One of the potential clients I met with in Malawi was a very energetic and entrepreneurial business man who enjoyed the cut and thrust of acquiring new businesses. By his own admission, however, he was not a manager this was not a fun area for him. He was one of those guys who has a phone in either hand and was either horribly early for meetings or horribly late a real maverick.
He already had a diverse portfolio of businesses a design agency, a printing company and a hotel or Lodge as they are called in Malawi usually because they are single story buildings.
In addition to wanting Business Plans completed for each of the Businesses he wanted us to put together a Management Framework for him. Interestingly, when I did my internet research every consultant starts there of course although I got women in bathing costumes I could find no simple authoritative Management Framework.
So it was time for the drawing board and this is what I came up with - see www'chrisfarrance.co.uk
Particular issues here were the fact that the client was the sole shareholder and he was currently running the businesses single handed. A positive was that he had travelled abroad and was keen to develop world class business.
I was not in Malawi long enough to see this through but it was clear that there would be a number of challenges not the least of which on present evidence it would call for a massive behavioural shift by the client. So the outcome was unproven although I would like to think the basic framework shown here is essentially sound.