Company Spotlight: Creamer & Sundt

Creamer & Sundt is a bespoke management consultancy based in London and Glasgow. Alistair Creamer is described as “a catalyst, a creative and a bridge-builder”, and Anna Sundt as “a business psychologist, facilitator and artist”.

In their own words, they work with businesses to “bring about change by using the arts to engage people, inspire better ways of working and accelerate learning and development”. They talk about taking art out of the everyday and putting it into the hearts of the organisations they work with.

Creamer & Sundt's clients are varied and come from across multiple sectors, including Unilever, Film London, Buttle UK and Chichester Festival Theatre. Their inspirations, listed on their website, come from far and wide, spanning the full breadth of the creative arts.

They focus on three main areas:

• Connecting – finding your purpose and communication.
• Creating – innovation and culture change.
• Acceleration – team and leadership development.

Connect

Creamer & Sundt apply the mindset of an artist to their ideas about communication. This means bringing your message to life through a mixture of storytelling, visuals and video.

• Focus on communication within your organisation – people want to feel good about company goals, how they are contributing to the company's success and how the company is performing.
• People need to know “why” - what is the purpose behind your business?

“People don't buy what you do. They buy why you do it” - Simon Sinek

Create

The belief that everyone is creative and that companies are more successful when people are creative at work is a core element of their approach to business. They bring this creative approach into businesses in two ways: innovation and culture change.

• When people come to them with a specific challenge, they try to play it back to them and disrupt their thinking, creating the space and environment for them to see that challenge in a fresh way.
• They also have a passion for working brands that are serious about culture – these projects are a long-term investment in people.
• Engaged employees are the best employees; people really living the values are the ones who deliver.

“If you are going to evolve, to survive and thrive, then you too will need to think more creatively. And you'll need to do it faster, too” ― Nick Souter, 'Breakthrough Thinking'

Accelerate

From strategy conferences in Amsterdam to team-building days in Soho, Creamer & Sundt consider their team events to be their signature work.

• They aim to help you get the most out of your budget and time together, pushing the envelope of what can be achieved “off-site” to pull off some truly invigorating team events.
• Creativity is a key quality in modern leadership.
• Creamer & Sundt's leadership programmes are “a journey of discovery” - they work through challenges, design unique learning sessions, and coach both teams and individuals.

“Change will never be this slow again” ― Mark Holden, PHD Media Worldwide

Watch this space for an exclusive interview with director Alistair Creamer.

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Our next event will be at Indigo Blue on 9th November. We hope to see you there!

Company Spotlight – Ernst & Young

Ernst & Young or EY is one of the so-called 'Big Four' audit firms. Founded in 1989 through the merger of Ernst & Whinney and Arthur Young & Co, the multinational professional services firm is the third largest in the world by aggregated revenue (2014), after PwC and Deloitte. The organisation operates as a network of member firms which are separate legal entities in individual countries.

In 2016, Fortune magazine ranked EY as one of the 100 Best Companies to Work For and it is now the 11th largest privately owned organisation in the United States. It has at least 212,000 employees in over 700 offices around 150 countries in the world. It provides assurance (including financial audit), tax, consulting and advisory services to companies.

EY Global

EY is the most globally managed of the Big Four firms. EY Global sets global standards and oversees global policy and consistency of service, with client work performed by its member firms. Each member is organised as part of one of four areas, whereas most other professional services networks are more centrally managed.

The four areas are:

• Europe, Middle East, India and Africa
• Americas
• Asia-Pacific
• Japan

Each area has an identical business structure and a management team, which is lead by an Area Managing Partner who is part of the Global Executive board. The aim of this structure is to effectively cater for an increasingly global clientèle, who have multinational interests.

“Building a Better Working World”

EY aims to create what they describe as “a better working world”, by asking #better questions, such as “how do we inspire future entrepreneurs to bring their ideas to life”? For them, this better world looks like increased trust and confidence in business, sustainable growth, development of talent in all its forms, and greater collaboration. This includes using their global reach and scale to start conversations about the challenges facing economies and the capital markets. They believe that “when business works better, the world works better”.

EY Entrepreneur Of The Year®

As part of it's goal to recognise, celebrate and nurture the power of entrepreneurs to make a difference and bring fresh ideas to create positive social change, EY started their Entrepreneur of the Year awards programme.

The first programme took place in 1986 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, in the United States and by 1987 it was held across 11 US cities, expanding internationally in 1993. The programme celebrates entrepreneurs, giving them the chance to share their stories, inspire others and receive the recognition they deserve.

Over the last five years, more than 6,500 entrepreneurs have become Entrepreneur Of The Year alumni, a veritable “who’s who” of both developed and emerging markets. Over half of today’s top 100 NASDAQ companies have won Entrepreneur Of The Year, and most received the award before they achieved top 100 status.

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Our next event will be at TateHindle on 12th October. We hope to see you there!

Business Spotlight – London Small Business Centre

Among the attendees of our most recent event at the Brain Exchange was a business adviser at the London Small Business Centre. Formally known as the East London Small Business Centre, they exist to provide help and support for entrepreneurs who wants to start their own business and be their own boss.

Their business support services are open to anyone living or trading within all 33 London Boroughs but they also run specific programmes in Lewisham and Redbridge, aimed at supporting local communities. This includes access to the Lewisham Enterprise Hubs, affordable workspace with business support and access to finance, and support for construction businesses in Lewisham.

As part of a commitment to supporting local businesses, Lewisham Council is working in partnership with London Small Business Centre to help Construction SMEs to access more work opportunities in Lewisham as well as in surrounding boroughs.

Key Areas of Focus

• Education.
• Advice and mentoring.
• Access to finance.

Education

Through a mixture of subsidised events, workshops and other programmes, they aim to ensure that small business owners are fully prepared and confident to start and grow their own businesses. Start & Grow is their three year tailored support business package funded by the Regional Growth Fund. The programme basically provides a step-by-step guide designed to take your idea from a start-up to a growing business.

Mentoring

The London Small Business Centre also providescre one-to-one mentoring services with their team of highly skilled, professional business advisers who have all worked for leading companies and have their own experience of starting a business. They give practical hands on advice about your business objectives, including help with business plans, cash flow forecasts and loan applications.

Once you've secured a start-up loan from the London Small Business Centre, you're assigned an adviser to mentor you through the start-up phase and to continue to review the practical aspects whilst you're trading and growing. If you’re an existing business and looking to grow, you’ll also be assigned a business adviser who will guide you on how to scale up. Businesses and advisers are paired together depending on their business ideas and goals. Sessions are structured dependent on the kind of support needed.

Finance

They also work with various partners and sponsors to ensure that clients have access to the right kind of loan and subsidised programmes to help start and grow a business. Their diverse range of partnerships with companies and organisations ranging from the European Regional Development Fund to London South Bank University deliver a range of pan-London projects.

As well as start-up loans, creative industry finance and RevoLewisham, the London Small Business Centre might be able to provide the following loans:

• Short-Term Loans Against Orders up to £10,000.
• Sharia Compliant Loans For Entrepreneurs of Muslim Faith.
• Gap or Match Funding With Other Lenders.

You can get involved through sponsorship, offering pro-bono support to entrepreneurs or donating to the East London Small Business Charity which runs the centre. The donations are used to help create jobs in London by training ambitious entrepreneurs to start their own businesses.

RevoLewisham

RevoLewisham is the revolving energy fund for Lewisham. It is designed to help Lewisham businesses aquire the skills, knowledge, accreditation and tools needed to put themselves in the best position to develop and benefit from market shifts.

Currently 17% of the total carbon emissions in the UK come from homes, commercial and public buildings. This will need to be substantially reduced in the coming years, offering a massive opportunity for businesses. Between the number of home and business retrofits which are taking place each year, increasingly stretching carbon targets and clear signs from government that most energy efficiency improvements to properties are going to have to be funded by occupants, there is every reason to believe the market for energy efficiency measures will grow substantially.

RevoLewisham can provide support or funding to increase the ability of your business to develop and access the growing energy efficiency market and help your customers make informed choices. The interest-free loan can be used for training, accreditation fees, retrofit equipment, project development and marketing. The programme is funded by the London Borough of Lewisham.

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Our next event will be at TateHindle on 12th October. We hope to see you there!

Company Spotlight: IndigoBlue

Among those joining us for our next event on Wednesday 14^th at Buttle UK will be the Head of Public Sector Services at IndigoBlue, a leading agile technology consultancy.

Since their conception, IndigoBlue has been at the forefront of a number of cutting edge projects in the UK, working with a wide range of clients from the British Council to IPC Media to BrightHouse. They are the current holders of the prestigious Agile Consultancy of the Year award.

IndigoBlue believe that change within their clients' businesses should be driven by the clients themselves, rather than prescribed at the beginning of their relationship and then imposed. They believe that this will help businesses to achieve self-sufficiently much earlier than would otherwise be expected.

With a focus on hands-on development of skills and experience, they provide their clients with the skills and insight needed to transform successfully to digital organisations, creating a dynamic culture and structure to allow businesses to more effectively respond to their customer's needs.

Agile Management

IndigoBlue operates under the principles of Agile Management, an umbrella terms for a set of ideas, principles and methodologies for developing software which share a common philosophy. Examples of Agile methodologies include Adaptive Software Development and Pragmatic Programming.

The term was invented in 2001 by a group of 'luminaries' in the field of software development. They recognised that they held similar views and met to agree on their areas of commonality. This meeting was concluded by the signing of the Manifesto for Agile Software Development, a document which summarised their approach to software development and introduced the term Agile to combine their ideas.

The core principle of the manifesto is that 'a project should continually and incrementally deliver value to the customer'. IndigoBlue works with organisations to fully embed Agile. They have developed and refined a number of ideas to help people understand how and why Agile works, and enable projects to be governed without compromising the agility of the approach.

Key Ideas:

• Collaboration,
• incremental planning,
• and dynamic uncertainty management.

For example, the Agile Manifesto promotes 'working software over comprehensive documentation' – i.e. the need for iterative, incremental delivery. A good Agile project reduces time to market and maximises early value, delivering regular increments. Therefore, incremental planning is seen as critical to success. It provides clear direction to the project and involves a more thorough understanding and management of value then is normally required on a more traditional project.

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Our next event will be at Buttle UK on 14th September. We hope to see you there!

Company Spotlight: Buttle UK

In their own words, Buttle UK focuses on 'maintenance, education and advancement
 in life of children and young people who through poverty and family circumstances are in need of, and will benefit significantly from, Buttle UK’s support'.

Buttle UK was founded on the vision of an East End clergyman who endeavoured to raise £1m to 'launch 1,000 children a year out of poverty'. His name was Rev Frank Buttle and he died on February 1953 when he was just £80,000 away from his original target. This money was used as an endowment to fund the charity as it exists today and is now worth almost £50m.

The endowment was set up to be permanent, meaning that the Trustees are required to balance the potential needs of future beneficiaries of the fund with current ones. The fund therefore can never be fully spent but has been re-invested and multiplied countless times since its inception, creating an income which the Trust then spends on an annual basis. As they have grown, Buttle UK have expanded Frank Buttle's original vision to include research and project work, but the core of their work remains providing support and relief through grant aid.

In their 2014/15 review, they note that in the previous year, they 'gave out more than 11,000 grants worth a total of £3.7 million' but that in the future they plan to do even more. Recent projects include ground-breaking research on 'kinship carers' and a study into the effects of boarding school places for vulnerable children.

Key Areas of Focus

Their key areas of focus include:

• boarding places,
• domestic abuse,
• emergency essentials,
• estranged young people,
• and kinship care.

In 2015, Buttle UK launched 'Boarding Chances for Children', funded by the Education Endowment Foundation. This is a research project looking into the ways in which boarding schools can 'offer a transformative experience for certain groups of vulnerable children'. The charity is currently working with local authorities to place children at boarding schools starting from year 7 in September 20-17. In comparison with the majority of children in care, only 15% of which achieve 5 good GCSEs, 60-70% of children supported by Buttle UK to attend boarding school achieve at least 5 good GCSEs.

Buttle UK also runs the BBC Children in Need Emergency Essentials Programme, providing quick and direct financial support, in collaboration with their Small Grants scheme. The programme provides up to £300 for families or young people who are 'living in crisis', helping to alleviate stress caused by financial pressure and help families buy essentials such as white goods or even beds. Buttle UK's extensive network of 5,000 frontline partner agencies allows them to target funds to reach the most vulnerable children and young people in the UK; 28,057 children were helped by the charity within the last year alone.

Kinship carers refer to those who are taking care of the children of relatives because their parents can no longer look after them. A study commissioned by Buttle UK, conducted by the University of Bristol and funded by the Big Lottery Fund revealed in 2001 that approximately 173,200 children were living in this kind of situation. Changes in policy and demographics mean that this number has increased over time and with no statutory provision for local authorities to make provision for them, many kinship carers receive no formal support.

Buttle UK are developing projects to help carers meet the specific needs of children in these arrangements and are currently able to provide extra support to kinship carers in Northern Ireland as well as some parts of Scotland and Wales.

Click here to see our membership packages or leave a comment below.

Our next event will be at Buttle UK on 14th September. We hope to see you there!