Helping people give voice to, and realise, their personal aspirations is not a preoccupation you would usually associate with accountants.

But the national head of Baker Tilly’s growth programme, John Thompson, believes that personal and business aspirations are inseparable and must bearticulated and addressed if clients and their enterprises are to realise their potential.
‘There is a kind of yin and yang between personal and business objectives,’ he says.

‘Whether they are executives in a large corporation or owner managers, the person and the business can’t really be separated. Lots of business decisions are driven by personal needs and wants and business is a vehicle enabling you to do certain things in your personal life.’

John Thompson joined Baker Tilly in October 2001 when the firm acquired the four-office, Hampshire-based practice of Harris Walters, where he headed the business development team. He has been national head of the programme for the past three years.

After a five-year stint as finance director of a manufacturing company, the firm’s managing partner, Richard Harris, successfully lured him back intopractice to lead a business development team focused on advice for growth businesses.

The Harris Walters approach to this kind of advisory work has formed the basis of what is now Baker Tilly’s growth programme.

Like many other firms, Baker Tilly wants to be more to its clients than their auditors, tax planners or outsourced finance department. But while many firms offer advice and mentoring for growth businesses, Baker Tilly’s approach differs from many in its non-prescriptive approach.

Personal goals

To that end, Thompson, and other partners and senior managers who act as facilitators, set out to help participants to define their personal objectives and goals. They do this by asking a series of questions and, through a non-judgmental facilitated approach, aim to develop a plan for growth and evolution that those owner-managers or executives can fully buy in to.

‘We ask questions along the lines of ‘what is it you personally want to achieve through your business for yourselves and perhaps for your family?’

‘If we can help you clarify that, then we will be what everybody wants us to be, which is your trusted adviser, and we will better understand you, be able to give you better advice and you will feel more in control of your business and your life as well.’

Having worked with clients on their objectives - business and personal - the programme turns the spotlight on how the business performs, its risk profile and the people issues that underpin it.

The approach works, he says, for large quoted businesses as well as smaller entrepreneurial outfits, or even not-for-profit organisations. The underlying theme, he says, is the non-judgmental approach. The facilitators help clients work out what they want to do with their business rather than imposing their own view of what the business should look like.

And while it might sound straightforward, facilitation is not always an easy process. In the course of working with upwards of 200 clients he has seen everything from a start up that didn’t actually have a business up and running, to an established technology company with four directors heading in very different directions. Thompson recalls working with ten executives from the European division of a global business who, between them, came up with seven different versions of what their company did.

It’s a feature of business life that used to surprise him, but doesn’t anymore. Sometimes people simply get lost in the myriad tasks of the daily running of their business, causing them to lose focus or become out of touch with their former partners and founding directors.

‘With owner-manager businesses, it tends to be three or four people who have got together and set up a business a number of years ago. They’ve built it up and become quite successful. Now they want to be more successful, but they don’t actually talk to each other as much as they used to. They don’t fully understand why Fred is taking the business in one direction and Harry wants to take it in another.’

This is a common turning point for entrepreneurially-driven businesses, he says. ‘There’s a hiatus in a lot of businesses, when it gets too big for them to do what they used to do. So where once they used to know every single employee in the business and they did three or four jobs themselves, they can’t do that anymore. They need to buy in professional help and let go of certain roles and expertise.’

Change for the best

Change can be incremental and measured or it can be quite dramatic, says Thompson. One established technology business was transformed when it started focusing on its core business, for instance. After selling off and closing down non-core business streams it began bringing in £100,000 each month instead of annually. The process took only 18 months.

Of course, there are clients and there are clients. ‘The best clients to us are the ambitious ones who want to do well and want to grow - whether that’s by 1% or 100%, that’s not for us to say.’

One concept the firm often uses is the ‘success gap’, the difference between where people are and where they want to be. And while in an ideal world Thompson would like to see elements of the programme used with all the firm’s clients, it’s generally those businesses that are motivated to make changes that are most likely to be successful.

Nationwide, the firm has 58 people who work as facilitators on the programme, two-thirds of them partners. ‘We find that there is a reasonable churn. People say they would really like to do that, but they find out quite quickly that, either they’re not enjoying it, they’re not suited to it or they’re a bit uncomfortable with it. So they self-select in and out.’ So what makes a good facilitator? ‘Everything boils down to attitude and commitment. If you’re very open-minded and committed to helping business people progress, that is three-quarters of it.’

Given current concerns about an economic downturn, some businesses may be tempted to let a market correction take care of their competitors, batten down the hatches and keep on doing what they are doing. Thompson’s hope is that people will instead try to refocus their businesses and take advantage of wider opportunities.

‘In the 1990s when we had a similar kind of problem, broadly two types of people emerged: those who cut back as much as possible and those who used the opportunity to look carefully at what they did. Going back to my first stint with Harris Walters, those were the ones who survived in better shape - the ones who said, ‘we can’t just sit here and let it all happen around us. We’ve got to make decisions and changes and make things happen’. My view is that we might even get more interest and bigger uptake because the better businesses - the motivated and skilled ones - recognise that they can’t just sit still.’

People person

Thompson says an interest in people is central to success in this kind of work, as is a genuine desire to help them and their businesses progress.
‘The most important thing is the absolute desire to do the best for the client and making sure you always put the client first. It’s not for us to judge what’s best for the client. It’s up to us to help the client achieve whatever success means for them.’

For the client's view, go to page 2