Brunel Hive Executive Learning: Putting your business future in focus

The world of business has changed. Today’s marketplace is crowded and hard to beat, but certainly the most exciting it’s ever been.

An innovative idea could easily get lost in a sea of others put forward by other equally passionate entrepreneurs. And with technology removing the limits of geographical boundaries, businesses are no longer just competing with their peers down the road – they are competing with everyone else from Sweden to Singapore.

But this needn’t be a daunting prospect. A high startup failure rate doesn’t portend doom for every new business. Most importantly, it shouldn’t discourage risk-taking among entrepreneurs.

The bottom line is that success is not necessarily final and failure need not be fatal. And although there is no magic bullet to success, there is one surefire way to help businesses do a lot better – through executive learning.

Brunel Hive Executive Learning: Empowering growth-hungry businesses

Brunel Hive is Brunel University London’s business growth and engagement platform.

Part of the Brunel Business School and driven by the institution’s growing reputation as a ‘university for a changing world’, Brunel Hive Executive Learning was created to “engineer the growth of businesses” across London and to facilitate their internationalisation in economies across Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

The Go for Growth programme was created for this purpose, offering busy business leaders the opportunity to pick up critical finance and management knowledge to help them meet their growth challenges.

“Running a successful business means mastering planning, marketing and sales; delivering products and services; understanding finance; and recruiting and managing people,” says a facilitator of the programme.

“Since most people only have experience in limited areas prior to running their own business, they end up creating another job for themselves.

“Ideally, you need to create an enterprise that excels in all areas of the business and grows with or without your 24/7 attention. To get there you would need to learn and master a wide range of business skills while still running the business day-to-day.”

Go for Growth meets this need, with sessions designed so that business leaders need not slacken the reins at work while attending workshops.

The programme also combines academic expertise with real-world knowledge to help growth-hungry businesses define and deliver their scale-up objectives. This means training is delivered by a good mix of academics and industry heads, offering participants opportunities to network with key business leaders and to learn from their experiences.

How it works

The Go for Growth 2020 executive learning programme is held over five months of fortnightly sessions.

Sessions are in the form of workshops taught by industry and academic experts in SME leadership, as well as limited one-to-one discussions with Brunel Hive’s network of delivery partners, academics or members of the university’s exclusive Executives-in-Residence (EIR) club.

Participants will focus on business growth in relation to the following themes:

#1: Strategy for Growth

Startup failure rates are worryingly high, with at least 50 percent of new businesses meeting their demise five years after launch. A common reason for this is their failure to create a sustainable growth strategy, one that considers all aspects of business impact from profit to people and planet.

In this session, business leaders will learn how to create a strategic plan for their business, making sure their vision is aligned with their long and short-term prospects in order to maximise their potential for successful growth.

#2: Financial Advantage for Growth

Every business needs a sound financial strategy. This entails a whole lot more than putting up winning decks to wow investors during funding rounds.

In this session, business leaders will learn how to access finance, understand various financial statements, and what questions to ask.

They will receive tips and tricks from industry leaders on the best methods for establishing what resources their company needs, where to get these resources and, most importantly, how to spend them and turn their financial strengths into competitive advantage.

#3: Self-Management & Prioritisation for Growth

In a tough business climate, shrewd business acumen and comprehensive market knowledge must go hand-in-hand with good people management skills.

Business owners and managers must lead by example, fully cognisant of how the values and work ethic displayed by the company’s decision-makers will directly influence how the company is run and impact productivity and profitability.

In this session, participants will learn time management and self-management skills, understand how to prioritise tasks and responsibilities, as well as the best ways to delegate work to the team.

#4: Branding, Marketing & Sales for Growth

Marketing is the bridge between the business and their prospective customers. However small or large the venture and in whatever niche they operate in, it is one of the most important aspects of building a successful business.

An effective brand strategy could give a business a major edge in a crowded marketplace. It enables them to move away from competing on price and to differentiate themselves from the competition.

This session gives business leaders the 4-1-1 on brand marketing, helping them understand what makes a strong brand strategy, how to find their niche and outline their unique selling proposition.

#5: People for Growth

It is often said that a company’s most valuable asset is its people. This is especially true today – the age of automation may come with the promise of scale and growth but without the right leadership team, even the most innovative businesses struggle to stay afloat.

In this session, participants will learn what it takes to be a leader that’s both firm and fair, that isn’t just liked by their subordinates but also respected.

They will learn the importance of developing a keen understanding of people and how to leverage individual strengths to meet performance standards, improve team engagement, and tailor their management approaches to different personalities in order to bring out the best in their team.

#6: Systems & Processes for Growth

Good businesses are built on an efficient network of systems and processes that are connected, conversing, and most importantly, consistently fulfilling all their intended functions.

Lean, well-structured systems remove redundant work and ensure all business functions are operating cohesively and consistently to deliver the best value to customers while also minimising waste. Failing to place importance on this, many businesses falter on systemic failure.

In these sessions, business leaders will learn to systemise and optimise operations, and train their teams to follow these processes every day.

Go for Growth with executive learning at Brunel

As most business leaders today know, finding success in a hyper-competitive globalised world requires more than just good product knowledge and a strong sense of entrepreneurialism.

These qualities may be necessary to help a leader out of the starting blocks but it won’t be enough for them to win, or even finish, the race.

“It’s not enough to be passionate about a new product or idea, or even a hard worker. All too often companies fail due to bad management, even when the idea behind the business is sound,” Rob May, CEO of global skills development non-profit Association of Business Executives (ABE), said in a commentary last year.

“… if more small businesses are to survive and scale, while at the same time reducing personal tragedy, then management skills matter. In fact, compelling evidence suggests that improving the quality of small business management is key to solving our (the UK’s) productivity crisis.”

If your business is keen on improving what you do and how you do it, register now for a spot on Go for Growth, Brunel Hive’s premier executive learning programme.