Our Focus

External
business focus

External business focus is an essential element of continued competitive growth. It fosters the ability to tailor current and future offerings to the market, which is a constant driver for client value.

High quality of engagement with external stakeholders produces the ability to utilise what is happening in the broader business environment to your advantage. In today’s market this is even more critical as technology creates new business opportunities and competition daily. The following attributes are critical to keeping your business externally focused:

Leadership

Your entire leadership is externally oriented and promotes a culture of constant learning from success as well as failure. This inspires action throughout the business to continually improve.

Empathy

In this culture of continuous learning everyone seeks to understand each other, the business and the market by listening on a focused level. This naturally leads to sharing of knowledge, which promotes innovation.

Innovation

Constructive disruption is your way of operating, which guarantees the quality and flow of new ideas, as well as the ability to continuously adapt to new circumstances.

Confidence

Fired by your trust in the quality of your business, you keep all your communication as transparent as possible, driving and promoting best practise internally and within your industry.

Ring true? That puts you above the norm. External business focus is often misinterpreted as only being about client focus or competitive knowledge – it requires a much wider perspective. If you agree, we may be able to do some interesting work together.

Other aspects of our focus

How healthy is your organisation?

Have a look at the components of Organisational health, so you can check how your business is faring in developing and sustaining your competitive edge.

Thank you, Nicole.  It has been an absolute pleasure to go through this stretching and illuminating programme with you as our guide.  You are a wonderful resource and impactor on our professional direction and personal and professional lives.

Chris Bowers Managing Director, AFL Hyperscale EMEA
Chris Bowers

“Most trainings bring new insights, but only few plant the seeds for lasting change. Nicole’s Coach Approach was a starting point for lasting change in the company I worked with. Her easy-to-grasp and yet profound concepts accompany me to this day. Choosing a coach approach to client relationships was a key insight for management, sales and delivery teams and helped us to professionalize our consulting business. With few adaptions, it soon became the standard doctrine for our client-facing activities. Personally, it was a starting point for transforming my whole consulting approach. I am grateful to Nicole to have opened that door for me.”

Norman Hilbert Expert in agile project management, professional development and leadership
Norman Hilbert

Nicole has very kindly supported me as I establish myself as a Coach. Nicole has an incredible ability for establishing depth of connection in a way that enables her to cut through the chat and very quickly identify what is holding you back. She provided me with challenges and direction in a manner that energised me to seek so much more for myself. Any time spent with Nicole will uncover beliefs & opportunities that will only propel you forwards.

Bep Dhaliwal Award winning Resilience Coach, Facilitating Conversations that matter, NLP practitioner, MHFA, Ollie Coach
Bep Dhaliwal

I wanted us (to become) one team with a clear focus on improving the business. Haywood Mann designed and delivered a programme for the whole of the senior team with this aim. The Haywood Mann Diagnostics provided a framework that helped us all understand the key components of a high performing team, which gave us ways to improve the relationships between team members and measures to show the progress made. This approach helped the team develop much faster than would have happened naturally and 6 months after the programme the performance of the team continues to improve. We will be continuing to work with Haywood Mann on our next steps to becoming a long term competitive business.

Piers Grummet Managing Director, Stölzle Flaconnage
Piers Grummet

‘[The Coach Approach to Client Relationships is] definitely the best course we have ever had as a company. The learning environment created was excellent and everyone took away very constructive new skills and an increased desire to ask better questions. 

Hanno Allolio Founding and Managing Partner, Allolio & Konrad GmbH
Hanno Allolio

Sadly, not every professional is interested in making sure that they are right up to date with the latest research and thinking in their core area. However, Nicole is one of those rare people who takes their professional responsibilities and development seriously, and who mixes practical experience with proper evidence and research. Nicole is professional, knowledgeable and with a real concern for not only making sure that her work is evidence-based but that her deep knowledge is right up to date with the very latest research and evidence.

David Wilkinson Editor, The Oxford Review
David Wilkinson

Nicole is an excellent executive business coach. Many executives overlook the need for effective coaching that has a significant long-term impact on their management skills and decision making. Nicole is a person that is able to identify with management needs and specific outcomes. I strongly recommend her as an executive coach to clients

Julius Steyn Investor and Finance Specialist in Water Sector
Julius Steyn

“It is a real delight to work with Nicole – why do I say this?  Firstly, her absolute integrity, responsiveness, flexibility and dependability.  Secondly, her finely honed coaching and feedback skills have helped many of our senior managers positively embrace the changes they need to make to improve their own and their teams performance.  Thirdly, her enthusiasm for life and being proactive about living it to the full makes it very interesting and great fun to work with Nicole.”

Shirley Smith Global HR People Development, Lenzing AG
Shirley Smith

“Andrew’s experience, knowledge and advice enabled us to focus on the key issues. The Directors have already been discussing the potential benefits of engaging (his) services in the future to assist with the strategic direction of our business.”

Darryl Pounds Director, John Burke Associates
Darryl Pounds

“Andrew has excellent credentials across several industry sectors which enabled him to grasp our challenges very quickly.  He’s very ethical in what he does (and) he adds value away from the defined sessions.I have recommended Andrew several times and will continue to do so.” 

Andrew Smart Managing Director, Virtual Sales Team Ltd
Andrew Smart

The Game Changer assessment is useful at pinpointing those areas that need the most attention on the path towards ‘outstanding’. It is worth your time to discover something useful about your business 

Paul Matthews Managing Director, People Alchemy Ltd
Paul Matthews

The in-depth report [on Organisational Health] provides some excellent pointers on next steps. Getting the rest of my management team to review the output provoked much needed discussion on some challenging issues.

John Sharples Managing Director LPRS Ltd
John Sharples

Nicole is a person I admire greatly. We both serve on the board of Entrepreneurs World and working with her is always enjoyable. She has a wonderful intellect, which I value very highly, and a fascination with many things. She is dynamic, warm, down to earth, well-informed, balanced and fun to deal with while also being passionate, very proactive and unafraid to tell it as it is. She is excellent at drawing out the best in people, something I have seen in action many times. If you need someone to bring out the best in you, so that you use all your talents and skills, Nicole is very highly regarded and must rank as one of the best there is. She’s great and I highly recommend her.

Robert Clay Author, Speaker, Mentor, helping owners of established businesses to achieve 628% growth in 12 months or less
Robert Clay

Nicole enables busy Executives and CEOs to communicate better with each other and their teams’. Nicole ensures that individuals become effective leaders. Nicole is passionate about building effective teams and improving people management within organisations. I have recommended my contacts and clients to her, and all have spoken about the true level of satisfaction and commitment which they have found with her services.

Simon Renshaw Director and Insolvency Practitioner at RG Insolvency
Simon Renshaw

“Nicole is simply awesome.  She is not only a wonderful kind-hearted and warm person, she delivers time and again and is the ultimate professional.  If you haven’t had chance to work with her, do.  Then you may see why she gets so many recommendations.”

Cliff Findlay Creative Director, Latitude Solutions Ltd
Cliff Findlay

Find out how External Business Focus can
transform your organisation. Get in touch.