Case Studies

Impact Arts – Mairi Sanders, Operations Manager

Impact Arts – Mairi Sanders, Operations ManagerImpact arts are a UK community arts company, committed to involving people of all ages and abilities in innovative arts-based activities. Established in 1994, they work in partnership with a variety of community groups, schools, housing associations and funding agencies to develop and deliver tailored projects and bring the arts to the community.

Although the business had been operating for some 10 years, in the last 12 months the organisation was successful in securing a number of projects and grew rapidly from 9 to 23 core staff! This brought some fundamental issues for the management team including Mairi Sanders, Operations Director. Mairi has been with Impact Arts for 8 years and has developed her skills with the company over that time. More recently however, in light of the rapid growth, Mairi soon realised she needed additional support to help her cope with the demands being placed on her management ability. “the main reason I joined The Business Map was to develop me and to have the ability to maintain and sustain the level of growth”

Despite her hectic work schedule and a seemingly ever increasing workload, Mairi found the time spent on the programme invaluable and immensely beneficial. The input from the one to one coaching and the structure built into the programme helped Mairi apply and reinforce everything she had learnt “The Business Map takes around 5 months to complete and I joined a great group of people – the reason for our success as a group was the honesty that we all shared about our day to day business life. It is hard work being on the course as you have the modules to attend and workbooks to complete after each module and a visit from a business coach. Although hard work, it is extremely worthwhile as the workbooks help to reinforce what you’ve learnt on that particular subject and the one to one visits help you to question what you have thought and maybe look at it from a different angle. It’s also very good as its your own personal individual time to discuss the business as there’s no pressure and you can talk about you (yourself) within the business - maybe it wasn’t meant to be quite counselling, so I thank Lesley (her coach) for that part”

The diversity of businesses and people that participate in The Business Map adds to its appeal to many. “it didn’t matter if you were drilling for oil, recruiting engineers worldwide or a UK based community arts organisation, real parallels could be drawn between all the businesses that took part and this was not only interesting – it was also extremely useful to bounce ideas off people in different industry sectors who had come across the same problems as you but looked at the same problems from a different angle”

The nature of the programme actively encourages the participants to openly discuss and exchange opinions about their businesses. This open interaction quickly establishes high levels of trust and openness across every group, these relationships last far beyond the duration of the programme and have proved to be a major factor in the success of the programme. “The great thing about the course lasting the length it does and everybody meeting up regularly, means you have over a period of time, the time to make relationships with some great “professional” friends and I believe that we will all keep in contact in the future and share more problems and success stories with each other and this means that the spirit of the programme will still live on as we wont stop learning form each other”.

At the conclusion of The Business Map the participants focus on producing an operating plan that will help them implement the changes necessary to take their business to the next level. They also have the opportunity to share their plans with their group “at the end of the programme I created a short, medium and long term plan and having looked it out again recently I realise that I have been doing some of the elements unwittingly and this is another bonus from the course as some of the important elements have lodged themselves in my brain that I now naturally think that way.”

Not only do the relationships forged on The Business Map last way beyond the programe, the learning you get from the programme can be applied immediately but also referred to in the years ahead. “the benefits are long lasting as this is not a quick fix course and you will only get out of it what you put into it, but I think (and hope) that I will be referring to my notes from my tender youthful years to my graceful grey years throughout business”.

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