In “Catalysing Success”, delve into the transformation journey of Narla Engineering, a seasoned business facing the challenge of over-reliance on its founder. Faced with the looming thought of retirement and the realisation that the company’s sustainability rested solely on his shoulders, the owner sought the guidance of Action Coach.

Through targeted interventions and a customised approach, the business underwent a remarkable transition. Coaching was a catalyst for change, unearthing untapped potential and driving tangible improvements in sales and operational efficiencies. Discover how accountability, strategic focus, and leveraging the expertise of a skilled coach propelled this business towards newfound autonomy and growth, setting the stage for a successful transition into the next phase of its evolution.

Video Transcript

I think he’s helped us a lot. Lots of areas of the business are better than they used to be. If you look in the Action Coach sort of portfolio, the number of areas that they’ve got, or informational areas you’ve got, very few businesses would use all those. So we’ve only used a certain section which suited us. We focused on areas that we knew where we could improve and it’s helped us enormously.

Business has always been a very solid business, but it were clear, as I were getting older and coming up to retirement, I didn’t really feel that the company were necessarily in the right position for me to be able to leave the business. The business were very dependent on me and I recognised a bit of work needed putting in to enable me to be able to exit the business. The business obviously wouldn’t have been saleable without me in it. So, these were key things which needed addressing at this particular time in the business’s evolution, as it were. But I found Action Coach excellent in the setup, the amount of information they had, the areas that were covered, and in our case, we got a very good coach.

One of the most important things that people can get from coaching, and we certainly did, is that a coach acts as a great catalyst because you know so much about your own business, but sometimes it needs dragging out of you. And I think coaching does that, if you use it in the right way. I think accountability does play a big part. We all know how effective a to do list is and we find ourselves adding things to our to do list that we’ve done so we can cross them off. So, it’s a powerful mental thing and it’s good for people in the workforce to get into that mindset.

From our point of view, in our particular business, we saw results very quick, but we saw good improvements in our sales and in our efficiencies. And efficiencies to us, we viewed as much more important because as sales can go down, you’re much stronger and much more able to make a profit when things are very tough. Our business is a people business. We haven’t got state of the art machinery, we’ve got state of the art people. So, the development of the staff has such an impact in the company’s future, its efficiency, its ability to respond to what the customer wants. So that’s where I see the strength in our business. And the improvement is in the improvement in the people. Well, yeah, I think I could leave the business and the business could do very nicely. Fortunately, we’ve got quite a lot of new business, a lot of complex jobs, which we’re looking at, which I love to get involved in, so that’s great. But I feel the business without me is better than it used to be. But our coach was quite a talented man in his own right. He’s got lots of skills himself, which I think is important. None of us like to listen to people who’ve not achieved much in the life, or certainly that’s how I look at it. And Matthew, we have. Has achieved a lot himself, so he’s worth listening to.