Hope you’re doing well and combatting any cabin fever you may be feeling working from home the past week! In this blog post I wanted to talk about how we are approaching COVID-19 at flinder & how you can safeguard your business in the months ahead.
Here’s an important email that I sent out earlier today to flinder clients:
Dear all, following on from my note last Friday please see below additional business exercises to consider in these testing times. Businesses need to prepare for potential significant business disruption and adverse impact to demand (some may actually see an increase in demand depending on their sector).
Many entrepreneurs struggle to get enough sleep. I’m one of them – my most creative thoughts come to me in the middle of the night. I can fall asleep within seconds of my head hitting the pillow but it’s the 4 hours later that I’m literally wide awake with so many ideas running through my head. And so with that in mind, this week’s 3 things are all about sleep….
This is a note that I sent out to our clients earlier today in light of the recent developments with COVID-19.
Alastair Barlow examines the history of M&S leading up to its recent deterioration and loss of CFO Humphrey Singer.
flinder celebrated in style as they took home Mid-Sized Practice of the Year 2020 after experiencing unprecedented growth in the past 12 months.
HMV has been in the news recently so I thought I would dig in a little deeper to see what was going on with its performance and strategy. Have a read below for my take on this once high-street super-giant!
Moneyball is a 2011 American sports film based on Michael Lewis’s 2003 non-fiction book of the same name. It’s based on the true story of the Oakland Athletics baseball team’s 2002 season and their general manager Billy Beane’s attempts to assemble a competitive team using data!
Value is one of the most important concepts in business but too often we let price get in the way of seeing the value.
As we get back to work this week at the start of a new decade, many businesses (and people in general) will be thinking about objectives (or New Year’s resolutions) for the coming year. While the business side of this should have been done a long time ago, it’s better late than never.
Finance is not a support function so don’t treat it that way: it’s an enabler to making sound decisions and getting investment, so get your act together and stop putting investors off, writes triple Accounting Excellence award-winner Alastair Barlow.
Happy New Year – we hope it’s a great one! What you’re about to read will flip all your goals for the next year upside down.
Have you ever used Airtable?
written by alastair barlow [blog]
Last week I had the joyous experience of sitting in an F1 simulator – the full on virtual reality version at Mercedes-Benz World. It was an incredible immersive experience whereby I actually felt like I was on the grid and racing the Suzuka circuit in Japan. Words just do not do justice to the experience!
written by alastair barlow [blog]
written by alastair barlow [blog]
written by alastair barlow [blog]
written by alastair barlow [blog]
written by alastair barlow [blog]
written by alastair barlow [blog]
If technology is the engine behind your business, processes, customer experience or even designs, then data is most certainly the new oil. While oil is there to make sure your engine runs smoothly, data is also a rich resource and powerful commodity the can drive your business performance.
written by alastair barlow [blog]
Are all accounting firms born equal? Not quite, here’s just one reason why we are different…
written by alastair barlow [blog]
written by alastair barlow [blog]
written by alastair barlow [blog]
written by alastair barlow [blog]
written by alastair barlow [blog]
written by alastair barlow [blog]
I recently gave a talk on How to be a Kick-Ass CFO at Accountex in London (Europe’s largest accounting conference). Most of my presentation circled around improving management information.
written by alastair barlow [blog]
written by alastair barlow [blog]
The past couple of days I’ve attended Accountex in London and I’m exhausted from it! If you read my previous newsletter on management lessons from my fitbit I absolutely smashed my steps over the 2 days and my calories target – I actually burned 4,000 calories on day 1 from walking around. It really is on a huge scale!
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written by alastair barlow [blog]
I’ve had a personal trainer for about 18 months now – he’s awesome. We’ve worked hard together (more so me!) to shift some of the fat I put on post ankle surgery (invasive micro-fracture surgery on my ankle where my cartilage had pretty much disintegrated). It turns out running is not that great for you after all!
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I recently watched the movie Coach Carter for the first time – if you haven’t seen it before it’s a biographical sports film drama based on the true story of a basketball coach (Coach Ken Carter) played in the movie by Samuel L Jackson.
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written by alastair barlow [blog]
If you follow us on social media you’ve probably seen we recently came back from our annual flinder Takes The Piste! ski trip. It was pretty epic, as you can see from some of the pictures and videos.
Traditionalists may wonder why we take our team skiing.
Well, we do this for many reasons and believe there are many benefits to our approach to culture; some include:
You really can learn a lot about a person when you observe them for 5 days solid!
What does this have to do with reaching objectives?
Well, last month, I shared our approach to strategy-setting which is based on the OKR (Objectives & Key Results) methodology. If you missed it, you can read it here.
One of the points I mentioned was around ‘making sure everything in the business aligns’. Well, there are few areas more important than aligning the team with the strategy.
So, now for the other reason we go skiing together – to present, share and discuss our strategy with the team. One of the words I probably overused last week was ‘transparent’ (another was ‘data’ but that’s a story for another time). At flinder, we truly believe in transparency around what we are trying to achieve and how we intend to do that; we want everyone in the team to know, live and breathe our objectives and ultimately know what their role is in working towards them.
At the beginning of the week we spend a lot of time with the team walking them through it top down; from our mission to our 10 year vision to our 3 year objectives and to our near term 12 month objectives. We then distil these objectives down further by each of the functions in our business and map out what we see the key results as and some of the projects to get there. I did mean to say ‘some’ of the projects as some we purposely leave blank for the team’s input on. As well as being transparent, we also want to engage the team and enable them to feel more invested in working towards projects they have co-developed and believe in.
We also make sure the team has full access to this and everyone can see, not just what the business-wide objectives are but, what each function’s objectives are. This also includes project and initiatives to meet those objectives. This is fully open for everyone in the business to see at any point in time. This includes financial, service and people objectives, among others.
I’ve seen many businesses where teams can’t answer what the business objectives are and don’t know how their role contributes to this. I find this lacks trust, alignment and stalls momentum. Above all though, they aren’t engaged and feel like they have less purpose.
In the famous quote with JFK and the Janitor: President John F. Kennedy was visiting NASA headquarters for the first time in 1961. While touring the facility, he introduced himself to a janitor who was mopping the floor and asked him what he did at NASA.
“I’m helping put a man on the moon!”
The janitor got it. He understood the vision, and his part in it, and he had purpose.
My question to you is – does your entire team know, understand and embrace your mission, vision, 12 month objectives, functional objectives, projects to get there and individual objectives?
If not, it may be something worth thinking about…
guest written by darren cran [blog]
Getting a business off the ground often means skimping on avoidable expenses, but there comes a time when it makes sense to invest in a few important upgrades.
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guest written by conrad ford [blog]
A business’s capital is affected by many moving parts, so it’s hard to always keep track of your cashflow, especially if you’re a non finance person.
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hosted by alastair barlow & luke streeter
culture is important to us and so is having shared values with our clients. here’s a sneak peak at the culture within flinder at our client & staff ski trip to morzine, france. hopefully, you can join us next year! […]
guest written by conrad ford [blog]
There are many obstacles businesses need to conquer to succeed. From setup and survival, to stability and expansion — one of the biggest challenges at every stage is cashflow.
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written by chris agnew & maryna irzhanenko [blog]
Think of a company strategy day and you think of sitting in a dingy conference room somewhere, listening to someone’s monotonous tone read slide after slide from a dated PowerPoint presentation.
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guest written by conrad ford [blog]
The business finance market has changed a lot in the last few years. It’s well known that after the financial crisis, high street banks reduced their lending to small and medium sized businesses, and alternative providers emerged to fill this lending gap.
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written by alastair barlow [blog]
this is the follow on article from 11 sections to the perfect business plan – part 1 & part 2 where I describe these sections in detail; business strategy, finances and risks.
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written by luke streeter [blog]
what are the key differences between debt funding and equity funding and which is right for you and your business? and on what terms should you be taking either?
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written by alastair barlow [blog]
this is the follow on article from 11 sections to the perfect business plan – part 1 where I describe these sections in detail; branding, customer & marketing, operations & management.
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written by alastair barlow [blog]
business plans can be daunting for those that have never done them before; a host of new terms, concepts and financial modelling.
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hosted by alastair barlow & luke streeter
culture is important to us and so is having shared values with our clients. here’s a sneak peak at our first annual client & staff ski trip. hopefully, you can join us next year! […]
written by alastair barlow [blog]
this article is not for the faint hearted – it gets a little technical and involves detailed calculations on the metrics I see as most important when running a subscription or SaaS based business.
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written by alastair barlow [blog]
with the right insight and metrics, subscriptions offer a great way to build a reliable business or a reasonably predictable revenue stream.
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