Winning a big, lucrative government contract is every small business’s dream, right? Yes, but with some nightmares along the way.
| Entrepreneur |
Drew Sutherland, Managing Director |
| Company |
The Benchmarque Group |
| Business type |
Registered Training Organisaton (RTO) specialising in clinical and leadership skills training |
| Founded |
2007 |
| Employees |
4 full-time, 35 sessional trainers |
| Head office |
South Yarra, Melbourne |
Key Learning Points |
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Assumptions
Do you just assume that your people are across all the current developments, or that they remember what was said in the last meeting, or just follow events in their own way? Don’t. Drew says: “I probably tended to assume too much about how much staff knew about what was going on. With the open-plan office, I just figured that if people wanted to know, they would listen in. But that wasn’t the case”.
Titles And Rank
If you’re in the top dog’s seat in your organisation, it can be easy to forget how much some staff value their title. Remember when “manager” first appeared on your business card? Drew says: “I learnt about needing to pay more respect to people’s place within the organisation. Sometimes it’s really easy to think that titles and job roles are over-rated. Then I have to remind myself that it’s easy to think this way when you have the best title in the office”.
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The Benchmarque Group Story
Drew Sutherland is having trouble wiping the smile off his face as he reflects on his success in meeting what felt like a Goliath-size challenge for his David-size business. In 2007, Drew established a small training company, Benchmarque Group, which specialises in teaching hands-on medical skills such as suturing, first aid and cardio-pulmonary resuscitation to health professionals, mainly nurses.
By early 2010, the business had grown past start-up and Drew was considering expanding into leadership and motivational training. In a bold move, he submitted a tender to the Commonwealth Department of Human Services (DHS) to provide 4,000 Child Support Agency workers with training in resilience and personal leadership. It was a speculative bid and, after posting the tender, Drew flew to Alice Springs to begin a cycling trip with a bunch of mates.
But as Drew was strapping on his bike clips in Alice Springs, the mobile phone rang in his pocket. It was a DHS manager calling to say that Benchmarque Group had won the contract. Suddenly, Drew had to snap out of holiday mode and get on with developing and delivering a new course at 14 sites around the country within16 weeks.
The Challenge
Drew had 16 weeks to develop, finance and deliver a new training program to 4,000 participants at 14 locations around Australia while keeping his core medical skills training business ticking over. The intense pressure strained relationships between Benchmarque Group’s staff and placed Drew under personal and financial strain.
The Solution
For a guy who had always been a bike-riding, jeans-wearing, casual-shirt type of manager, Drew was surprised at how intimidated he felt by the challenge he faced. He says: “Driving down the Geelong road to meet with the DHS manager, I was absolutely wetting myself, thinking ‘How can I make myself seem more important than I am?’”
He eventually calmed himself by realising that they had chosen him because he had the best tender and he had nothing to hide. Excitement, anxiety, staff discontent and other issues would now jostle for Drew’s attention during the 16 weeks between winning and finally delivering the last training session of the contract.
In the past, clients had paid up-front for their training. With DHS, payment came after the courses were delivered. Drew had to draw on a nest egg of cash in order to pay and accommodate the contract trainers, fly them around the country and buy the 25 laptops and projectors that Benchmarque Group needed to deliver the training. There was a lot riding on the contract.
As Drew focused on the mechanics of making the contract work, discontent was bubbling away among the staff. The small organisation was being forced to rapidly step up to a much bigger role and it lacked the systems and culture to manage it well. Drew was frequently out of the office and inadvertently left staff members out of meetings.
In response, Drew introduced shared calendars using MobileMe (an Apple product). He now holds weekly meetings at which the previous week’s events are reviewed and the week ahead previewed. It has taken some work but Drew says: “I feel as though we’re holding hands again.”
Drew’s open and honest style of management provided a framework for staff to vent their frustrations over the unprecedented pressures.
The Result
The stress of those 16 weeks revealed weaknesses in Benchmarque Group’s management structure that needed attention. Staff relations were painfully shaken up but resolving the problems has resulted in more open and efficient relationships.
Drew is thrilled about having broken into the “soft skills” training field. As a result of winning a large, lucrative government contract, Benchmarque Group has made a valuable capital investment and is now perceived as a more broadly based company that delivers training in leadership and motivation as well as medical skills.
Benchmarque Group’s annual revenue has doubled within about six months to a projected turnover for 2010–11 of $4 million.