Demystifying the Road to Change

By Karen Matthews

Demystifying the Road to Change is all about making your business dreams a reality. No BS.

 

In this book, you will find a no BS way to plan and implement business change that is dynamic, focused, and flexible. 

You will see how to become a responsive and agile business armed for long term success. &n

• Language: English
• Publisher: Karen Matthews Pty Ltd
• Release date: Nov 23, 2021
• ISBN: 9780646848464

Book preview

About the Author

With over 25 years’ experience leading turnaround, change and growth, Karen Matthews is recognised in the market as a confident and innovative business advisor.

She has led business transformation strategies for several well-known brands including Ella Baché, where she was CEO for ten years, and Guess, where she established and ran their licensing business. Her last corporate role was Retail Director for Freedom Furniture. She knows that businesses who do not continue to innovate, reinvent and instil this way of thinking into their business DNA, will quickly lose relevance.

Karen’s leadership has been recognised during her career with several awards including Telstra NSW Businesswoman of the Year and PwC National Franchise Woman of the Year.

In 2016, Karen launched her own advisory business leveraging her extensive experience to guide and support business leaders as they navigate the challenges of constant change, turnaround and longterm growth. She is frustrated by the out-dated ‘set and forget’ notion of planning and is a passionate advocate for her no BS approach to business transformation and growth.

Karen is well known for her refreshingly unique and pragmatic approach to change along with an inspirational, warm and authentic style. She is a mum of two incredible teenagers and a spirited beaglier called Maggie. She loves and is privileged to live in Sydney’s gorgeous Bondi and is a passionate cross fitter.

To Bella and Harry for inspiring me every day with

your resilience, humour and huge hearts – I am so proud

to be your Mumma. Mike, thank you for your patience in

riding this roller coaster of life with me. And to my

incredible mum, dad and sisters for the unconditional

love and a bond like no other.

First published in 2021 by Karen Matthews

Copyright © Karen Matthews 2021

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

ISBN: 978-0-646-84847-1 (Paperback)

ISBN: 978-0-646-84846-4 (ebook)

All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the Australian

Copyright Act 1968 (for example, fair dealing for the purposes of study, research, criticism or review) no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, communicated or transmitted in any form or by any means without prior written permission from the author. All enquiries should be made to the author at [e-mail]

Photography: Hero Shot Photography

Editor: Lu Sexton

Cover and internal design: Seymour Design

Contents

Templates & Checklists

P&L history template

Cultural styles

Workshop agenda

Positioning map template

Example of completed positioning map

SWOT template

Workshop template

Day 1 checklist

Urgency & importance template

One-page business plan template

Financial plan template

Balance sheet / Cashflow forecast template

Implementation plan template

Traffic light report template

The final checklist

Introduction

Does this sound familiar?

You are sitting in a strategy session with the leaders of a large business. There are presentations, PowerPoint slides, spreadsheets and lots of silent finger-pointing. There’s no open debate, no sharing of ideas, no creativity and no innovative thinking. To top it all off, everyone leaves the session with no idea what’s next and no concrete focus. There were no notes, no summary, nothing. It was as if it hadn’t happened. You spent days locked away in a conference room and end up feeling worse than when you went in. Everyone is demotivated and frustrated. It feels like the ‘do strategic planning session with the leadership team’ box was being ticked, but nothing will change.

If you’ve been through something like this, you will be quite rightly wary of strategic planning sessions.

But it doesn’t have to be like this.

And this book will show you how.

I am going to show you how to build (or rebuild) your brand, claim (or reclaim) your position in the market and leave no doubt in the customer’s mind of what your business stands for. I will take you, stepby-step, through a proven process of planning and implementation, and will show you how to build this new way into your business going forward. At the end of this process (which is quick, by the way), you will have a one-page business plan, a clear and concise implementation plan, and a new fluid approach to planning ‘make it stick’ and keep your business moving as quickly as it needs to.

You have picked up this book because your business is not where you want it to be.

• The numbers are underwhelming.

• Your market share is not what you dreamt of.

• The creative spark behind the brand has disappeared and been replaced with beige and unoriginal messages.

• You’ve done countless planning sessions before, but any change is not sustained.

• You spend all day, every day, fighting fires and despite knowing change is needed, do not have the headspace or energy to tackle it.

• Change is everywhere – you are being left behind and you don’t know where to start.

Trust me, you are not alone.

I was one of those frustrated leaders running to try to keep up, let alone keep ahead of the competition. I knew the standard process I was following did not make sense. Then, 12 years into my career, I joined the dots. I had pieced together the positive and not so positive experiences in my leadership journey to find my style. A realistic, passionate style that starts with a no jargon, no bullshit plan. At the centre of that plan and every decision, action and process going forward is the brand – its message, values, and personality.

If you are a small to medium business determined to adjust to the new world and launch into the next chapter of your business success, then you are going to find this book refreshing. No matter whether you are in start-up, scale-up or business turnaround mode, you will love this book. It is simple, pragmatic and full of templates, tips and stories based on my experience.

You will be like the Pied Piper: having motivated and inspired your entire business about the future. Your brand, your business and your people will be reignited and ready to follow your lead. They will be confident, feel valued and trust that you’ve got this!

So now, let’s go. Commit to change, be excited and read on.

Enjoy

Karen x

HOW TO USE THIS BOOK

This book will step you though how to:

• Write a no BS one-page plan, in collaboration with your people via a two-day workshop process.

• Develop an implementation plan with your leadership team, complete with KPIs and financials.

• Make it stick. So many businesses do not do this critical step. Your business process needs to incorporate this new approach to fluid planning. Regular reporting check ins, communication updates and strong leadership are essential to keep your business responsive and moving forward.

It includes templates and step-by-step instructions for actions and exercises, as well as the theory behind the practice. The book is divided into three parts, which reflect the exact process I use with my clients.

PART 1

Reality Check

The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

Part 1 covers practical work you need to do before and during Day 1 of the planning workshop. As the name suggests, this is a fact-finding mission to get you up to speed on where your business sits now. Most of it you will do in the workshop with your team, but there is also some investigation for you to do on your own.

It may be some time since you have reviewed every aspect of your business and, be warned, some things will not be as you expect. However, no matter what the reality, this stage is critical – without a starting point, you have nothing to build on.

At the end of Part 1 and Day 1 of the workshop, you will summarise the work done and the issues highlighted, and classify them in a succinct business SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) – the perfect way to summarise all the information gained through the course of the reality check.

PART 2

Decide and Act

Part 2 is all about decisions and actions. Part 1 and Day 1 of the workshop have set the scene, finishing with an up-to-date SWOT of the business as it is.

Day 2 of the workshop will work through prioritising the issues, agreeing on the strategic actions for each issue, developing a succinct vision, values and positioning statement, and the creation of your onepage plan.

Part 2 will then take you through a follow-up half-day meeting with your leadership team, where you will create the essential (and often ignored) implementation plan, KPIs and succinct reporting pack to keep track of your progress.

Part 2 concludes with showing you how to launch the plan to the whole business. How to set expectations and introduce the business into this new, transparent and more responsive way of operating. An essential precursor for long-term success in this fast-changing world.

PART 3

Make it Stick

Part 3 will walk you through the process of defining a new way of doing things – a dynamic and current approach to planning – and ensuring your business processes are aligned. This fluid way of thinking and planning is all about prioritising chunks of issues, actioning, measuring, adjusting and repeating. Consider it a circular process, which will ensure your plan remains flexible and the business can respond when and as needed without losing sight of the vision.

I’ve written this as a workbook that combines some theory and a lot of practical, collaborative group exercises. I want this book to be your planning guidebook – something you will come back to again and again. My hope is that it becomes a well-thumbed, go-to resource, complete