A view from the top: Dave Annable on business infrastructure for ambitious growth.
When I first met Dave and his senior team at Franklin Fitch, the passion and energy for value-led quality and culture literally shone through the whole business.
This is his story:
What has been your experience with business infrastructure (relating to strategic, operations and people)?
I started my career in sales, and after four years moved into my first recruitment role with a large, entrepreneurial, independent recruitment business that later floated on the LSE. That business was well-run, it had a tremendous learn and development team, excellent leadership support structures, and extremely robust process and business infrastructure. It was exciting to be there, but also taught me a great deal about build strong foundations for sustainable growth.
I am a process driven sales leader, so when setting up Franklin Fitch, it was imperative to have the right business infrastructure from the outset. I planned for ambitious growth, so excellent business systems, formed around a supportive, growth mindset culture, was key.
We’ve grown organically through a graduate hiring model, so learning and development (eventually leading to our Academy system) has been fundamental to our success. Nurturing raw talent into recruitment excellence takes strong processes and quality business infrastructure.
We now have a thriving company-wide development programme, with clear progression routes for all of our people, enabling career development at every step. It’s crucial that our business infrastructure is rock solid, our high standards are upheld, and these relate directly to our vision, values and culture for Franklin Fitch to excel.
What are your thoughts on Absolutely Business’s Growth Framework® for recruitment SMEs?
People are our business, and enabling people to be their true selves to thrive is our goal. Processes and systems are very important, especially when used to support, inspire and motivate people to do great things together.
I realise that I have been fortunate; my first recruitment employer understood the value of business infrastructure, and had established great processes. Balancing entrepreneurship, ambition and efficient processes can be tricky and this is where Absolutely Business’s Growth Framework® can support roadmap creation for many recruitment SMEs.
I haven't used the Growth Framework® personally, but the three pillars make it accessible and clear for users to know where to either start building or enhancing their processes. Having the sections laid out in such a way instantly gives teams a shared goal and language which increases productivity and a sense of going forward.
When building a recruitment SME, being effective with your resource and preparing your processes for the next step in your growth is paramount. This framework should create the foundation and could be hugely impactful.
The Growth Framework® advantage.
Ambitious growth definitely needs passion, energy and inspiring leadership. But is also needs the right foundation to support it – because this creates environments where everyone can out-perform market norms.
That’s why we created the Growth Framework®, based on our proven consultancy model for business growth and scale-up - at a much more accessible price.