David initially approached Oxford Innovation looking for an external perspective on the organisational structure of his business, and while he had a firm understanding of what he hoped to achieve, wanted to sense check his thinking with someone outside of the business.
Although he was at first uncertain about whether business coaching could yield the results he was looking for, working together with Lead Coach Meredydd Jones, a reorganisation of the business took place that David was happy with.
“The coaching program seemed like a great opportunity to see if my cynicism around these programmes is really valid (…) I suppose I was looking for somebody to bring an external perspective to the business that could just challenge us in ways that we weren’t doing ourselves,” David explains. “The coaching support really helped me to reshape the structure of the business to make it more effective.”
That reorganisation, David says, may have helped the business look more credibly ready for expansion. This stood it in good stead when it was approached by TFP, and then merged into the group at the beginning of 2021.
Following on from the restructuring, Meredydd enlisted the support of OI coach Karen Biggs to help with the next hurdle faced by David and his team: finding a more efficient way to monitor projects.
“I’ve been really, really pleased with the work that Meredydd and Karen have done for us. Karen helped us out with a couple of very specific things, we wanted a way of managing or monitoring short term projects (…) she had some tools that she’d used, and she gave me and the team some coaching on those tools. That was a very tangible benefit.”
“They are coaches to help you really unpick what you need to do with your business, rather than to come in and tell you what to do. And I think they played that role really well.”
The expansion of the business into the TFP group has been a hugely important part of the journey for David Hodgson and the business he created. Now a part of the wider group, the innovation and expertise that made the business remarkable can continue to make a difference at a critical time for the environment.