Balancing stress with Professional Management
A recent survey by The Chartered Management Institute identified that, for those individuals who had invested in professionalising their skills:
- 93% had developed greater self-awareness which allowed them to connect more effectively with co-workers
- 86% had heightened self-confidence
- By making significant “better decisions” they delivered, on average, £362,176 in added value to their organisations
But what does investing in professional management mean?
Professional management, or professional managers, covers many areas of people’s working lives. One such important area is stress, as a motivator and a detriment.
Too much stress can lead to a cataclysmic drop off in performance needing weeks if not months of recovery time. We also know that without enough stimulation, or background stress, performance suffers and motivation dips. It’s a fine balancing act to ensure that performance is optimised without risking overwhelming. As people are often an organisation’s most valuable asset, professional managers need to understand what drives this and which interventions to be apply.
Professional managers set goals and objectives to manage that balance. In setting goals that are achievable with the resource, skills and talent that exists, they also support the development of a company culture with employees’ values.
When goals are set which can be delivered entirely within the control of a given individual, as long as they are sufficiently challenging, stress levels should remain low and objectives should be met. More often than not an objective requires team co-operation or enablement from another. In these cases, the objective may initially heighten stress but as the individual accepts and starts to act on the need for support, realising that it is coming, goals and objectives should be met without undue stress.
However, once it becomes clear that the goal cannot be met either alone or with others, problems start to arise. This is when it’s necessary to look at alternative options or to re-set goals and objectives. Decisions need to be made if the individual is to avoid the dreaded realm of overwhelmed.
These will range from recognising the impossibility of the situation and retreating from the environment, compromising on values to achieve the desired outcome, or struggling on attempting to succeed but knowing that failure is inevitable and recurring. Clearly, neither the second or third options are acceptable, and the first is only acceptable if there is a fundamental mismatch between the individual and the organisation, at both a capability and values level.
This is where professional management needs to step in. The professional manager will look to how individuals and teams can be supported, joined and enabled for success. No-one goes to work with the aim of doing a bad job. The professional manager will facilitate access to people or tools that can help. They will allow sacred cows to be challenged and support new ways of working.
Investing in professional management is to create more “Win Win” situations for both the employee and the company. And where this isn’t possible, to say “No Deal”.
To put your people first, come and talk to us today.
The Partners behind CAP
CAP is a boutique practice of highly-experienced consulting partners, CEOs, successful entrepreneurs and behavioural specialists committed to delivering a more accessible partner-led service, making a real and measurable difference.
We are far more than a group of senior executives who have undertaken this type of work before. We are agile. We are creative. And above all, we are a team that has invested time to become attuned to the behaviours that either inhibit or facilitate success.
We are open, collaborative and all committed to continuous learning and knowledge sharing. We continuously challenge the art of the possible, giving our clients more options and greater confidence to go further, faster.
We have specialists in unlocking the benefits of flat, dynamic structures. We have team members steeped in recruitment and talent management, and we have people familiar with managing investor relations and external reporting requirements.
We believe that all assignments should be partner-led and assign the most relevant leader for your needs who is committed to making a lasting difference to your business.
Stephen Warburton – Managing Partner
Stephen is one of the country's leading "go to" people when it comes to growth and governance. He has over two decades of experience of working with start-up and growth companies, leading FTSE and Fortune 500 telecoms and high tech companies, and building Professional Service practices.
Chris Taylor – Partner
Chris has over 20 years of experience working in the UK and internationally with HR consulting firms, leading sales teams focussed on high-value solutions with FTSE and Fortune 500 companies. Working as a sales director, he has led high performing sales teams and is known as a rainmaker in achieving multimillion dollar corporate deals with his clients.
Caroline Brown – Partner
Caroline has 20 years of experience at plc board level, driving strategic growth and leading high-performing teams in the media, professional services, fintech and technology sectors. She thrives in entrepreneurial markets.
Bevis Moynan – Partner
Bevis is the only coach globally to be both a senior trainer of motivational mapping and a trainer of neuro linguistic programming. Bevis provides bespoke and unique business growth and advisory services with the intention of improving engagement and motivation at work.
Sara Barrie - Partner
Sara helps people and organisations to be their best and realise their potential, by enhancing leadership capability. A recognised business leader, she is an engaging, authentic and passionate coach who brings fresh thinking, challenge and fun.
Working with us
Ever wondered what it would be like to work with some of the country’s brightest minds who help clients unlock exceptional value? That’s what CAP does every day. Why not have a chat to us about how you can become part of something very special.
A strong, stable and dynamic base
An U12 cricket squad and business. They’re more alike than you think. The success this season of this group of able, but not unnaturally talented, individuals can be attributed to the same skills and approaches used to consistently create successful businesses.
This team has always been good. It has always performed well but it often lacked belief and consistency. Over the course of the last 12 months however, it has won every match it has played and, in the course of that, won both the winter indoor league and the main summer league. No mean achievement. So, what has brought about the change?
This team does not rely on just one or two players, it understands that mistakes happen. It accepts that no one makes them on purpose. It also knows that when something doesn’t go to plan, the player(s) concerned know it and feel it more than anyone and don’t need to be told they got it wrong or what they should have done. This team is supportive, understands it’s strengths and looks to execute against them. It also has fun and finds ways to enjoy the time it has together, exactly what a good business should do.
An experienced cricketing coach has a number of tools in their kitbag:
- Instruct
- Demonstrate
- Analyse
- Observe
- Listen
- Question (and discuss)
- Silence
In the cricket team the balance of these tools has changed over time and, as players have taken greater personal responsibility for their own growth, results have improved.
As a consequence, the coach takes a facilitator’s role, creating an environment that allows the team to succeed, shape its own future and defines its ambition. The coach helps it go further, faster and more consistently. Effectively, using tools 4 - 7 much more.
So just as the team’s mantra of “strong, stable, dynamic base” works in junior cricket, so it will in business. Do you agree? Let us know!
Our unique approach at CAP
CAP knows its strengths and unashamedly plays to them, and them alone. We deliver three types of assignment:
- Strategy and target operating model
- Governance, risk and compliance
- Operational effectiveness and supply chain optimisation
These are our “disciplines” and our partners are each renowned experts in these fields.
Where CAP is truly unique and where it defines #ConsultancyRepurposed© is its application of four inextricably linked “perspectives”:
- User and customer experience
- Digital and data
- Organisational development and behaviours
- Commercial
But, unlike others, we:
- Are industry agnostic, focusing on outcomes and how they are best achieved, regardless of sector
- Secure insights through combining “big data”, social/business media (inc. discussion forums), relevant networks and bespoke research
- Utilise opensource tools and techniques, but creatively, in ways others have yet to imagine
- Continuously look at where disparate worlds collide and where opportunities to re-define the accepted norm exist
For CAP, simply looking to “catch up” through benchmarking-led approaches is never enough. Our approach goes beyond this and ensures we set our clients apart from their competitors, delivering growth and scale, stability and progress, and transformation and market leadership.
Our disciplines
Strategy and target operating models
Why change unless you want to be the best? We see target operating model work as an opportunity for transformation. Whether you want to grow or evolve, we will define a strategy and ways of working to take you to industry leadership, allowing both differentiation and longer-term cost leadership to re-define your industry’s benchmark standard of excellence.
Operational effectiveness and supply chains
#KillingComplexity© is one of our mantras. With experience of working with owners on scaling for growth, successful businesses ready for listing, or established businesses re-inventing to take advantage of technology and market advances, we have the credentials you need. We have an intense focus on playing to strengths, finding the #UniqueContribution© and eliminating “time theft”. Our clients spend more time doing the things that differentiate them. Going faster because they partner with others who are specialists in their own domain. And having access to greater opportunities because they see the value in collaboration.
Governance, risk and compliance
There is nothing our team doesn’t know about this area. Whether you’re after compliance review or addressing governance with game changing thinking around flat structure leadership, we have the experience to make a positive impact. And we always ensure that more relevant insight is created at less cost with significantly less disruption.
Perspectives
Our value goes well beyond our finely tuned, expert-led discipline expertise. How we deliver this using our unique perspectives is transformational. We invest heavily in creating these perspectives, following the latest thinking, engaging in and leading the most relevant debates and creating forums for collaboration across sector and functional boundaries to tease out the very best ways for our clients to deliver their required outcomes; but we don’t merely replicate what others have done, we translate, re-imagine and repurpose to create sources of sustainable competitive advantage.
Customer and user experience
This perspective looks to help our clients optimise how they serve their customers and clients, understanding what customers are looking for, what they value and are prepared to pay for, how they prefer to interact, and the true nature and respective needs of the customer provider relationship. Fail to deliver what the customer needs and there will be no market. Over deliver where there is no perceived value and you’re incurring unnecessary cost and affording competitors cost advantage.
Digital and data
The world we live in is increasingly digitising and often in ways that we couldn’t have imagined even a few years ago. This pace of change is set to increase with AI, distributed privacy and big data gathering momentum. This perspective analyses how our clients can take advantage, not just of these developments, but also from the inherent value in its intrinsic data sets and how it can drive advantage (including “built in” compliance) from a well organised data architecture. Such is the importance of this area that not only does CAP have its own research capability, but it also has active partnerships with researchers in the university and beyond.
Organisational development
Whilst the impact of AI cannot be underestimated, people remain one of the greatest assets a company has. Aligned and motivated, it will feel like there is nothing that can’t be achieved. Without this, it’s always going to be a tougher ride. Our partners are passionate about people and people development, both at an individual and system level, and have worked with some of the largest talent management companies around. We have a network of specialists from numerous fields including, for example, psychologists, NLP master practitioners and motivation scientist. We have access to a suite of tools ranging from motivational maps through to resilience and mental toughness, which we routinely deploy to add a degree of richness that other strategy consultancies find hard to match.
Commercial
#KillingComplexity© and the #BusinessGrowthParadox© are at the heart of what we think about. Creating the environment where people and organisations play to their strengths, killing the “theft” of valuable time is essential, collaborating vs competing, and taking the right “Make vs Buy” decisions without ego because it is the right thing to do. Helping clients understand which assets are core and how they can be monetised in ways that they had never thought of is of very significant value, and an area of strength for CAP. Within our team we have accountants, lawyers, entrepreneurs, scientists and operations directors who are each passionate about discovering increasingly effective commercial models and are each committed to continuous learning.
Come and talk to us to understand how our disciplines and perspectives can help make your business unique!
Being clear on our values
Our foundation at CAP is based on values, principles and ways of working that we will not compromise on. Only those who are wholeheartedly committed to these can be part of the CAP family.
Our values
- We act ethically and with humanity, operating with honesty, transparency and integrity
- We contribute to our people, clients and communities, using our talents and resources to add value and build sustainable futures
Our principles
- We lead by example and actively support each other
- We act in the best interests of our people, clients and communities, being transparent in our actions and decisions
- We conduct our personal and professional lives in line with our ethics and professional standing
- We are inquisitive, behaviourally curious and committed to lifelong learning
- Client work will always be partner-led
- We encapsulate the Cambridge identity in our work and philosophy, seeking innovation, collaboration, inclusion, curiosity, balance and diversity
Our clients will experience us as
- Interested, investigative, passionate and innovative – we will bring all our curiosity and available talents to each client
- Reliable, results-driven, adding value and behaving ethically – we will do the right thing even if that is difficult, including telling you if we are not the right fit
- Acting with integrity, humanity and empathy – we are not here to judge, we are here to help
Is this what you would like from your business partner? If so please contact us today.