People Puzzles Midlands Newsletter May

This month’s newsletter is a little late, mainly due to the fact that I took some time off to visit Paris with family and friends but also because it’s been an extremely busy month...

Whilst the snails were tasty, the Midlands has been the opposite of snail’s pace this month with new clients coming on board and interviews underway to expand our wonderful team of highly skilled People Directors. ?

We held an inspirational meeting this month with the Liberti Group in the East Midlands. The Liberti group brings together businesses offering part-time top-tier directors in various fields across the C-suite:

- People Puzzles for HR Directors

- The CFO Centre UK for Finance Directors

- The Marketing Centre for Marketing Directors

- Freeman Clarke for IT Directors

- Kiss The Fish Ltd for Sales Directors

We united our teams to explore how we can collectively enhance value for our clients. The passion, energy, and enthusiasm in the room was truly remarkable!

On the topic of adding value for our clients (and whatever your thoughts are on the election) it will certainly bring about a much-needed end to the uncertainty. There will be huge business opportunities if handled properly and this is a key time for us as leaders to ‘lean in’ to our teams and ensure they feel supported and empowered, and have clarity on the longer-term direction of your business.

It will hopefully be an exciting time for SMEs to continue to drive the nation forward and something we have been helping our clients with across the UK. I just wanted to reshare our Roadmap for Growth People-Puzzles-Roadmap-for-Growth-4ppA4.pdf (peoplepuzzles.co.uk) in case you haven’t got around to building that longer-term strategy, with people at the centre to help you answer some of these questions.

We’re aware that the key levers around people, systems & processes and sales & marketing are all key to continue our growth and we have our own ‘fit for the future’ projects around IT and system solutions, new marketing and sales channels and people structure taking place in the last quarter. Having real clarity, engagement and ownership of these deliverables will be key to their success. It's pretty certain that ‘what you’ve always done’ won’t continue to work in the longer term without that 2-3 year people lens on your overall business strategy.

Without creating the right foundations to support growth in terms of your people strategy, you will likely run into problems with recruitment, retention, development, management and performance (to name just a few). So how do you design the right structure to support rapid growth? Our podcast this week was around this topic and well worth a listen with Divya from our London team, who is an expert in organisational design, on how to structure and manage your people strategy to support ongoing growth.

Finally, on 18th June, we are excited to be sponsoring the inaugural Leicestershire Leadership Forum business breakfast at Leicester University campus. Special guest Rory Underwood MBE DL will be running a masterclass for ambitious CEOs, MDs, Entrepreneurs and Business Owners on how to Accelerate Your Business. If you are interested in attending this exclusive event, please drop me a line. It will be running from 8am – 10.30am and is set to be a fantastic opportunity to start your day with like-minded business leaders.

Enjoy the month ahead (hopefully summer will appear at some point) and don’t hesitate to reach out if you would like any further info on how we can support you with any people issues.