Yesterday I attended the Business Growth Workshop by Indigenous Business Australia in the Brisbane office. I actually didn’t realise that IBA had a growth workshop until two weeks ago when I saw the post of Facebook. I was really keen to see the content and give myself a day to work through stuff about IM.

The workshop was delivered by David, an independent contractor based in Sydney, who has a lot of experience in online businesses, shipping, and the oil industry, and has delivered the workshop many times over the years. The content was written some years ago by BDO. Though the materials were a few years old, they were very relevant and timeless.

The day was organised around 8 modules – personal, strategy, people, culture, leadership, management systems, finances, and customer needs. I feel like it was a good overview of the issues around growth. I was particularly drawn to the idea of creating a dashboard for the business which first establishes the KPIs we need to monitor, as well as tools to ensure we get the information we need.

I really like the pacing of the workshop – there was enough content (including videos at every section) and time for discussion, but also written exercises. I thought it really benefited from being an interactive workshop, after each module, we were encouraged to complete an action plan for that area (in the booklet it’s referred to as Alignment Summary). I think the main message of the workshop was that “alignment” is key to successful and sustainable growth – are our personal goals (as owners) aligned with all the other aspects of the business.

My only suggestion is a review of the booklet to get some of the slide content into it. I’m keen to continue to use the booklet as a reference.

David was an excellent presenter. We were a bit of a chatty group and he had plenty of examples from a long career in a variety of businesses to pull from. He had a nice pace and was really responsive to the group’s questions and discussions.

I highly recommend this workshop – I feel like there would be benefits in doing the workshop early in the business journey and then again in later years.

As I’ve mentioned many times before, business owners must be life-long learners. This workshop is one that could be quite useful at multiple points in the business owner journey.