Because you want your business to thrive, to be profitable and to be a great place to work. And for that to happen, there has to be clarity of intent and you’ll need to be clear on the set of choices you’ve made.
I’m Natasha Bye, and my world is all about helping my clients with clear business strategies without all the corporate guff!
"Her most outstanding strength is the way she distils the multitude of ideas and perspectives, and quickly collates them succinctly in writing. This has been so well done that we asked her to come back and present the strategy to the Group Board"
I work with start-ups and solopreneurs through to multi-nationals and charities. I work with CEOs and Boards through to functional teams and line managers, across a spread of industries – from healthcare to construction. The common thread is the desire to get clear on what success looks like and how to grow, whilst bringing everyone who needs to get it, with you.
Most organisations have a vision, a dream for the future. Whether your dream is big or small, my job is to help you dream clearly.
It is hard to sell or communicate your vision and strategy to anyone unless they understand and believe in it. I am here to challenge and support you, to get your route to growth as simple, clear and defined as possible. We won’t hide behind ‘corporate speak’. I will then help you engage your teams, investors or other stakeholders behind it – I can even bring some comedy to make it come alive!
Before changing anything, find out what is working or not working in your organisation
When you don’t see the results you’d hoped for, it’s tempting to organise yet another strategy day. Before you change anything, you need to know what is working and what isn’t. You may need a business health check!
Sometimes the scariest time in business is when everything is going well! Unless you know what is working now, it is hard to adapt to new challenges or opportunities that come your way. A business health check now, may help your future growth.
If you don’t know what is behind your performance, you may keep doing absolutely everything in the hope that the sales keep coming in. A business health check may help you build a more efficient, profitable business.
I can work with you to drill into your business performance, to understand what is working or not working and WHY.
I can interview your staff to find out their understanding of your strategy, and their perceptions of what is working well/not so well. Together we can look at what data, information and insight you have and where your gaps are. We will explore where your growth is coming from, what might be holding you back, your risks and opportunities.
We will look at how well your organisation is lined up behind your strategy. Most importantly, we will work out your breakthrough issue(s) – the things that will make the biggest difference to your performance.
The Health-check is an important step to take before making any changes to your plans. It enables you to work out if you need to make corrections to your strategy or your implementation. It helps you avoid jumping to conclusions and trying to fix everything. Most importantly, it helps prioritise your focus areas. I will be happy to chat through with you how best I might be able to help you.
Get help to build, adapt, simplify or clarify your strategy
You and your team are the experts in your business. But that expertise can mean you go headlong into tactical plans, before checking to align on the strategic intent. It can be helpful to have a fresh perspective to ensure that your strategy is as clear and joined-up as it can be.
I can help you build the strategy from scratch, adapt, or simplify an existing strategy. I can work with you on your whole business or drill into a specific part of your business, portfolio or brand.
I can help you refine and make some tough choices, taking out activities that add little and distract your organisation.
I have developed my own framework which can be applied to any business model, regardless of maturity. Alternatively, if you are a business unit in a multi-national, I can help you work through any globally mandated templates or models.
I will work with you and your team to ensure unambiguous clarity and specificity at every stage. Including, but not restricted to, clarifying and defining:
Your choices will ultimately be your own, but I will help you to explore the implications of those choices. I will be happy to talk through and work out the best way I can help you and your team.
Get help on communicating your strategy, motivating your teams and lining up your ways of working behind the strategy
A good strategy doesn’t end with a high-level paper exercise; it will succeed only if every part of your organisation is set-up to deliver it.
I can help you to communicate and engage the hearts and minds of your teams behind the strategy. I can bring your strategy to life to help you get the buy-in of your Board or External investors.
I can help ensure that the people that matter to you, feel listened to and part of the strategy, are clear on expectations and are inspired, motivated and equipped to deliver it.
I can help you shape your whole engagement and communications plan – from key channels to messaging. I can facilitate workshops for you to listen and engage staff through to building presentations for conferences. I can coach you on your delivery or step in and present at key meetings with you. Most importantly, I will work with you to identify creative ways to keep the strategy relevant and alive throughout your organisation.
No matter how good your thinking was in the building of your strategy, it will fail unless your organisation and whole way of working is aligned behind it. I can work with you to identify and remove any internal barriers to success.
For example:
You may already know where your issues are but feel they are impossible to address. Someone outside of your organisation can help with an objective view and approach. Do call me if you just want to talk through your ideas or concerns as a starting point.
Get help to ensure effective team and leadership meetings
One of the trickiest things to do as a business leader is to run effective meetings. You find yourself wearing three hats: trying to chair the meeting to get the desired outcomes; trying to facilitate and manage timings, whilst at the same time being an active contributor yourself.
For those all-important meetings, I can be your Chair and your facilitator.
You can call upon me to just hold an event together, hosting and introducing speakers, managing the time, and recapping key messages. Or you can bring me in to Chair your Board meeting, freeing you to contribute your ideas. I will ensure that everyone is heard and gets the most from the meeting, without losing sight of what you are trying to achieve.
I am an experienced facilitator for large and small meetings, and a Non-Executive Board Chair for a Trade Association. My style is friendly, warm but direct. I challenge with a positive intent, clarity and good humour, ensuring that potential conflicts are addressed in the room.
I facilitate both in-person events and those online and adapt my style accordingly. Most importantly, I work to keep energy and engagement levels high, avoiding the meeting fatigue that can set in.
As always, I can tailor to my support to your needs. Do get in touch if you want to explore some ideas for facilitation.
Find a friendly mix of mentoring and coaching for you or for members of your team
Whatever leadership position you hold in an organisation, from CEO to a team manager, sometimes we all need a sounding board. Someone outside of your company who can listen to you, challenge you, hold you to account and help you to take a fresh perspective. Sometimes you need a mentor.
I provide ad hoc sessions through to regular monthly mentoring sessions for clients. I work online or face to face as needed.
I give my clients a safe space to think and reflect. Whilst people typically come to me to think about their company or departmental strategy, we spend time discussing way more – from their career or personal impact, through to handling tricky people issues. A particular area I am doing more of, is helping first-time managers make the transition from expert to leader.
You will be guaranteed a warm, friendly and non-judgemental approach. I will use a mixture of coaching (where I help you to think) vs advising and giving you examples to consider. Some clients even ask me to write-up their conclusions in a structured way to reflect on.
I will be happy to chat to you so you can explore if I might be the right mentor for you or your team members.
Get more intentional in how your grow your specific brands, products or services
When it comes to your marketing, you can call upon any number of fantastic experts in everything from logo design, social media, SEO optimisation and advertising. However, they can only deliver what you want if you are clear on your intent.
This is where I can help. As a former Marketing Director in a multi-national, I can support you to get clear on the marketing strategy for your brand, product or service. I can get this clear enough so that you can put it into a brief for the agencies above.
I will work with you to get really clear on:
I may be able to help recommend marketing experts from within my network to help you take it from there too.
Take a more strategic approach to stakeholder influencing and public affairs initiatives
Not everything in business can be solved through sales and marketing. Your best route to growth may be through growing the market, not your market share. For this to happen, you will need to bring about a meaningful change to attitudes, policies or behaviours.
Prior to moving into Marketing, I worked in Medical and Public Affairs – engaging politicians, charities and professional bodies to drive change. I learnt that there is more to campaigning than merely raising awareness of issues. A strategic approach to relationship building and lobbying is key.
I can help you build a stakeholder influencing and public affairs strategy. Including but not restricted to:
Book an entertaining speaker who understands your world or a trainer who makes topics accessible
I believe in the power of humour, clarity and empathy to motivate teams. A strategy is nothing unless people are motivated to deliver it.
If you are looking for a more relatable speaker for your event, a host who can engage a diverse audience or maybe a more approachable trainer or facilitator, get in touch.
If you are interested in the power of improvisation to improve connection in your teams, find out more…
If you are a solopreneur or running a very small business, check out the range of support available
If you are a solopreneur or running your own very small business, it can be a lonely road. Success or failure sits on your shoulders. You alone make the choices and determine the direction to take. But how do you know if it is the right one? How do you know if you are working on the right stuff? Just because you are not a big corporate, doesn’t mean you cannot access the same level of strategic support. Click here to find out how I can support very small businesses too.
Build your own strategy with my Flagship Programme 9 Questions to Success
Your friendly and humorous guide to building a meaningful and relevant strategy for your business. In just 9 questions you can get clear on your business, your direction, how to get there and keep going!
If you answer every question I put to you, fully and honestly, you will leave this course with a super clear strategy for your business. You will define your business in the context of your environment, work out what you really want for it and how you will get there…and keep going!
If you want others to follow you, to buy from you, or invest in you, you need to win over hearts and minds. The quickest way is through humour. I love comedy as a way of making complicated topics easier to understand. I use it when training, when hosting and every day in meetings to help put people at ease.
A former and current Prime Minister help us to understand what it means to be strategic.
Remember Joe Biden? Well here he is helping us all understand what we mean by a ‘vision’.
You can’t get far in business unless you are genuine. And who better to talk to us about that, than Donald Trump…
natashabye@strategydoctor.co.uk
+44 7506 140337
Registered Address
Strategy Doctor Ltd
Newminster House
Baldwin Street,
BRISTOL BS1 1LT
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