The curse of the Feast and Famine Cycle
Many small business owners will understand what we mean by the curse of the Feast and Famine Cycle. When it gets busy – it is busy. You focus on delivering for your customer and that often leaves little time to devote to marketing.
The end of 2024 was busy to say the least. 2025 started the same way. And our website has been neglected. So, to get things started, here are some things we forgot to tell you…
Building personal profiles in Lego
In December last year, we delivered our first sessions using the Clarity4D profiling tool. The name Clarity4D comes from the concept of four dimensions of personal development and goes beyond simply providing personality profiles. The 4D approach is a process which embeds continuous growth for individuals, teams and organisations – so nicely aligned with our own approach. We still use DISC Flow but we now have more flexibility to use a technique that meets the specific needs of a customer.
We also used Lego in those sessions, so that the senior leaders and managers on the programme could build and share creative representations of their preferred styles whilst improving the effectiveness of their communication and working relations.
Circles of Concern and Control
At times during the Feast and Famine Cycle, the challenges of life overtake you and your good intentions get deprioritised and forgotten. We had a few people on programmes who were struggling with this so we encouraged them to concentrate their efforts on those things they can do something about.
It isn’t necessarily about being in the “fast lane” – worrying about how other people act and behave. Maybe it’s about focusing your energy on you bringing a proactive approach to the challenges that you face.
Recognising that this can be an issue for many people, in January we released a short video about the Circles of Concern and Influence on our YouTube channel. You can see the video here.
Helping small businesses to grow
In February we wrapped up our last session on Help to Grow on behalf of Nottingham Trent University. Developed and delivered by Small Business Charter-accredited business schools across the UK, The Help to Grow: Management Course consisted of 12 modules, peer support work and 1-2-1 mentoring. Mark was a guest speaker and subject matter expert for two of the modules: Digital Transformation and Effective Operations.
As well as a variety of tools and techniques, these modules used a variation of the Business Model Canvas to deliver some of the key messages. We have always loved that Strategyzer framework and it inspired us to produce an example based on Optima Training. It turned out to be one of our most popular videos to date. You can see that video here.