100 Stories of Growth - Insights from Entrepreneurs

Located in some of London’s most prime locations, the key difference at The Clubhouse is the level of service we provide to members and guests in order to offer everything they need to run their business. With one aim, which is simply to make our members and their businesses more successful, human capital is vital and at the heart of everything we do. As a founder, you come up with the idea, concept and vision, but it’s really down to your team and a shared passion to turn that vision into reality. Since we launched in 2012, we have seen first-hand how a number of our members’ businesses have grown phenomenally on the back of the solution that we offer. The founder of one of our first members – AirPortr is an innovative company that allows you to check in your bags from your doorstep which they deliver to the airport is a great example – met his CMO across a hot-desk at The Clubhouse. We embarked on a cultural enquiry programme to ensure we really understand the values and behaviours that drive and motivate the high-performers in our company. Similarly, two successful technology consultants left a large corporate to start their own business. Today, Altius is a hugely successful IT consultancy, which helps businesses to harness their data and use it to understand, model and predict business performance. The company now employs over 100 people. We also love to work with our members where we can. Altius provides The Clubhouse with an immensely valuable, bespoke solution that allows us to use our wealth of data to make more informed business decisions. But at the heart of the growth of these great businesses and our own is human capital. As a business we have spent a lot of time to try and create a fantastic culture, so our team are inspired by what we do and share the passion I have for the business. We have had clear corporate values since day one – our four Ps are premium, productive, professional and personable. Then 12 months ago, we embarked on a cultural enquiry programme to ensure we really understand the values and behaviours that drive and motivate the high-performers in our company. Today we have a set of individual values and behaviours, which we also recruit on and use to develop our people. This gives a great framework to ensure that each individual’s values and behaviours align with our corporate values. Without these being in sync, moving forward together to fulfil our aim and achieve the vision for the business would be almost impossible. Looking after your human capital is probably more important now than ever before. All business leaders focus on financial capital to grow companies – and of course growth capital in this sense is vital to expand our businesses, open new locations, hire more people and to invest in technology – but sustainable, long-term growth is only achieved by also focusing on human capital. We make sure we inspire the people who work for us so they continue to develop personally and professionally. We want them to work productively and to come up with their own solutions when faced with challenges, helping to drive the business forward and to retain them for as long as possible. All business leaders must work much harder on their human capital to lead and manage our teams. Looking after your human capital is probably more important now than ever before: we live in a global business environment where our teams are often made up of people from many different backgrounds and cultures, with different demands and expectations. At the same time, we hear that millennials want a range of experiences rather than a job for life. Technology means we are always on, always connected with nowhere to hide. So working nine to five is certainly a thing of the past. The impact of social media means that we must also pay huge attention to stress and mental health to ensure people aren’t overwhelmed and burn out. While we don’t want to be complacent and a certain amount of ‘stretch’ means we work harder, innovate and move forward, mental health is higher on the agenda than ever before. So we must also work on understanding emotional intelligence and awareness in order to 51 50 THOUGHT LEADERSHIP THE CLUBHOUSE