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Family Business leadership: lessons learned

January 9, 2023

Mark Essex, course director of KPMG in the UK’s Family Business Leadership Academy, talks about his key learnings from the past 12 months.

Suffering from a talent shortage? Move to skills-led organisation design

January 3, 2023

Employers can’t survive by constantly trying to push square peg employees into round hole positions. Instead, they need to look at what’s available to them in the talent market and conjure up a solution that meets their needs… Make your holes squarer, says Mark Essex, course director of the Family Business Leadership Academy, KPMG in the UK.

“Back in the day” is a phrase my kids use a lot. Of course, they don’t mean the 1980s or even the 20th Century. They mean 2019. “You know, when you used to go to work every day, Daddy”. Leaving aside that working from home is working, there is a truth in what they observe. Especially when it comes to recruitment.

Investing in people is like investing in anything, we all want the best ROI

December 1, 2022

Take a look at one of your most important asset classes, your talent, and start to think about how you can improve the investment, says Mark Essex.

In the struggle for talent, some of your competitors might prefer to poach your staff rather than coach their own. And if one of your best people is seduced by a golden hello from a rival, you’d be forgiven for looking again at how much you invest in your staff. Of course, it won’t be long before someone comes out with the cliché: “What if you train them and they leave? What if you don’t and they stay?”

Leadership through the lens: How to pass on experience and knowledge in a virtual working environment

October 28, 2022

Helping the next generation learn leadership skills is possible in a virtual world. But it’s harder and we need to work harder at it, says Mark Essex.

Leading teams in a virtual world is harder. It requires effort, concentration and planning. But, for business leaders passing on their experience gained over a lifetime, it’s an investment. And the return is higher for family businesses.

Don’t wait for hybrid working to settle down; it won’t

October 14, 2022

In a tight labour market where talent is scarce, family business should make a virtue of their optionality and flexibility on this issue to attract talent, says Mark Essex.

The invention of email is 51 years old and has been a staple tool of office workers for at least 25 years. However, in that time we still haven’t really adopted a set of ubiquitous norms; we still receive hundreds of messages a day and use basically the same workflow for “Fancy a brew” as “Please see attached a multi-million pound contract”.

Breakout session with Abhinav Ram Reddy

February 28, 2022

The next-gen managing director of office park developer GAR Corporation talks to Campden FB about adapting and evolving while sticking to what you know.

Abhinav Ram Reddy, the managing director of Hyderabad-based office park developer GAR Corporation, knows all too well the havoc the unexpected can wreak. Having weathered the COVID-19 pandemic, Reddy is now looking forward to shepherding his family-run business into a bright future.

Next gen Abhinav Ram Reddy on developing the GAR Corporation family business

November 23, 2020

The next generation principal of the office park developer GAR Corporation expects India will recover economically in 2021, but is unconvinced remote working will become a permanent fixture.

The next generation principal of the office park developer GAR Corporation expects India will recover economically in 2021, but is unconvinced remote working will become a permanent fixture.

Australia’s Coopers Brewery family business has fortitude on tap against the coronavirus

May 13, 2020

Australia’s family-owned Coopers Brewery is demonstrating its resilience against the impacts of the coronavirus pandemic by continuing to manufacture and distribute its products while supporting supply chains and the hospitality sector, and protecting its workforce and philanthropic grants.

Since the Covid-19 outbreak, the sixth-generation family business has grappled with major changes in how it operates, in tandem with difficulties among commercial partners and fluctuating customer demand in an uncertain market.