The Red Review - Business Strategy with Helen Gawor
In this episode Jeremy is joined by fabulous business strategist Helen Gawor to talk all things strategy and how we as work-winning and bidding people can influence it.
Find Helen on…
Transcript
[00:00.6]
The Red Review is brought to you by Growth Ignition, the transformation consulting, training and enabling tech firm in the work winning space and their product set, the Bid Toolkit, the online bid processing guide with APMP accredited training and tools to download. So.
[00:16.8]
Hello and welcome to a, new season of the Red Review podcast with me, Jeremy Brim. So we've got some episodes coming out thick and fast, because we've produced some webinars, one on social value and one on the New Procurement act that we've pushed out through, the podcast channel as well.
[00:37.0]
But this is my first podcast specific chat, a Red Review episode specific, with one of my favourite people in one of my favourite industries actually. So we're going to be having a chat about strategy, proper grown up stuff, and particularly growth strategy.
[00:53.8]
So I've got my friend Helen on. Hello Helen. Hello, how are you? I've got a bit of a cold but I'm all right, I'm all right. I'm soldiering through, so it's great to get to hang out. Thank you very much for making the time.
[01:09.3]
So Helen, could you just give a bit of an introduction to yourself, career, overview, etc. And then let's go from there. Well, I'm Helen Gavor, so I am a strategy director, strategy consultant in the construction industry. Been in the industry for seven years now, but started my career working as an analyst and strategist in the digital and tech sector and that segued very naturally into a role at a scaffolding company.
[01:39.0]
But that is a whole different podcast as to how I ended up in scaffolding from working with tech startups and the likes of Google and Facebook. But this is a sector I absolutely love and obviously we've got a big transformation journey ahead of us. So I'm thoroughly enjoying working with businesses in this sector.
[01:58.8]
Very good. Well, we used to compare scaffolding notes, didn't we? Because I was, you were on the board of a very large, very successful scaffolder and then I was a non exec to a much smaller but still quite successful scaffolder in Cambridgeshire where I live. So yeah, we've had many a chat about health and safety and how to grow those sorts of businesses and clients and things.
[02:20.8]
I always valued it. So Helen, since you're a proper grown up around this stuff and I dance around the edges of, of strategy, we should probably get a definition first of all, what does strategy mean to you? First of all oh, well to me the thing is strategy can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people and you will get a different answer, from anyone who works in strategy.
[02:46.2]
But for me strategy is about building the architecture for a future, for the future of an organisation. So in construction it's very much about building resilience within an organisation as it operates today and then thinking about how it builds transformation for how we're going to operate tomorrow.
[03:09.6]
So it is very much about putting that system in place to take an organisation on that journey for the future. Very good. That was a very eloquent, very well thought through example. Very good. So where do people, where do most people go wrong when it comes to their business strategy, if they have one at all.
[03:34.0]
So I mean I should say so we do a lot of work just on growth strategy. So whereas you do the proper grown up stuff around the actual building blocks of business even into as we touched on health and safety and building Safety act and how to operate.
[03:49.6]
So my world is much more just the growth related stuff. So market research, business plan, marketing, more tactical account based marketing stuff. Key account management, capture, bidding is kind of our arc that we spend our time in.
[04:07.2]
But I am always surprised. So we do a lot of maturity modelling sessions. We were just talking off camera, weren't we, about a friend of ours that we've both been to see at different points recently. I was doing a maturity benchmarking session with them last week and they're actually pretty well sorted.
[04:23.7]
They don't necessarily have a business plan published, you know, in a drawer but they, they absolutely know what their perfect client looks like. They know their markets inside out, they've got a plan around their key clients, etc. But that's actually incredibly rare. I was almost surprised they've got that stuff together.
[04:41.0]
Yeah, because the amount of times I get invited to talk to chief execs in C suite or you know, people on the board, who are tasked with growth of a business and they, you know, I asked them for a copy of their business plan and they send me a spreadsheet with four numbers in it and it's the turnover per geography or per sector.
[05:01.5]
And then I ask them where are those numbers come from and they say well it's last year's numbers plus 10%. Well where's the 10% coming from? Made them up in the pub. The amount of organisations, some of which are listed PLCs that we go and Work with where that's the baseline is really quite interesting.
[05:24.1]
There's a lot of. It's actually, I say to people it's quite easy to run a mediocre business, yeah, make a single digit percentage profit, maybe even double digit, low double digits. But to actually get real performance and real shareholder value, it's actually pretty rare I come across people that are doing this stuff.
[05:45.3]
Well, but what, so what, what do you think? What have you found and where do people go wrong when they are doing it? I guess I think you know the word strategy. There's kind of two words that kind of come up in my role a lot that I have a problem with, one's innovation and one's strategy because they can mean different things to different people and they become barrier terms, as well.
[06:07.9]
You know, strategy, you know, as you said, sounds very grown up and very, very complicated. And I think, you know, particularly when you're, you know, you look in the world of management consultancy, it's become something that is very high level, very very. And actually businesses, as you quite rightly identify, can behave strategically and still get it right without actually sort of nailing their actions and their outputs and their targets to a particular strategy that is communicated and everybody needs to adhere to.
[06:41.3]
But that is rare. And that tends to happen in the more entrepreneurial businesses, maybe more smaller businesses, larger businesses do need to have something that guides the entire organisation into a certain direction.
[06:58.8]
And the one stat that I give businesses regularly is that 90% of business strategies actually fail. And they fail for a whole number of reasons, but one is that they're set up incorrectly in that they'll either go in two directions, one they'll go too financially driven.
[07:21.8]
So as you said. Exactly. Identified. They know the targets they want to hit, they just don't know how they're going to hit them. And therefore you've got whole parts of the business that don't really know where they fit in that revenue generation piece or that profit, improvement piece or they go market communication.
[07:41.8]
So they build what looks like a strategy that sounds great to the market and it sounds great to clients and it sounds great internally to the employees, but nobody really knows what that means in terms of delivering profit and improving how we do things.
[07:58.6]
And strategy is somewhere in between. And the one thing that I try to do for organisations is to build strategies for implementation. So I'm a market strategist, so I will always first of all look at what's happening in the environment that the business is operating in and you know, look at the very real economic factors and market forces and horizon scanning, but also how do we implement that internally?
[08:27.4]
What does every part of the business need to do? One of the biggest reasons that strategy fails within that 90% is that strategy is set at, one point in time and, doesn't evolve and iterate over a period of time.
[08:44.4]
So a good strategy probably needs three to five years in order to deliver it, depending on what your objectives are. But the market's going to change in that time, the economy is going to change in that time. Your capabilities are going to evolve in that time. So if you're not treating strategy, your organisation strategy, almost like it's the neurological system within your business, where you've got messages going up and down to the brain and it's feeling what's going on in the external environment and reacting to it and making decisions around that, then that strategy is not going to survive because it can't change and evolve over, time.
[09:21.7]
So. So that's. That's what I see as being sort of some of the big reasons why strategy doesn't get embedded or why strategy fails. Yeah, that's really interesting. So, to build on that, the next bit that I find, where it fails and I don't.
[09:40.7]
We've not really talked about this. I don't know whether you're a carrot or a stick person. I think you're allowed to be both. But. So, you know, I've been really, really lucky to grow up working in some businesses that had fantastic strategy. Yeah.
[09:57.2]
Probably both for similar reasons, actually. So if you take E.C. harris, which was then sold to Arcadis, E.C. harris had a fantastic strategy on that journey, but it turns out it was because it was up sale. And the partners were very clever in how they shaped the proposition to the market, their strategy and how the business would deliver, but particularly how they took the staff along with them.
[10:22.6]
Yes. And how we were measured against those. So everyone had a scorecard. So your appraisal, it's fascinating. In more recent times, I've worked with some big building contractors, you know, listed companies where staff make up their objectives for the year and take those to their line manager and say, this is what I want my objectives to be, and they agree, maybe have a bit of a negotiation.
[10:48.3]
And I just think, as someone who grew up in outsourcing at Mouchel, I find that absolutely mad, because what you actually want the business to be is a pyramid scheme. You want your strategy at the top and then tactically, you Want your middle managers to be absolutely aligned with that, with a scorecard, which is a subset of their boss's scorecard.
[11:09.5]
Yeah. And so there's a lineage all the way down through the business. Right. And down to staff. So you have like strategic KPIs, SPIs, so maybe six of those. Turnover margin, health and safety growth, staff, well being, whatever top level staff, staff turnover, KPIs, through the middle, which might be 20 of those that managers are measured on and then PIs and what's baked into people's scorecards.
[11:35.1]
But it's very, very, very rare you find a business that's that well sorted. When I grew up at Eastern Harris, I just thought all businesses were like that. Yeah. And it turns out they're not at all. They're actually. They're pretty high performing. But it really. So that was the stick bit that you didn't get your bonus or your promotion or whatever if you didn't deliver the stuff in your scorecard, which did interestingly include some stuff around personal development.
[12:00.5]
So it wasn't just about turnover, you know, and staff, you know, the people who worked for use, well being or whatever. It actually had some personal development stuff in there as well. But yeah, I didn't realise that was quite high performing at the time.
[12:15.8]
Not. Almost nobody does that. No. It's really important that a strategy is executed and felt within every part of the business, every function and every layer within the business. And that takes that pyramid scheme type approach to leading strategy.
[12:35.4]
And this is where most businesses get it wrong because they create a strategy that sounds good but. But they don't know how to implement it. And, building strategy for implementation is actually quite a different skill set. It needs a really good generalist who understands how to navigate their way around the organisation and how to build the measurement in as well.
[12:55.1]
So the amount of businesses that I've gone into where they've not thought about implementation, so they don't know what their roadmaps look like, they don't know what investments are required to deliver the strategy either. And, also how you're going to measure it, how do you know that it's successful.
[13:12.4]
And measurement is really important to take people along that journey because we need marginal gains and we need to be able to celebrate marginal gains. It should not just appear in your annual report once a year. So there's a complexity to that infrastructure strategy which I think that organisations quite frequently miss.
[13:34.2]
Yeah, it's fascinating, isn't it? So there's an interesting intersection between your big strategy piece and us in winning work. Yes. Which is becoming ever more important, I think. So solution as in how the business does what it does.
[13:52.2]
Yes. And, and then the innovation on that. So it's quite. Most of our audience are bidding people, bid writers, bid managers, etc, and I have a lot of awkward conversations when I'm teaching our general bidding bid writing course.
[14:08.4]
Or we do some more stuff with bid teams these days. Yeah, sort of one day sheep dip stuff on how to run or how to be part of a high performing bid team, or APMP qualifications and stuff. And almost every time there are bidding people in the room, there's a point in the courses where I have a bit of an awkward conversation which is, if, if the business can generate solutions that create more value for clients than any of your competitors by some margin, it basically doesn't matter what you write in your bid, as long as it's compliant because you will win anyway.
[14:43.4]
Yeah. If you can save the client $10 million more than anyone else. Yeah. They're not really going to give a. What it says in your bid as long as it puts across that story well. And you know, as long as it's compliant. Yeah, always. You're pretty much always going to win as long as you don't really screw it up.
[15:00.4]
Yeah. And so I, I have, I, I found myself for six months actually in a business. When I left, it was the business I joined. After I left Arcadis. I'd been sold this pipe dream of what a wonderful business it was and actually they were 10 years behind the market in thinking.
[15:17.1]
So they were, they were the biggest business in the market. They just bought the second biggest business in the market. Smashed the two things together. So a private equity business had bought them both, smashed them together. But they hadn't really innovated for about 10 years.
[15:32.2]
So some of their competitors had better technology, were more efficient, looked after their clients better, fundamentally created more value for the end clients than they ever, ever could. Yeah. And I, I realised within a couple of months I wasn't going to be able to change that.
[15:48.2]
Yeah, not as just a bit. I was just, you know, running a bid team. And so I, I left actually and joined one of those smaller competitors on the board that was really pushing the edge of the envelope and had a great time eventually helping people, helping sell it. And it was a great journey, but it was a really stark moment.
[16:08.0]
And an example I still use today of the difference around solution as part of that business strategy, you've got to be relentlessly focused on creating more value than anyone else for your clients because if you do that, you'll always be fine.
[16:25.6]
You've raised a really interesting point, actually. Two things related to bids and bid teams, which was very apparent to me when I was working at isg, in that, understanding the environment that we work in, the bid team is essential to that, in part of that due diligence of monitoring the market forces and the clients needs, etc.
[16:50.3]
And your bid teams should definitely be included within the strategy development because you will have a unique insight into what it is the clients are asking for and reacting to, and also what you're winning and losing business against.
[17:07.0]
But also as well, how, you know, how easy it is for a bid team to articulate what the organisation is delivering, how it articulates its strategy, how it articulates how it's adding value to the clients at the market.
[17:23.8]
If the bid team can't do that easily and clearly and understand it, and it's not part of that sort of muscle memory in how they talk about the organisation, then something's gone wrong with how we're implementing the strategy and how we're communicating the strategy internally.
[17:41.7]
So I think that the bid team is probably a very good litmus test for how we communicate the strategy internally and externally, but also is an absolutely essential sort of source of information when you're developing the strategy as well. Yeah, no, I absolutely agree.
[17:59.6]
In fact, the, the success of that company, jbw, that I eventually helped sell, you know, Jamie, the, Jamie Waller, the chief executive owner, was a really super smart guy, you know.
[18:14.9]
Yeah, well, I'll leave it there. He was a super smart guy. Not that, not, not the most pleasant, but very smart. And he actually put the bid function and work winning function at the centre of the business. Yes. And how it drove forward because he realised every bid we submitted we were coming up with some new innovation and we were going back to the business, driving the business harder to do new things.
[18:40.5]
In effect we were failing fast, you know, testing ideas with clients as we went on. On bids. Yeah. And then into delivery, learning from that and then taking that into the next deal and the next deal. You know, fundamentally the guy sold the business for many, many, many millions and, you know, did very, very well off the back of that.
[19:03.9]
And particularly now any, any business and, and everyone that will listen to this will be beat in B2B or B.
[19:13.0]
You know, capture and pursuit of deals in advance of tender is, is going to be where the juice is for bid teams. Moving forwards with that with AI really you know, coming along to bolster and eventually replace I think the whole bid writing piece.
[19:31.1]
You know we, where we are experts is in the running of campaigns to position for and win deals. And I bang, bang the drum about this stuff all the time. But it's in the, the business strategies in interrelationship with those key campaigns and what you're pitching to clients and then learning from that and driving forward.
[19:51.6]
Yeah, it's really quite critical. And most people, most people don't get that. No. The, the business leaders, the. It's interesting. I've had some issues. I was thinking about it again last night actually. I've had some issues with non exec directors, who get parachuted into businesses, either private equity backed ones or privately owned ones.
[20:13.4]
Yeah. Largely I find, who are ex. Operators. Not strategy or business growth people. Yeah. But they, for some reason or another they naturally get drawn into growth related meetings, conversations, etc.
[20:29.9]
And they're out of their depth quite quickly. Yeah, because they, they were never as, as coos or you know, operations directors or whatever. That was never really their jam. They might have been at the heart of some presentations to win some deals and stuff, but they were never marketeers or you know, that kind of thing.
[20:50.2]
And so I've crossed swords with a few where it's kind of, you know, guys, why don't you stay in your lane? Yeah. And you know, you, it does make such an incredible difference where you have chief execs, people in the C suite who get this stuff and really value the bid team and put it at the heart of things.
[21:10.1]
Yeah, it does make a big difference. So you're definitely right there. So what are the first steps then Helen, to developing a cohesive strategy, do we think? And I guess in part this bearing in mind most people on who listen to this podcast will be bid managers, bid writers, bid bid directors.
[21:32.1]
So in the growth lane, I guess it's through the lens of how can they influence their businesses to do better in this. I guess bidding teams can influence the strategy in a great deal because obviously you are at the sharp end of dealing with the clients, the sectors, the wider market.
[21:49.7]
So I think intelligence gathering, and using data and finding a way of reporting that back up the tree is really important because not only when you, you set a strategy initially, but also iterating the strategy regularly as markets evolve and sectors evolve and client needs evolve.
[22:11.0]
We, need to be agile as businesses to be able to do that. And you know, and bid teams absolutely have the insight to, allow people in the right positions to be making decisions around how we react to that sort of strategy.
[22:27.0]
And also as well, if being honest internally, if articulating what the business is trying to achieve strategically and where the business is adding value, that is difficult for a big team, then leadership needs to know about that.
[22:43.8]
And I think we need to be in a position where we're not just accepting the status quo and what comes from the top. It's about being able to talk openly about where we genuinely do add value and where we don't, so that we can start to look at the capabilities internally within an organisation and make sure that we are actually doing what we say we are going to do.
[23:08.4]
Not just putting it in words on a marketing communications plan or in a bid. That authenticity of really driving things forward. And also as well, this is so much more important where for a lot of the big contractors now, a lot of them are saying we have a purpose led strategy.
[23:27.3]
And you know, to the point where that's almost becoming white noise now. And being able to prove that you're purpose led without greenwashing, without just saying the right sort of marketing sound bites is really, really important.
[23:43.2]
And ultimately, you know, at the end of the day, we can't be purpose led if we're not actually winning business and generating more profit and being more productive and all of these other things. So, being able to evidence what it is that we're achieving as part of our strategy is also particularly important, especially if we are using the word purpose within our strategies.
[24:05.5]
It's really interesting, isn't it? I had my quarterly, mentoring session, which is normally an onslaught of a bollocking. Actually, my mentor at the weekend who's a chief executive chairman, he was chairman of the business that I helped sell.
[24:23.3]
Actually. It's where we met. Just an incredibly interesting, articulate, but just a sensible bloke who just asks those really difficult questions. And he's actually found a bit of a niche of work where people bring him in on these massive outsourcing deals and he used to own a huge IT management consulting practise.
[24:45.2]
So people bring him into these big government deals and stuff and he just challenges their solution. Yeah, can you do more? How are you going to do that better? How are you going to add more value? And he says, you know, every single Time he's bought in to do that, he finds millions of pounds worth of value that they can drive for clients whether it's directly or whether it's social value, just by getting them to think, you know, talk, look across their own business, all of that kind of stuff.
[25:12.7]
And I was like, well that's great but actually shouldn't it just be in the DNA and the strategy of the business to bring that stuff to market in the first place? It just shows how much sort of latent opportunity there is. Yes. To do, to do better. Yeah. And of course because you know, you don't have to give all of that benefit to the client, you can take some of it as a super profit.
[25:37.2]
Yeah, you know, absolutely. You know, remember when I was at a certain large builder, and they figured out how to build tall buildings 20% faster, and 20 cheaper leveraging an Australian model and idea.
[25:56.0]
And I was in a room with a bunch of these builders and they were just going to give that value to the client. I was like, boys, what were you doing?
[26:05.2]
Nobody knows. We don't have to tell anyone. You know, we'll give them, let's give them 5% of each and you know, do it a bit faster and a bit cheaper. But actually we can keep that as super profit until everybody else figures it out, which won't take long but you know, and then we can reinvest that money in making the innovation even better, faster and all that kind of stuff.
[26:26.7]
But it's just funny, everybody gets into a bit of a groove in their business, don't they? Of blindly just sort of carrying on. And particularly in big teams we will work on these mega deals that are game changing for the business. Yeah. And but we'll put up with quite a lot in that firestorm of a bid in that month or however long we've got and then sort of relax when the bid's submitted.
[26:49.4]
And quite often companies just forget that actually there were things we could have done better if we had more time or there were ideas we've come up with and we've not told anyone else in the business so it's not going to be reused. And so much opportunity there isn't there to help inform that incremental gains in strategy overall.
[27:11.7]
It's just something that in construction we're just generally not good at. It's the same when, you know, when projects end we all go, God, thank God for that. We got through it and we move on to the next project. And don't Share the learning. And it happens in, you know, in every part of the industry.
[27:26.9]
And I think that's why strategy still feels like something that's, that's relatively new for our businesses in our sector. Because we are, we're not used to looking for forward, we're not used to sort of, you know, driving improvements and creating these situations where we can create marginal gains and horizon scanning and looking at what the future might look like.
[27:52.5]
Because we've, you know, we've just been very, focused on driving revenue, winning work and you know, and not having to kind of shift how we do things to too much. And I think, you know, obviously Covid was a big change for the industry because we actually proved that we can collaborate and we can adapt very, very quickly and we can learn.
[28:15.9]
But how much of what have we learned over Covid have we actually continued to apply within our businesses? The fact that we needed fewer people on site to maintain 80% plus levels of productivity. We're just not used to being in those iterative learning cycles.
[28:33.5]
And that's, that's why strategy feels hard, because it needs nurturing, it needs feeding and, it needs somebody to make sure that it is still relevant and it is still in line with where the business needs to be going and that everybody's engaging with it and doing the right things.
[28:53.3]
And obviously part of that is good measurement. And we're still, there's still a lot of work for us to do to actually have good measurement systems to away from finance, but good ways of measuring, how we operate as an organisation, what our output is, and using insight to inform how we improve, how we work.
[29:14.7]
So we're still quite early on that journey, I think. Interesting. So, what are you getting up to these days then? So you've got a new endeavour? Yeah, well, I'm, I'm working with, businesses of all sizes in construction, with lots of different types of organisations to help them implement strategy.
[29:39.9]
So I think, you know, my passion is very much to helping specialist contractors and organisations that are kind of on that curve of really driving transformation within the industry. But I think there's, I think there's a real gap in sort of in businesses being able to look ahead at the future and understand what they need to do within their business in order to meet some of their future vision and their future ambition, whether we call that strategy or not.
[30:10.7]
For some smaller organisations, strategy, as I said, can be a bit of a barrier word, but certainly, helping organisations put the right infrastructure and the right things in place in order to help them grow and realise their future ambitions.
[30:27.3]
My mantra is very much about building resilience for today and transforming for tomorrow. And I think that every construction business should have that as the bedrock of their strategic intent.
[30:43.0]
Because obviously we are going through a very difficult economic period within the industry and within the country as a whole. And we are seeing the fallout for not, having resilient business models and working to low margins.
[31:01.3]
And we've got a huge amount coming down the line, whether it's legislative with the Building Safety act, but also how are we using digital platforms, how are we improving our data collection, data quality and data usage. There's a lot of stuff that is coming down the line, which businesses need to get their heads.
[31:21.6]
And it will be different for every different type of business. We're a very fragmented industry, very, very interesting and very different for all of those reasons. So I'm working with businesses to help with some of the strategic alignment around that. Very good.
[31:39.2]
Well, I've always valued having you as a mate. I have to say. It's been really helpful for my business to have a grown up. I can phone up and say, what do you think of this? And it's very. As well to, to when I'm having my crazy ideas.
[31:55.7]
Yeah, likewise. It's been good to bounce stuff off, isn't it? So, I couldn't recommend more, you know, I can imagine those big trade companies, whether it's. I guess it's not going to be scaffolders because you've worked with the big and best, but it might be, but other you know, other supply chain members, but also the main contractors of any size as well are.
[32:18.9]
I can't understand how and why you're not a chief exec actually. But, if you want to dance around just helping people out, that's up to you, my dear. But I'd love you on the board any day if I was one of the big contractors. So grab a piece of Helen while you can is my advice.
[32:35.9]
Very good. How can people find you just on LinkedIn? Just search your name on LinkedIn. If anyone follows me on LinkedIn already, you know that I enjoy a good thought leadership LinkedIn post. You can find me on LinkedIn and my website is buildingstrategy.co.uk so yeah, I'm happy.
[32:58.3]
Just one part of my propositions for any micro businesses as well that just want a coffee, a chat. I think one of my little nuggets Strategically, if I've got time to just say that is everybody's strategy.
[33:13.9]
Should have said something in there that articulates how you support other businesses in the construction sector. Because the sectors that collaborate within our economy are the sectors that are more productive, more innovative, more profitable.
[33:30.6]
And, we have a great industry. And, we've got businesses of lots of different sizes. So in order to pay it forward, because this industry was very welcoming to me when I joined it seven years ago, just this crazy ginger head woman from, the tech industry, and the scaffolding industry, GK Scaffolding, took me under their wing and, you know, and listened to me.
[33:53.5]
So, yes, specifically for micro businesses as well. Don't see people like me as a barrier. Just, you know, put some time in. It'd be great to have a coffee. And there's lots of stuff that I've already done that might be able to help those businesses and just to call to other businesses to do the same.
[34:08.8]
Do something that's going to help other businesses, businesses in your sector. Because we will grow and we'll be more productive and profitable if we work together. Very good. Very good. Well, there's an offer you can't refuse. Excellent to get to hang out. Lovely to see you, Helen.
[34:23.8]
Thank you very much. And I'm sure people will reach out. Thank you. Lovely to talk to you, Jeremy, as always. Thank you.
