Business Performance

Business Goals

Every business needs a vision: of what it wants to achieve, by when, and with whom. In order to achieve this vision - to fulfil its business goals - every business needs to implement a substantial development plan, both for the structure as a whole, and for each individual member of staff.

Clare Howard Consultants specialise in working with small and medium-sized businesses to help set business goals, establish business plans, and maximise business performance.

We can:

Support your management team in developing a strategic business plan
Set up - and conduct, where necessary - regular performance and development review sessions with key members of your staff, to help them set personal objectives and achieve business targets
Ensure that the agreed performance review process supports any professional training and/or regulatory standards imposed by external regulatory bodies

Strategic Alignment

The goal of most organisations is to secure a long-term, sustainable, competitive advantage within their chosen business sector. A mark of highly-effective organisations is the fit between the needs of the customer and the company's strategy, culture and leadership. This is what provides a long-term competitive advantage. When these components do not mesh, businesses lose their way and have difficulty meeting customer needs. Resolving any such misalignment is essential for continued business success.

Clare Howard Consultants are licensed to run Strategic Alignment programmes. These are based on over nine years of development, research and successful use in a wide range of organisations. Strategic Alignment can be used to:

Identify and describe an organisation's customers and the environment in which it conducts its business
Develop strategies for meeting customer needs
Describe the organisational culture
Assess leadership and management style
Enhance strategic thinking skills and develop corporate vision

PADI Logics

Strategic alignment offers the leading-edge solution to business misalignment by noting that the common denominator in all systems is the behaviour and motivation of people; whether they are customers, employees, leaders, or owners. These behaviours and motivations can be classified into four broad patterns called PADI logics - Performance, Administration, Development, and Intimacy. These define the way people focus on doing certain things:

Performance	focus, speed, time, action, performance, results, outputs, goals, energy
Administration	systems, measurement, control, analysis, accuracy, detail, incremental adjustment
Development	quantum change, innovation, flexibility, individuality, surprise, new
Intimacy	participation, consensus, group partnership, cohesion

A Strategic Alignment framework gives you the ability to measure, describe, and categorise the logic of customers, strategy, culture and leadership. The key to successful alignment is to ensure the dominant PADI logics of an organisation's strategy, culture and leadership match the dominant logic of the organisation's customers.

The Investors in People Standard

The Investors in People Standard is a national quality standard - a benchmark of good business practice. It recognises an organisation’s commitment to training and development as ways of achieving business goals.

We can provide you with support and advice on Investors in People, and help you work towards accreditation with the Standard. We ensure that any agreed performance review and development process that is put in place with e-coaches could be used at a future date as part of the Investors in People accreditation process.