Advisers & Advisory Boards
Advisers in The SMB Partnership serve all types of businesses and organisations, from start-ups to multi-national corporations, or government, public and third sector organisations.
They are experts in particular industries (e.g. Financial Services), specific situations (e.g. business revival) , or functions (e.g. operations). Or they focus in particular initiatives (e.g. innovation).
You may have issues (e.g. risk) that need to be looked at from a variety of perspectives. In these cases we can assemble a team of experts to form an Advisory Board.
All the evidence suggests boards and executive teams increasingly recognise the limitations of their own in-house expertise. This is to be expected as the speed of change, and associated complexity and uncertainty, are strong features in the business environment. Our network of advisers can help fill any knowledge gaps with individual experts or Advisory Boards. Enquiries
Executive and Director Dialogues
As the saying goes, "two heads are better than one". So, imagine the benefits you can get from thirty heads. Those of other knowledgeable executives and expert advisers, together in a facilitated Dialogues.
Whether you are looking for new insights, hoping to discover new opportunities, searching for answers to a problem, aiming to expand your knowledge and confidence, or simply looking to stimulate your thinking with fresh perspectives, we have a Executive Dialogue session for you, or we can create one.
Each is carefully designed to ensure a balance of non-competing peers and advisers. The facilitated meetings will collectively explore issues and hear shared experiences and case studies.
Business, organisational and personal development will be achieved in an enjoyable atmosphere, with peer group support. All this without the cost, pressure and time commitment associated with academic study. Enquiries.
Boardroom Challenges
As a result of the most recent global economic crisis, and the frequent reports of company scandals, the boards of companies and other organisations have come in for a great deal of criticism.
Much of the criticism is justified, but even scandal free boards struggle to meet the demands on them. This is largely due to the size and complexity of many of today's companies, the volatility in the business environment and the need for continuous innovation and change.
As a way of helping board members deal with these demands we bring together board members from non-competing companies to help them acquire new knowledge and best practice insights. They collaborate with peers to tackle case study based challenges in facilitated learning exercises - Boardroom Challenges.
Expert advisers from The SMB Partnership network help board members improve their board effectiveness. Enquiries
White Space Workshops
In a business context "White Space" is a metaphor for opportunity; spaces that might offer room for manoeuvre in a crowded market; a space in which there is no competition; a new space among the existing product or service offering in a market place; a space that a new business model may open up.
New opportunities offer the potential of competitive advantage but, are likely to require product, service and business model innovations. They are also likely to ressult in game changing disruptions, rather than incremental improvements. They, therefore, carry greater risk and reward potential.
Discovering White Space opportunities usually requires skills not taught in business schools, and are rarely found in business. Realising the benefits of them also requires collaboration with other stakeholders.
The SMB Partnership brings together groups of executives (potential collaborators from non-competing businesses and organisations), to explore opportunities in facilitated White Space Workshops. Enquiries
Stakeholder Summits
Most executives will be familiar with the concept of a value chains; the linear, end-to-end sequence of steps and relationships that create and deliver a product or service for a client or customer. Within this structure are a number of stakeholders (suppliers, employees, distributors, customers etc.) upon whom the organisation depends to varying degrees.
A traditional view says, optimising value creation and minimising costs is the way to acheive competitive advantage and win a larger shares of the value being created.
Whilst not ideal, such thinking worked reasonably well in relatively simple business contexts. Today business is far more complex, depenent upon value creation networks that afford far greater value creation potential. But they require much more collaborative relationships that are focused on the co-creation of value. Rather than fight for a larger slice of the pie, the goal is to align stakeholder interests to create a bigger pie. Stakeholder Summits are a product we developed to help clients optimise their value creation networks.