Business Improvement Solutions

In the realm of business, no year is perfect. We strive year after year to get better.

Importantly, what you want to understand and appreciate is that a structured, consistent approach is a great way to embed the continuous improvement cycle.

Monitoring your market-based Total Return to Owners, comparing your performance across years, setting and evaluating results against targets, and benchmarking against industry standards are not just measures; they’re milestones on the path to excellence.

We advocate for a strategic progression through the stages of business improvement. This isn’t merely about cost containment or waste reduction, though these are important. Our focus is on fostering ‘profitable’ growth – the kind that sustains and enhances your business’s value over time.

Dive into our webpages on Benchmarking and Profit Improvement to gain further insights into what you could be benefiting from.

When you are ready, schedule a free meeting and let’s see how we can tailor an approach for maximum benefit to you.

There comes a time in the business growth journey where you encounter considerable trouble getting your business to perform as desired.

A leading cause is because the way you’ve done business up to now has been designed to work very well for a small business. That is where your leadership, and that of your managers, have the skillset to thrive. However, that same skillset, well at least the way it has been applied in the past, is no longer optimal for the new challenges your business faces as it grows into a larger business.

This is a very difficult situation to overcome. Especially when your business is still making decent profits and keeping most customers. It’s difficult because what you’ve been doing does work, to an extent, but it also doesn’t work. You don’t want to jeopardize what you already have, but you can’t let the present growth challenges continue to persist unresolved.

This is especially the case if revenue growth has stalled, since some research has shown that 54% of companies fail to regain even moderate growth within a decade of a revenue stall, and when slow growth persists for more than 10 years the delay is most often fatal.

What you don’t want to do at this junction is get distracted by one of the almost never-ending fads of business management. You know what we mean, one of those new “high-performance frameworks” offering a silver-bullet to all your problems.

Instead, at this critical junction, we believe on relying upon proven research. Focusing on the key things which professional research has shown to have the highest impact on business growth.

You’ll probably be glad to know that there is research which directs you to focus your efforts on six key areas, so it’s not necessarily overwhelming. You’ll probably also find it good to know these are well-known business areas. What’s the difficult part is usually following through on excelling at each area, since the research indicates you’ll only have a better than 90% chance of “Winner” success when you do all six best practices at the same time.

Needless to say we’d be happy to help you scale your business. It is, after all, the purpose of our business – helping business owners and leaders experience success.

A great place to start is a no strings attached Get To Know Each Other meeting. But between now and then, take the opportunity to sign up to the Munro’s Business Academy where you can begin to arm yourself with evidence-based knowledge capable of propelling your business to greater success.

In that video you just watched, we mentioned some research.

If you’d like the references, simply head on in to the Munro’s Business Academy and you can find them on the Reference page.

Truly unlocking business growth, to propel your business forward for the long-term, means getting down to the root cause of problems, and fixing them for good.

When you resolve root causes, a multiplier effect happens. You fix more than one problem.

And when you build the internal capabilities to fix root causes indefinitely, well, that’s when you tap into a competitive advantage.

So, the outcome we strive to achieve with you, when overcoming problems like revenue stalls, poorly performing staff or capacity constraints, is not only the resolution of those issues, but also enhancement of your business’ capabilities to dramatically mitigate them resurfacing into the future.

Business leaders who genuinely commit to getting to the root cause of problems and permanently fixing them, are the ones who get to experience sustained success. You’ll be amazed at how few business leaders there are like that; are you one of them?

Go to the Unlock Business Growth page if you’re struggling with achieving viable sales growth, your staff aren’t performing to their best or you’ve got a talent shortage.

If you’re prepared to get to the root cause of problems, then also go and see the Build a Sustainable Competitive Advantage page.

And when you’re ready, go to the How We Get Started page and book a free Get to Know Each Other meeting. At that meeting we can explore potential root causes of your problems, and design a Risk Free Trial of our service offerings, to propel your business forward for the long-term.

Why don’t staff “perform”?

It’s not likely because they don’t want to, consciously at least.

It’s more likely because:

1. They don’t feel motivated.
2. Their understanding of what is expected isn’t aligned with your expectations.
3. They don’t have the skills.

It’s probably a combination of these.

So, what are you to do about this?

You need to set out in clear terms how their role contributes to achieving the goals of your strategy.

But, to do this, you need to be crystal clear on what your strategy is.

You should then follow what reputable science shows as two of the key levers for sustained success:

1. Have an organisation design, which supports:
   1. Fast decisions;
   2. Reduced bureaucracy;
   3. Keeps the best people closest to the action (the customer); and
   4. Is very clear on what each person’s role is: their functions, responsibilities and authorities.
2. Build a high standards, high trust and high purpose culture.

Achieving this will be difficult. By that we mean it’ll require conscious effort and continuous implementation. But the actual building blocks don’t need to get too complicated.

We say keep things as simple as possible, to enable everyone to remain focused and working together to resolve issues for the long-term.

As we’ve mentioned in various places of our website, your people are the source of your competitive advantage. Don’t under-appreciate how influential their discretionary efforts play within the overall success of your business. Rather, commit as all great leaders do, to uplifting your teams understanding, capability and motivation.

Get in touch with us if you want to explore how we can help you, or join the free tier of the Munro’s Business Academy to assist your learning of what can be done.

In that video you just watched, we mentioned some research.

If you’d like the references, simply head on in to the Munro’s Business Academy and you can find them on the Reference page.

If we came to your office and spoke with each of your leaders, will they be able to tell us what your business strategy is?

Let’s assume they can give some answer to that question. Are you confident each of your leaders will provide a clear and focused explanation of your strategy? Will they know what strategic tasks they have to perform this quarter to move your strategy along?

We know they won’t. Otherwise, you wouldn’t even be watching this video and contemplating what it is that you can do to help enhance leadership within your business.

To enhance leadership, you have to get everyone to know your strategy.

Your strategy is the bedrock of your business’s direction.

A clear, ambitious and hyper-focused strategy will detail your goals. It’ll include a series of actions that drive and inspire the entire business to achieve those goals and create a competitive advantage.

It’ll enable your leaders to get on the same page. To drive down the same road. A necessity for them to perform at the top of their game.

Outside of directly enhancing leadership, a well-constructed strategy stipulates the value proposition you offer to customers. Enabling you to communicate this effectively to them.

Don’t be that business which demands the world from leaders but doesn’t equip them with what they need to excel.

Lenna Nair, former CHRO of Unilever, once said:

“people is the only sustainable competitive edge that a business has because everything else can be matched”.

She is spot on.

Your people make or break your business. They are a key to how you build your sustainable competitive advantage. And the good news is, you have a huge influence on the outcome.

Your influence is linked to how you address such problems as Purpose, Culture and Talent within your business.

We dive into each of these problems in the other videos on the Sustainable Competitive Advantage page. But rather than address them in this video, let’s briefly talk about change, because building your sustainable competitive advantage is going to require change.

Change is something commonly viewed in a negative light. If I asked you how will people react to change, you’d probably say: ‘with resistance’.

What I want you to think about is – do people really hate change?

I don’t think so.

People, just like businesses, are commonly thriving to change. They want to be the best versions they can be. It’s the change process they find challenging.

This is an important distinction. It should help you think a little differently about change, and how you can go about changing things to build your sustainable competitive advantage.

A common way of thinking when it comes to change is that you need to be change ready when changing. You need “buy-in”. This is a concept which makes sense on the surface. However, we propose that there’s a better way.

Never wait to be change ready, because you risk never being ready. Instead, to build your sustainable competitive advantage, get started on change immediately and at the same time get started on being change ready.

This subtly different approach could be your key to change success.

Now, how that works in practice is beyond the scope of this video. So, before ending this video, I want you to know we’re not talking about some radical process that magically makes change easy.

The fact is, the whole change process is seldom easy. Otherwise you and your competitors would have already done it. Rather, I’m saying there is a way to go about change which increases your odds of success and that’s the one we’d love for you to follow.

So, please go ahead and watch the other videos about how to build a sustainable competitive advantage.

Afterwards, when you’re ready, let’s catch up and see how we can help you achieve change success.

Discovering the pathway to increased profits can be a challenging journey for businesses, particularly when existing revenue does not translate into expected returns.

At Munro’s, we believe businesses should be achieving at least a market-based total return to owners rate of 15%, and even more for riskier ventures. If you aren’t achieving this, or don’t even know what it means, then this Profit Improvement Programme may be ideal for you.

Designed with varying business needs in mind, the Profit Improvement Programme is available in two distinct forms. We particularly recommend the “Financial Clarity” version for its in-depth insights into how you are performing against others and the financial projections of your improvement strategies.

Guidance is a cornerstone of our programme, where we focus on what requires your attention, the sequence of actions, and the methodology to be employed.

By the conclusion of this programme, not only will you witness tangible improvement actions but also a significant enhancement in your in-house capabilities. This empowerment enables your business to continually identify and capitalise on further improvement opportunities independently.

Moreover, the programme equips you with the knowledge of next steps to perpetuate this cycle of improvement.

Offering flexibility, we provide the option to participate in cohorts with other businesses or to opt for a private experience.

Cohorts are run on an irregular unplanned schedule dependent on our availability and demand. Therefore, if you need help as soon as possible the best choice is to opt for the private experience.

We recommend bringing along your core team, since businesses are improved by teams of people.

For first time business clients of Munro’s who we choose to work together with, we provide a guaranteed Risk-Free Trial.

This allows you to experience our value-adding services for up to 90 days with no-risk. If our approach does not meet your expectations at any point during this period, a refund is at your disposal.

We offer this because we know it can be difficult to take the first step and we want to make it as easy as possible for you. We’re supremely confident you won’t need to use it, but include it anyway as our first way of helping you beat the status quo.

We invite you to schedule a complimentary Get To Know Each Other meeting. This initial step is crucial for assessing the compatibility of the programme with your business goals, paving the way for a successful and profitable collaboration.

Are you running an established business struggling to grow profitably in the direction and pace you desire?

If the answer is yes, our Strategic Growth Programme may be ideal for you.

The Strategic Growth Programme is tailored specifically for businesses that may not know where to start, lack strategic plans, or struggle with implementing their plans effectively. The latter being the most common.

The programme directly addresses common barriers to growth. From the initial uncertainty and fear of failure to finding the time to focus on strategic tasks.

Upon completing the programme, you will understand the leadership, operational and financial requirements for profitable growth. It will be clear how you’re growth plans will impact your financial position. Very importantly, focusing on what needs to happen to translate it into real dollars, satisfied customers and happy employees.

We offer two variants of the programme: a 90-day and a 180-day option, with the latter providing enhanced support for actioning your growth plans. This extended support can be crucial for translating planning into results, preventing the all-too-common issue of stagnation post-planning.

A core element of the programme is your involvement in designing the growth plan with our facilitation help. This approach not only tailors the strategy to your unique business needs but also helps empower your business with enhanced in-house capabilities, capable of seizing future opportunities independently.

Offering flexibility, we provide the option to participate in cohorts with other businesses or to opt for a private experience.

Cohorts are run on an irregular unplanned schedule dependent on our availability and demand. Therefore, if you need help as soon as possible the best choice is to opt for the private experience.

We recommend bringing along your core team, since businesses are improved by teams of people.

For first time business clients of Munro’s who we choose to work together with, we provide a guaranteed Risk-Free Trial.

This allows you to experience our value-adding services for up to 90 days with no-risk. If our approach does not meet your expectations at any point during this period, a refund is at your disposal.

We offer this because we know it can be difficult to take the first step and we want to make it as easy as possible for you. We’re supremely confident you won’t need to use it, but include it anyway as our first way of helping you beat the status quo.

To determine if the Strategic Growth Programme aligns with your growth aspirations, we encourage scheduling a free Get To Know Each Other meeting. This initial step is about understanding your needs and how we can help you overcome the hurdles to achieving the growth you envision for your business.