When you want to grow your business, there are many factors you need to consider.

Market demand, your sales strategy, your supply chain and financial forecasting. But if you are going to succeed in taking your business further, the single, most critical ingredient is having a management team that can deliver.

There are a number of critical factors to consider when you want to develop your management team.

It starts with you and understanding your role. You need to be an effective leader. You need to ensure that you are providing clear direction, encouraging new ideas, that you’re willing to listen and that you recognise and acknowledge the individuals and management team’s achievements.

The management team need to believe in the strategic direction of the business and in the importance of creating a culture that reflects the values, as well as the vision of the business.

With the key objectives set and the team on board the next step is to ensure you have effective communication. It is important to hold management meetings during which you reflect on past performances but more importantly focus on how to improve the future performance of the business. A good way of achieving this is through the creation of key projects in which your management team members are the team leaders responsible for the creation and delivery of these business enhancing projects.

With a clear strategy in place the achievement of goals and measurement of performance will become part of the culture of the business. This can be linked to performance reviews and personal development plans for both the management team and the employees responsible for the delivery of the plan.

A strong management team all believe in the strategic direction of the business and they believe in creating a culture that reflects the values, as well as the vision of the business.