Business Coach in the company, Antonio Panìco speaks
Between Great Resignation and new needs, the habits of businesses and workers have radically changed from 2020 to today.
If we add to this the crisis triggered by the war in Ukraine and the high prices, the scenario outlined by ISTAT in its latest report on innovation in companies emerges.
Italian production companies invest less and less (just 50.9% have introduced at least one innovation within their processes) and struggle to rely on external professionals to improve dynamics business.
A practice, the latter, very widespread overseas, but scarcely adopted in our country.
Among the successful entrepreneurs who have relied, for themselves or for their brand, on a business coach, for example, appear former Google CEO Eric Schmidt, journalist Oprah Winfrey and Silicon Valley guru Steve Bennet.
A research by the American company “Exactly Where You Want To Be”, in fact, it shows how 90% of the leaders who have hired one recorded important increases on average.
Business coaches are professionals with expertise, skills and experience to support the growth of a business on the market.
But what are the reasons for having a business coach in the company?
According to Antonio Panìco, founder of Business Coaching Italia and winner of the international Business Coach of the Year award 2021, at the ‘CEO today management consulting awards’, there are at least 5.
“It is physiological that companies can face periods of difficulty linked to various reasons – explains the expert – and contacting a business coach can prove to be essential to overcome obstacles. In my experience, the 5 most frequent reasons that require the support of this professional figure are represented by very specific conditions “.
“The first, for example, is that the entrepreneur wants to unblock himself because he is no longer productive. Generally this happens because he does not have a group of independent collaborators and, without his continuous support and presence, the activities are not completed in the right time. He is therefore always committed to solving operational problems and in fact does not have time for the strategic management of his company “.
“The second reason it concerns companies that are already performing well but wish to increase turnover and profit, but do not have a precise strategy to do so “.
“The third reason to have a business coach in the company is the desire to improve the internal organization, perhaps in the light of critical issues that prevent the carrying out of activities in a fluid, effective and efficient manner, such as organization charts, workflows, procedures, job descriptions, definition of KPIs and their monitoring “.
“The fourth reason it’s about the corporate crisis, when all the statistics have collapsed. This is a real emergency in which procedures, including radical ones, must be put in place to regain altitude ”.
“The fifth and final reason, but not important, it is the starting up of a startup; this requires external support capable of organizing, structuring and guiding every part of the process so that we can immediately start off on the right foot ”, concludes business coach Antonio Panìco.
Entrepreneurs generally aspire to increase profit margins, they want to see the company grow, but also have more free time to devote both to loved ones and to future strategies for the expansion of the company; however, their attempts are often in vain.
According to the experience gained by the expert Panìco supporting, together with his team, hundreds of companies in their reorganization, there are 3 pillars from which to start to achieve these objectives.
Planning: “To clearly analyze the possible scenarios to understand the objectives that the company will be able to achieve in its market. Entrepreneurs tend to be discouraged and intimidated by the aspects of macroeconomics that surround them, but most SMEs are not or may not be affected by these scenarios. For example, the big players, in times of crisis, tend to reduce their promotion and communication activities and this could be the right time, for small companies, to conquer new market shares “.
Know the numbers of your company: “I have noticed in recent years that there are many entrepreneurs who do not know their numbers in detail, nor their break-even point in the company balance sheet. But it is precisely within the numbers that the answers to the entrepreneur’s desires are hidden: more free time, the possibility of hiring new staff or buying machinery. Knowing the data, knowing how to read it and having the ability to change the status quo in response to low margins is essential “.
Organization: “Organization chart, flows, rules, procedures, everything must be extremely clear. Each employee must know what to do, what objectives to achieve and the correct sequence of actions necessary to pursue them. It is essential that the metrics with which the results achieved will be measured are well known, to the worker as well as to the entrepreneur, in order to understand in time if it is necessary to correct any errors or if we are proceeding in the right direction “.
