executive team were super valuable.

Our session by Adrian Pickstock on 'Nailing Profit Per X' drove brilliant conversation around the key measure to drive what you need in your business. Is it profit per FTE, Profit as a function of Human Capital costs, pr the South West airlines aeroplane time in the air. Getting this right is just a critical part of driving the right focus amongst your team.

Scott B. invested time with us on inventory management and the efficiency gains that can result. I see this as a key tool we all have to drive 'power of one' improvements in our financial management of companies. Bottom line, how do we drive down inventory days without sacrificing product availability and customer experience as a result. In the context of 'Lean Thinking' inventory is waste (capital sitting on shelves), over production (too much capital sitting on shelves), rework and rejects (capital under-utilised or thrown out), motion (how do we store our inventory) and transport (moving our capital around). Ultimately efficient inventory management is about productivity. Greater productivity means doing more with the same or less.

Key learning for me 'The Glendale Sieve Analysis'..... what stock accounts for what revenue..... are we holding stock for long periods that accounts for little or no revenue without a really good reason. The Glenday Sieve separates procedures, conditions or activities, initially through the Pareto analysis of current volumes. Pareto - 80% of your profit from 20% of your stocks.

We have heard from many more fantastic speakers and I will share some of their insights next time.