People don’t come more down-to-earth than Janine Smith – but the business support organisation she leads has really taken off.
Director of GM Business Growth Hub since 2021, she has been integral to its growth over the last 12 years. Between 2018 and 2022, it had a return on investment of over 10:1, placing it amongst the highest gross value-added business support services in the UK. It expects to generate £506m of net economic benefit by 2025.
“Whatever type of funding we’ve tendered for and won – whether local or national – we’ve always been really successful,” she tells BusinessCloud. “We’ve delivered that high-quality support and delivered the impacts we need to in order to make a difference to the place we are working in.”
On the ground in all 10 local authority areas in Greater Manchester, it has supported more than 90,000 businesses to date, creating 15,000 jobs. Its services span funding, innovation, sustainability, people and sales.
“Our first growth spurt came when we secured European funding in 2013 and were able to scale to 50 staff,” says Smith. “Before that, when there was a handful of us, everyone mucked in: if the phone rang, any one of us might have picked it up, whereas now we have a dedicated enquiries team.
“When you grow to that size, you have to put a hierarchy in place alongside a change in mindset and a culture shift to ensure you can spend your time where you need to.”
She explains by way of an example: “With 170,000 businesses across Greater Manchester, we began to specialise people in certain geographical areas or sectors. We moved to a different floor and had to look at sitting people in zones, whereas before it was more unstructured.
“Communication then becomes quite a challenge and you have to plan this more formally.”
FUEL Manchester 2024
Smith will join Mehdi Kordi, head of sprint performance for the Netherlands cycling team at Paris 2024, Tech Returners co-founder Beckie Taylor and Isobelle Panton, director of student recruitment and international at University Academy 92, as an expert in the ‘people and performance’ masterclass at FUEL Manchester 2024 on Wednesday 16th October.
They will together offer direct advice to a cohort of 25 scaling companies in a series of ask-me-anything, off-the-record sessions.
“You have to know when to put the right structures in place – when to go from needing it to be ‘free flowing’, where everybody’s getting involved in everything, to establishing clear parameters. Otherwise you’ll implode,” she warns.
“When you realise that you no longer know everything about your wider team – what they had for tea last night, their kids’ names it’s a shock to the system – that’s when you’ve got to put systems and processes in place.”
Blueprint
Established in 2011, the organisation was the first Growth Hub of its kind and provided the blueprint for a rollout of 37 others across the country. Smith, who has led a successful and varied career across sales, marketing, business teaching and provision of business support, replaced founder Richard Jeffery as director when he took on the role of national director for business at parent body The Growth Company.
An experienced board member in her own right, Smith is also involved with her family business, which has been trading for more than 80 years.
“Effective leadership and management is really key for me,” she says of her approach. “I’ve always looked to drive performance in an inclusive way, and made sure to keep an eye on every single number and metric via dashboards as well as the human and emotional side of leadership.
“If certain areas aren’t doing so well, why is that? How can they learn from the other teams and individuals?
“The key is to motivate and encourage your workforce to get the most out of your teams and to never be afraid to get stuck in and roll your sleeves up.”
Change brings opportunity
As a publicly funded organisation, GM Business Growth Hub has had to adapt to the changing needs of Greater Manchester over the last decade.
“Part of being agile to business need means being able to mobilise then bring projects back down again; yet we’ve had a constant of people that have been with us throughout the 12-year journey. People stay with us because we’ve got such a strong culture and a real purpose around what we do and why we do it.”
Performance
Another big factor, says Smith, is having an ‘open door’ policy, even if sometimes the physical door must be closed in the interests of productivity.
“We ensure our people are aware that, if they have an issue, a challenge or an idea, we want to know about it. When new staff members start, I hold a breakfast with them early on to say ‘this is who we are, what we do and why we do it… and I want you to tell me what you do, what you want to do going forward, and what your ambitions are.
“Our in-person quarterly staff briefings are also interactive. We need to listen to our people to understand how we can improve.”
FUEL was created to fuel business growth for promising startups and scaleups. It’s two events in one, beginning with a whistle-stop discussion of some of the big questions facing businesses and finishing with a series of exclusive, invite-only masterclasses for a cohort of exciting startups.
Register for breakfast panel & networking
Supported by GM Business Growth Hub, Bruntwood SciTech and the University of Salford Business School, FUEL Manchester 2024 takes place at No.1 Circle Square, Oxford Road, Manchester. Around 160 people have already registered for the initial breakfast panel and networking event after we revealed our full line-up of speakers. There are still a handful of places available.
We have also revealed the experts who, following the breakfast event, will pass on face-to-face advice to our cohort of 25+ startups and scaleups in masterclass pods across funding, growth planning, people & performance and technology.
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