Taking time out from touring and just prior to the release of his latest album, “Midge” will take the time to tell guests about his journey through life and in particular how Footdown has helped him achieve his goals and continues to “hold his feet to the fire” and keep him accountable on various issues.

Cameron Thomson, Midge Ure and Mike Roe (Footdown CEO)

The evening is being hosted in the wonderful surroundings of the offices of Morton Fraser Solicitors who are strong supporters of Footdown methodology, being values led and people centric themselves.

“If previous evenings with our Patron are anything to go by we are in for a fantastic insight into what drives a truly Scottish Legend – there will be humour, honesty and humility in plentiful supply !”  Cameron Thomson

Nick Lyth is Director of The International Resources and Recycling Institute based in Edinburgh,  Nick brings a wealth of industry experience to the mentoring group with a strong background in Marketing and Market Research achieved via his background working with SME’s and large multi nationals.

He also sits on the Scottish Government Advisory Group for the development of renewable energy. Nick brings further depth to “the Board you cant afford” for the Scotland Group and adds  a breadth of skills set and knowledge that will compliment existing group members.

Welcome to the Scotland Footdown Fifteen!

Follow link for member profile: Nick Lyth

Nick Lyth is Managing Director of International Resources and Recycling Institute, and has been responsible for its development and growth.  He has been on the Board of IRRI since the incorporation of the Institute.  He created the concept on behalf of Dundee City Council, and developed the idea, taking charge of its structure, plan and constitution, as well as the appointment of the Board of Directors and the Management Team.  He has also led IRRI in its contribution to European projects, the development of its network, and its representation at external events, speaking at conferences in the UK, Germany, Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Spain.  He has represented IRRI in the press, the radio and on television.  He sits on the Scottish Government policy advisory group for the development of renewable energy in communities, the Communities Renewable Implementation Group.

Nick also leads the SMALLEST project, on behalf of IRRI, which is developing an innovative service for remote rural communities in the Northern Periphery to encourage the shift from traditional energy generation to renewable energy generation.

Nick Lyth has a background in marketing and market research.  He has undertaken a wide range of different market research projects, in a variety of different market sectors including projects for, amongst others:

• BT Consumer Division – consumer perceptions of BT
• Scottish Life – acceptability of Group Personal Pension Plans
• Shell U.K. Exploration and Production – internal perceptions of group facilities and services
• Denholm Specialist Handling – buying criteria for COMAH accredited storage
• The Caledonian Brewery – Scottish ale drinker attitudes and perceptions
• Four Science Centres – schools research into attitudes to science and a new science club
• Wood Mackenzie – quantitative customer satisfaction survey
• Scottish Enterprise Edinburgh and Lothians – Edinburgh Connections Tourism Platform Review
• Scottish Enterprise Ayrshire – Best Practice Research in Information Provision within an Airport Terminal

He has extensive experience of the private sector both in large corporate multinationals and also the start-up and SME sector, having worked in, and helped create, several companies.  At one point, in 2003, he was a Director of seven different SME’s.  He has also worked extensively on business incubation concepts, both in the private sector and the public sector.  Current Directorships include Cre8te (Craigmillar Opportunities Trust), Transform (formerly Dundee Cyrenians) as well as International Resources and Recycling Institute.

Joining Footdown

Any leader – entrepreneur, corporate director, partner of a professional firm or senior public sector employee – who is committed to improving his or her leadership performance should consider joining a Footdown Fifteen leadership mentoring group…find out more

To find out how to get involved with the Scotland Fifteen - contact us.

Vikram Banerjee

Elite players don’t just seem to have superior skills and fitness than us mere mortals, but they also seem to have more time than us when for example, facing Steve Finn bowling at over 90mph. However what they really have, through hours of preparation, is the ability to anticipate what is going to happen in a game more quickly than us or their fellow players. How?

This article is part of a series by Vikram Banerjee on “What can Sports and Business Leaders learn from each other?” – click to subscribe to his articles.

Arguably the greatest ice hockey player of all time, Wayne Gretzky, is famously quoted as saying that he skates to where the puck is going to be rather than where it is. You could probably say the same of someone such as Lionel Messi, Sachin Tendulkar or any other player who excels in their sport. What is the linking factor between them that makes them stand out from the crowd?

The 10,000 hour rule

Malcolm Gladwell, in his best selling book, ‘Outliers’ attempts to explain high achievement through his 10,000 hour rule. In the book he claims that the key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours.

“The people at the very top don’t just work harder or even much harder than everyone else,” Gladwell writes. “They work much, much harder.” Achievement, he says, is talent plus preparation.

Malcolm Gladwell

So the next time you watch a top golfer, cricketer or footballer on the television and wonder why he is so much more consistent that you, when you spend every Saturday on the golf course, the answer is beneath the surface. He or she has probably spent at least 20 hours a week honing their art for at least the last ten years before you get to see them. There is a reason that sportsmen and women are said to reach their peak in their late twenties and not before.

Neurologist Daniel Levitin has studied the formula for success extensively and shares this finding: “The emerging picture from such studies is that 10,000 hours of practice is required to achieve the level of mastery associated with being a world-class expert in anything. In study after study of composers, basketball players, fiction writers, ice skaters, concert pianists, chess players, master criminals and what have you, the number comes up again and again. Of course, this doesn’t address why some people get more out of their practice sessions than others do. But no one has yet found a case in which true world-class expertise was accomplished in less time. It seems it takes the brain this long to assimilate all that it needs to know to achieve true mastery.”

There are, of course, many provisos to the 10,000 hour rule. As one example, it’s not enough to just practice for 10,000 hours; the person practicing must constantly strive to get better. Someone who practices without pushing themselves will plateau, no matter how many hours they practice. I suspect many business leaders fall foul of this proviso, putting in enormous hours, but mostly doing work which doesn’t extend their abilities.

10,000 rule in the business world

However, there is research that shows that the 10,000 hour rule still applies to those in the business world. The computer giant, Bill Gates, co-founder of Microsoft, is proof of the 10,000 hour theory. Gates had a series of lucky opportunities that enabled him to obtain 10,000 hours of computer programming experience before his work with Microsoft. He attended the private Lakewood School in Seattle. The school started a computer club with funds from The Mother’s Club. Most colleges at this time didn’t have such clubs, so this was a rare opportunity for a grade school student. Thanks to The Mother’s Club’s paying of usage fees, Gates was given opportunity to practice programming on the large computer at the University of Washington.

From here, Gates’s opportunities to practice computer programming were remarkable for someone his age: He had the opportunity to work at ISI at nights on their payroll software while still a teenager. And he received permission from his school to spend his spring term at the company TRW writing computer code; all experience that added up to that magical 10,000 hour mark.

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Someone just starting out in industry cannot expect to see overnight success, regardless of initial expenditure and risk taken. This is the challenge to most up and coming leaders, and it needs to be seen as just that – a challenge. True leaders realise that every minute spent studying, giving up free time, honing their skills by providing a free service to your friends counts towards their 10,000 hours and so they are the stand-out successes and make it happen in three to five years rather than eight or nine. Sportsmen are infamous for their single-minded dedication to the cause. The lesson here is simple and universal; the harder you are willing to work for it, the quicker you’ll realise success.

In my next article I will talk about how things change once a leader reaches the top, and the challenges involved with staying there.

Founder - Andrew Mercer

What two or three things should you be doing right now to help the organisation you lead to maximise its chances of success in these troubled times?

Article by Andrew Mercer, Footdown founder.

It took me many years and one business failure to grasp the importance of knowing the answer to this question. I suspect I’m not alone in having this experience. Footdown could save you the effort and expense of repeating my mistakes.

When I took my newly venture funded software company to California in 1997, I was ambitious and audacious in my approach to leading and building a great business. But with hindsight I can see that I paid too little attention to these business critical issues and, if I’m frank, would probably not have been able to identify them. And so I found myself after just one year in California with a great product, and a good potential market, but lacking the necessary leadership skills to take advantage of this situation; and with VCs breathing hard down my neck. The end result was a reluctant sale of the business to Oracle who has since done very well with the product, and still employs many of team I had built up in the UK.

After the sale, I found myself wondering whether my experience was unusual and what I could have done to avoid it. Were there people who could have helped me? Was there a “manual” out there on how to lead and develop organisations? How was it that some leaders managed to be so successful; even in difficult economic times and during times of great change and uncertainty? So, with a lot of time on my hands suddenly, I researched every leadership theory, read numerous books and spoke with and listened to leaders whenever I could. I realised that for many, indeed most, leadership was a hit or miss affair and that many successful leaders were only perceived to be so because their successes obscured their failures. After all it was “gold rush” time in California with the dot.com boom in full swing. With the world economy now in a major recession, it’s a little easier to spot the true leaders in amongst the many pretenders.

Power of group mentoring and individual coaching

As I began to understand what it takes to be a great leader, I realised there could be many more of them; if only we could find a way to support aspiring leaders as they move into and then develop their leadership roles. So after I returned to the UK in 2000 I founded Footdown, with the goal of helping leaders to be the best they can be. I recognised early on the power of combining group mentoring and individual coaching, and launched the first Footdown Fifteen group in Bath in 2003. Since then we have established 11 more groups throughout the UK and are adding new locations.

I never gave up my quest for the leadership “manual” that I knew would be the real differentiator for leaders. Indeed I suspect I drove my colleagues mad pursuing a goal that, at times, must have seemed about as tangible as The Holy Grail. The manual I was searching for we now call Footdown Insight.

So what is Footdown Insight

It’s the only leadership product that seeks to consolidate into a single template the best theoretical and practical advice available for leaders today. It is a comprehensive framework and set of tools that allows leaders of all types of organisations to work smarter by taking the guesswork out of identifying priorities for leadership action. It then provides rigorous and continuing support for tackling the problems that surface as a result. It also increases the value of individual coaching by providing a context within which to coach, ensuring that individuals’ objectives align with the goals of the organisation.

As leaders, we only have limited time and many leadership challenges to address. Using Footdown Insight has enabled me to concentrate for at least part of each day on those activities that will make the biggest difference in the long term to the different organisations I am responsible for. While it may seem high risk to uninformed observers, this focus on vital issues allows me to ignore many seemingly dangerous fires, knowing they will safely burn themselves out.

Footdown Insight supports leaders in using understanding gained to make a real difference to their organisation. While we use a simple board game format to support this exercise, this format is far from simplistic. Underpinning the process is a comprehensive model, or diagrammatic representation, of how organisations and their leaders function. Footdown has also recognized and mapped the two way relationship between leaders’ behaviours and styles and the way their organisations execute.

A unique feature of the Insight model is its flexibility. It’s multidimensional, so that you can go as broad and as deep as you want to, and start where you need to. It’s a bit like having access to a world class business school, except that it’s so flexible you can decide on the curriculum, as and when you need it. As your organisation and personal needs change, so you can change the way you work with the model. The game, with its comprehensive set of clue cards for both the organisation and the individual, succeeds by shining a light on every aspect of the business and leader. This in turn identifies the two or three most important issues that need some focused attention over the next ninety days. But beware! It is not for the faint hearted. The game will provide you with vital information and inspiration, but it is hard to go back. Using Insight has a powerful effect on the team, as senior team members share in this compelling process.

A leader’s role is to supply energy, vision and generally keep ahead of the game. I know from my own experience and to my cost how difficult this can be. Footdown recognizes that even the most able leaders need support at times to lift their sights above the day to day challenges and take a more strategic look at their organisation. Insight’s guided process of discovery, decision making and action planning helps you to lead your organisation in a way that is consistent with your vision, taking it into a stronger and more successful future.

Are you ready to play the game?

For more information about Footdown Insight contact us.

So…if you have clicked here expecting to see something about talent, hard work and dedication you will just have to wait till next week! In the meantime, I wanted to outline some of my thoughts about how the farce that now enshrouds the England football team has the potential to become a blessing in disguise for the new leader.

This article is part of a series by Vikram Banerjee on “What can Sports and Business Leaders learn from each other?” – click to subscribe to his articles.

Tottenham Hotspur manager Harry Redknapp, has gone from what must have been a very tough time for him and his family, to being at the front of a very short queue of contenders to replace Capello. However, whoever the new manager is, he will have to move fast, with the clock ticking down fast towards the Euro 2012 tournament this summer. The new manager will have to show evidence of a new England, with a new culture taking shape less than a few months after taking charge.

One thing that I must point out from the outset is that I am not in the inner circle of the FA and their leadership team (how I wish I was at times), nor have I been a fly on the wall during their discussions. The media, as much as they have hyped the story and devoted column inches to the case, have not yet agreed on the exact facts of what actually happened behind closed doors. Therefore, perhaps due to my lack of knowledge about what actually happened, I will try and steer clear of the events that have caused this and instead look forward to the future for England and the opportunities that lie ahead for the new manager.

England have no captain, they were a complete embarrassment at the last world cup and have been under performing for many years. There is also the thorny issue of Terry himself as a player, and whether he should be selected, and what about Rio Ferdinand’s place? The culture of England football at the moment is toxic in so many ways; top players not seeming to want to play for their country, a massive lack of pride and teamwork not even on the radar. There’s not much lower the England team can sink at the moment.

While it may seem like an impossible task for the new leader, I actually believe that it might be easier than it seems, given just how bad a state the England team are now in!

England can benefit from strong and brave leadership

I believe the timing is perfect for England to benefit from some strong and brave leadership. Not to say that Capello’s leadership wasn’t strong or brave (that’s for another time) but a fresh start, with a completely blank piece of paper, free of any pre-conceptions, is very powerful and easier to instill when the team has their backs to the wall. A crisis this might be, but this crisis could yet be transformed into an opportunity.

When a team hits rock bottom, a leader is able to start again and ignore ‘what we’ve always done’, they are able to hold up a mirror to those involved. The uncluttered mind of a new leader can see a team for what it really is, where it really is and the changes that need to happen to ensure the ‘right people are on his bus’ and to align them against the common enemy – the crisis itself. People have to accept that the direction the England team were traveling in was not the right one, so there is no other option than to change it.

It can be argued that the situation of English Football is similar to that experienced by the England cricket team not so long ago. In 1999 they were ranked the worst team in the world, derided on and off the field. After some improvements England suffered from the Pieterson-Moores falling out and subsequently were bowled out for 51 in Jamaica. At this point it took some strong leadership from Andrew Strauss and Andy Flower, who decided that a new direction was required, similar to that required of England Football.

It is also nowhere near as bad as the situation Pakistan Cricket found themselves in a few years ago, after years of exceptionally poor leadership lead them down the darkest of paths.

Culture is fluid and not fixed

Institutions, teams and organisations do change. Culture in sport or executive teams can be created and influenced by those in leadership roles.

Both England and Pakistan Cricket can now be displayed as examples of how culture can be changed and changed quickly. Everything that England Cricket have achieved since then can be traced back to that afternoon when they were blown away. Pakistan are now riding a wave having whitewashed the world number one team having almost being ostracized from the world stage in 2010.

In both cases it took a cataclysmic event (in sporting terms) to provoke change. Culture change cannot come without such a catalyst, be it in the from of an outside event or internally, through strong leadership. As a leader, you have to be brave and sometimes force change to happen, otherwise culture will just drift along in a never ending cycle.

England have been blessed with leaders such as Flower and Strauss, but perhaps more impressive is the change that Misbah-ul-Haq and Mohsin Khan have instigated, given where they came from.

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Alongside accepting that culture can change, and accepting that it is the leaders and their people who do the changing, it is worth noting that all of the above examples waited too long. For whatever reason they allowed flabby thinking and a lazy culture, steering the teams headlong into a brick wall. Leaders in the business world have similar pressures to keep the status quo (often from stakeholders rather than media) but need to make sure they are brave enough to force the change before their team hits rock bottom.

It might be the only option to change once you hit rock bottom, and so in many ways easier for a leader – but it’s not a nice place to be. Why wait for it? Instead of waiting for the outside event, to jolt you as a leader into evaluating the culture of your team, leaders need to be a driving force for upholding the positive culture within the team, tweaking and altering it where necessary to ensure it stays en route.

Leaders need to be continually checking the culture of their team to ensure it is a vibrant, energetic and happy one, driving the team to where they want to be. That way, if an outside event does occur from left field, you are in the best place possible to deal with it.

English football haven’t been able to change their culture from the inside, but the current debacle gives the chance for English football to start again? Is it the ‘cataclysmic event’ they needed? Is it the 51 all out, or the spot betting trials that will give rise to a new strong leadership, who will provide the impetus to utilise and empower the emerging young talents such as Phil Jones, Danny Welbeck and Jack Rodwell to form a new England, with a new – winning culture.

What is your culture like now? Are you about to be bowled out for 51? Are all team members happy or is one on the verge of walking out? As a leader you need to be aware of whether the culture is the same as the one you wrote on the flip-chart during the last team-building session you had. Otherwise, as the old adage goes, it’s not even worth the paper it was written on!

Roger Harrop

Roger Harrop, Footdown Speaker is “The CEO Expert”, ranked in the top 10 Management & Strategy Speakers Worldwide and a sought after international business growth expert, here he talks on how different companies strive for success. The businesses that do best are the ones that are accountable for their own actions and don’t blame their failures on external circumstances.

There is no question – the prospects for the economies of the UK and the rest of Europe are not good BUT there are many sectors that have thrived and continue to thrive throughout the last 3 years.

Time after time I am meeting with small, medium and large businesses in the UK that are doing well and continue to do well – often despite the sector they’re in. I recently ran a master class for a group of estate agents, for example, that if you believe the newspapers should really be in trouble, but they are thriving – and plan to do even better. I know of an advertising agency that has just had their best 3 years in the 20 they have been in business – despite being in a sector that classically should have been severely hit in recent times. Amongst the professions also I am meeting with a few – lawyers, architects and accountants – that are doing really well, despite the fact that there are others that have recently gone to the wall.

Common theme to companies that are winning

What I see, though, is that there is however, is a common theme to all these companies that are winning.

Very simply, they have “got their act together” and focused back on the basics of the business – any business. They have, for example, gone out and sought customers who have money to spend – a fundamental basic of business that we so often ignore! If their traditional customers have no money then they have rather targeted the ones that have.

Surely it’s common sense you don’t need an MBA or vast experience to work it out!

Lose patience with the whingers

I find that I am now starting to lose patience with the whingers those that are blaming the recession, the banks, the Government, exchange rates – indeed just about anyone but themselves for failure of their businesses to grow and thrive. Some of the professions, in particular, seem to believe that it’s ‘beneath them’ to get out there and prospect for customers is an absolute fundamental of any business. Indeed it is easy to argue that if your market share is below, say, 80% then you have such headroom to grow that only reason for a lack of success is simply your inability to generate sufficient enquiries.
I fear that refusal engage in prospecting for business will be the epitaph for many companies.

I am just back from speaking and running Masterclasses in two thriving markets overseas which I had not worked in before – Qatar and Bangladesh.

Bangladesh is listed in the, so called, “Next 11″ of thriving economies (following on the ‘BRICS’) and I was lucky enough to present to a small “Thought Leaders” event in Dhaka where there were a dozen or so of the top business leaders. They were a mixture of County Managers for multinationals and locally-owned businesses and to quote one of them “You simply can’t do anything wrong here – everywhere is booming”. This is from basic household products through to the needs of a rapidly growing middle class and a thriving export business.

I will be back to Dhaka this year – will you?

I then spent four days in Qatar – the richest nation in the world by GDP/head and with a Government investment programme over the next four years of a staggering $225bn! The highly respected Al Jazeera news network is based in Qatar and it is, of course, where the 2022 FIFA soccer world cup will be held.

I was privileged to have the highly impressive top team of one of the major family businesses in my Masterclass and I’m back at the end of this month for more.

Will you join me?

I strongly believe that never before has the health and prosperity of businesses, large and small, their employees, their shareholders and all stakeholders been so dependant upon those in charge taking it upon themselves to be winners rather than whingers.

So are you a whinger or a winner?

Article by Roger Harrop

Roger Harrop is one of Footdown’s speakers who form a vital part of our leadership mentoring offering and they bring an enormous range of knowledge, skills and experience to our groups meetings.

Follow link for more information on becoming a member | contact us

• What have members done better / differently since joining ?
• What benefits have they derived ?

The answers were hugely interesting:

In a tangible sense, members commented that they could see an improvement in their performance leading their businesses. They felt more self assured and confident and that has translated into stronger results and focus. Just as pleasingly, in a quasi intangible sense, they believe they have broadened their breadth of view, increased awareness of their own behaviors (and others around them) and apply more perspective than they had previously.

Interestingly, they also now understand that, as business owners, they have other stakeholders views that need to be considered and included in their Leadership thinking – family, colleagues, suppliers, and customers. The evolution of these relationships is fundamental to their overall development and success. In addition, members found the access to a peer group of professionals to be very helpful in easing that sense of isolation that can be felt when leading a business, but doing so in an environment where they know there is tangible accountability.

Cameron Thomson

For more information on what Footdown can bring to your development, contact Scotland Group Leader:

Cameron Thomson
cameron.thomson@footdown.com
07795 598464

Vikram Banerjee

This year’s Australian Open Final is being heralded by many as the most amazing sporting display seen for many years. It was awe inspiring to watch Djokovic slug it out with Nadal for just shy of six hours, having only had 24 hours rest since his 5 hour battle with Murray in the semi-final. I can’t think of any other sport that requires the level of skill combined with supreme endurance.

This article is part of a series by Vikram Banerjee on “What can Sports and Business Leaders learn from each other?” – click to subscribe to his articles.

The Tennis final went through a series of ups and downs, with both competitors looking favourite to win at different times in the game. Yet Djokovic never seemed to be fazed. He remained calm under pressure, to keeping his decision making ability in terms of shot selection and all executed with precision.

Novak Djokovic - Photo via Guardian

As business leaders try to reach their visions, they are continually being pushed in different directions, and more is being asked of their time. How can they learn from Djokovic? How can they ensure that they perform at their best under extreme pressure; making the right decisions and executing with unerring accuracy?

Learn from the likes of Djokovic

When looking to learn from the likes of Djokovic and other elite athletes, I think it’s important to emphasise that they don’t live in a totally different universe to us. I am huge advocate that elite performers are made and not born. Obviously, star athletes such as Djokovic and Nadal must have some innate, natural ability and co-ordination, just as successful executives are able to think strategically and relate to people. But the key to excellence in both sports and business is not your natural height or your aptitude for mental arithmetic, but it is the development of self-awareness, mental toughness and resilience. Ironically self-awareness is a topic that has been discussed at length in the business world, and the sporting world is only recently beginning to catch up, while mental toughness are the reverse, with the business world striving to catch up with the top athletes.

Mental toughness, as defined by Graham Jones, is the ability to thrive under almost extreme pressure and it is perhaps the most defining characteristic of champions. They excel when the heat is turned up. They are able to stay focused on the things that really matter in the face of a multitude of potential distractions. They are able to bounce back from setbacks with a determination and, most crucially, they are able to maintain their belief in themselves in the most trying circumstances.

Mental Toughness in a Business World

In recent years, mental toughness has emerged as a desirable characteristic in the business world. Mental toughness in business is now considered to be so important, MBA students on some programmes are being tested and scored before they graduate to help maximise their mental toughness potential. A recent article on mental toughness highlighted the importance of mental toughness for success by demonstrating higher mental toughness scores for senior managers than middle and junior managers.

The business world is, in my opinion, still grappling with the true meaning of the term. A surprise to me when I made my career switch was that, for all the adjustments leaders make for the different characters in the office with things such as communication and motivation, many people still associate mental toughness with a tough, uncompromising attitude, the ability to burn the candle at both ends and being overly assertive.

The surprise for me was the lack of understanding of a topic in an industry where personal profiling is a huge business. Mental toughness, in my opinion, is someone who achieves consistently high performance regardless of situational factors and pressure, remains confident even in the face of adversity and has the resilience to bounce back from setbacks. Essentially, mental toughness is about staying strong in your self-belief, making your motivation work for you, keeping your head under stress and maintaining focus on the things that matter.

All this was shown in huge amounts by Djokovic during the Australian Open Final. He wasn’t flawless, he made mistakes, and when he did he obviously wasn’t happy with himself. However, when he made them he managed to get over it very quickly. He even smiled at times – a great way of letting go of tension – but then refocused immediately, never losing his intensity.

Mental toughness combines technical skill with self confidence in equal measure. I believe that working on ‘hard skills’ and ‘mental toughness and positivity’ is vital, as shown in sport. However, a common stumbling block in both the sporting and business world is destructive perfectionism, that undermines the vital but small gains that they are making. Realistic positivity is a key mental skill that goes a long way to achieving goals.

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This mental toughness is not something which the best learn overnight or are born with, rather they have worked hard on each of the key aspects (which are – or do we cover this later) to create the final product.

What many people do not realise when they see “charismatic” leaders coping with pressure and adapting to excel with seeming ease, are the 10,000 hours of effort and preparations that underpins their success. This effort and preparation is something that I will look to explore in my next article.

Footdown Founder Andrew Mercer and CEO Mike Roe at MBA Polymers

Footdown Member Kriss Akabussi supports MBA Polymers at Footdown workshop

“I think for any leader there is the need to invest time in working on the business and not always in it! My time with like-minded CEOs and leaders in the Bath Footdown group has frequently provided challenge and inspiration for me. Footdown Insight has been an extension of this support and allowed me to really engage and empower my team” Nigel Hunton

Insight provides a rapid and enduring means of engaging leadership teams in the challenge of understanding where they are, where they need to be and how to get there in the most effective way. Insight is a catalyst that challenges and inspires teams to think creatively and stimulates effective decision-making.

To find out more about Insight and how it can help you lead your business please contact us.