HOW INNOVATION LEADS TO A COMPANY’ S WELL-BEING
By Louise Ladbrooke, business growth manager and business coach
If your company was an animal, what would it be? Is it fit, fast, flexible and lean? Or maybe it’ s slow, cumbersome and not so elegant?
Is your team engaged or in conflict? I once worked in an organisation where the managing director loved to micro manage. As middle managers, we knew what words our boss wanted to hear. There was no well-being in that company.
When I left to set up my own childcare facility, I had to find another way.
As a leader, I needed to create more leaders not followers; confident decision makers who in my absence looked after both the children and my business investment.
What’ s your company’ s purpose? When I asked my team, they replied‘ to provide the best childcare.’ It was a great starting point, we were already committed to a shared vision.
How do you achieve a shared vision? Between us we built a picture of how it was going to be, then we broke it down into achievable chunks.
What qualities do you value in your people? Companies hire on qualifications and fire on attitude. We all agreed that we would prioritise attitude and founded our 16 Star Qualities.
Why are you making the decisions? As in any business, there was a lot of information flying around and decisions that had to be made. I wasn’ t going to be there so we put our vision at the core of every decision.
Did we get it right all the time? Any organisation is a living system in continual motion. Our priority was to focus on moving forward and accepted that springing forward can only be achieved by taking a step back.
We grew to trust each other and love our work; employee engagement was high, absenteeism and staff turnover nonexistent. I learned that if I focused on looking after my team they became good communicators and confident decision makers looking after the bottom line.
NEW ERA FOR HARTHAM PARK
Corsham-based Hartham Park is a Georgian manor house steeped in over 200 years of innovation and enterprise. Set in the stunning Wiltshire countryside, it’ s a great place to focus and be inspired. The enterprise centre is a unique business community, offering serviced offices, meeting and event space, hot desking, membership and a café.
The house has been a place to meet since the 15th century and in the 1940s it was a focal point for political and recreational life in North Wiltshire. Records show Winston Churchill stayed at Hartham Park on numerous occasions. The estate’ s current owner Jeff Thomas, redeveloped the site into a business park in 1997.
It is currently home to over 40 dynamic businesses, from entrepreneurial start-ups to well established names. It is also home to the Corsham Institute, a not-for-profit organisation focusing on education, research and development in the digital sector. Work is currently underway at Hartham Park for a conference at the House of Lords in October, looking at the control of data, placing equality and inclusion at the heart of the digital debate and recognising the impact of digital to the world of work and skills. Corsham boasts the largest digital capacity in the UK and Hartham Park is investing in technology to offer an unrivalled techinfrastructure and accelerated connectivity.
Hartham Park has recently undergone the first phase of an interior design project and has a complete new look, from new décor and re-purposed rooms, to a whole new brand identity in line with their future aspirations to be seen as the place to meet and work locally. Behind the Georgian façade, the space has been transformed into a contemporary space, with cosy rooms for informal meetings, to hot-desking space and boardrooms for more formal affairs.
To complement the redesign of the inside of the property, the team have been working with Mr B & Friends brand consultancy on a fresh brand identity to suit Hartham’ s new direction. The new logo( pictured left) features a bold H.
Adam Partridge, strategy director at Mr B & Friends said:“ We wanted to create an identity that would capture the spirit of innovation that makes Hartham Park such a special and unique place. To give a sense of the energy and the groundbreaking enterprise that goes on behind it’ s impressive facade and to inspire dynamic businesses of today to come and make their own history. The new identity, designed to come alive across multiple mediums, is bold and arresting and suggestive of the amazing work that goes on inside. Overall, it’ s a proud new identity designed to inspire and keep the ground-breaking legacy of Hartham Park alive for many more years to come.”
How do you measure your company’ s well-being? innovate2succeed can help you create a culture of wellbeing in your business by getting to the heart of what matters. For more information, visit: www. innovate2succeed. co. uk
0330 124 1243 i2enquiries @ businesswest. co. uk
For more info: www. harthampark. com
Richard Green, operations manager at Hartham Park added:“ The new logo is paired with the‘ Make History’ strapline. This is meant as an open challenge to follow in the footsteps of past innovators who have made great successes at Hartham Park. We promote and inspire ground-breaking ideas, entrepreneurship and enterprise at all levels. We invite businesses to come and make their own history here.”
18 THE BUSINESS EXCHANGE 2017