Transformative Leadership and Growth in Business Services

The service sector is one of the most challenging sectors to lead and manage because, like the hospitality sector, it is as un-mechanistic as you can get. Every service business relies on human interaction, creativity, negotiation, and relationship. While many of the production and data analysis functions might be replaceable or enhanced with AI, the sector relies so heavily on human interpretation, expression, and creativity that AI cannot replace it and probably never will.

In a mechanistic system, things are predictable, linear, and unprogrammable. Human systems are the opposite: non-linear, unpredictable, and unprogrammable. While in mechanistic systems, there may be many linear branches and logic gates; humans are independently intelligent, complex adaptive systems that react and interact with the conditions surrounding them.

Leadership and management in service-based businesses require the use of subtlety, nuance, language, and effective communication, which do not exist in the hierarchical linear command and control systems of the industrial past.

Whether digital agencies, recruitment companies, community groups, personal services businesses such as hair or beauty salons and spas, or specialist consultants, the challenge for the leadership and management of these organisations is to finely balance directional control with operational freedom and creativity.

The secret lies within CultureWork and creating your unique Platform Technology

Service businesses begin when the founder brings together a small team to fulfil their vision. As the team grows, the organisation becomes more complex. We start by capturing the founder's vision and then bring all of the team together to design the future.

The product exists only in the customers' eyes, and every customer is different. They have bought into your brand values and expect them to be translated into a solution that works for them. Trusting that the team will remain true to the brand values and use all of their creativity requires courage and understanding from everyone involved.

With ten years of experience in developing the largest beauty salon business in the UK and Spain, I have a unique perspective on trusting individuals to handle the brand values and deliver the client's expected results. Also, drawing from my hospitality experience and working with community groups, event organisers, consultants and startups, I approach the service sector in a way that ensures every person understands the contribution that is expected from them and the conditions of satisfaction required by leadership and management as well as the customer.