Top Swindon PR confirmed as judge in industry awards for the third year running

Leading Swindon PR consultant and award-winning serial entrepreneur, Sara Tye, is to judge The Whitewed Directory Awards 2019, for the third year in a row.

Sara Tye commented: “I’m honoured and excited to be asked back to judge these awards. The standard of entries increases year on year and I’m looking forward to the winners being announced in February 2020. I’m always delighted to help celebrate great entrepreneurship!”

Sara is an award-winning entrepreneur, top 500 PR, coach, speaker, mother and 70.3 triathlete. She is an acclaimed top 500 international PR who was a finalist in the first Cosmopolitan Women of the Year Awards in 1999.

Sara has joined some of the most influential people over the last three years as part of the judging panel. Now the PR is looking forward to repeating the experience in 2019 as the directory of recommended wedding suppliers across the south-west stages its third awards ceremony, launched to highlight and support the region's best wedding industry operators. 

This year, Sara is joined by director of sales of DoubleTree by Hilton Swindon Emma Richards. A key voice for businesses in the South West, Ian Larrard, who is director of the Initiative in Swindon and Wiltshire, completes the judging panel. 

The Whitewed Directory founder and managing director, Natalie Lovett, said, “A big thank you to Sara for joining our professional judging panel again this year. Her business acumen and experience means that she is rightly positioned to judge the entries and choose the very best applications to be put forward to the final.”

The shortlist has been revealed as:

Business of the Year 2019 Finalists:

George Goes Out
Kimmi's Cakes
Natalie Jolley Photography

Start-up Business of the Year 2019 Finalists:
Holly Robinson Jewellery
MK Hair & Makeup
Willoughby & Wolf

Most Inspiring Business Person of the Year 2019 Finalists:
Fluffy Puffin
MK Hair & Makeup
The Prosecco Party

The Peers Award 2019 Finalists:
Cakes by Mrs F
Holly Robinson Jewellery
Wendy House Flowers

The Director's Award 2019 Finalists:
Cakes by Mrs F
Corky & Prince
Holly Robinson Jewellery
Willoughby & Wolf

The winners being announced at an Awards Ceremony on 6 February 2020 to be held at, and sponsored by DoubleTree by Hilton Swindon.

Understanding how leading and managing a business needs different skills and approaches

How do you define the difference between leading a business and managing it?

Leading is realising the vision and taking all stakeholders with you.

It’s about knowing how to take calculated risks and then getting everyone on board to move with you.

Knowing where to invest resources for growth, whatever that growth is.

Leadership is about ensuring the company is a good business – that it’s ethical, the right people and plan are in place to take the business where it needs to go.

Managing is making sure that the resources deliver a good return on investment and realistic goals are achieved i.e. time, machinery, people etc. A lot of these resources will soon be outsourced in businesses of the future.  Best supplier management understanding will be needed to fulfil this.

Is leadership and management mutually exclusive? Should small business owner/managers attempt to combine the two or excel at just one?

Sometimes, by the nature and size of business, the leader is the manager.  As organisations become smaller and flatter, then the leader/leadership team will have to manage.

There are, of course, pros & cons to that in itself.

But management should become easier as jobs/roles/functions are outsourced.  The outsourced function is managed in its own right.  It will be quality control/assurance that grows.

Should good leaders always surround themselves with excellent managers?

Why would a leader surround themselves with managers who don’t perform or deliver?

  

Managers of the future will need to become very solution driven to ensure continued performance.

Has the culture of business today meant more leaders or managers are needed to ensure commercial success in the marketplace?

Yes and No.

One leader can make the most commercially successful business in the market place.  But there will be smaller businesses doing many more outsourced activities so in affect more business leaders.

   

I’m a big advocate of technology and strongly believe that technology today enables you to do more with less people.  So yes more leaders and no.

What do you think the future of business leadership and management looks like?

I believe that businesses are going to become smaller and that they’ll be based on the theory of a shamrock organisation, which was predicted over 30 years ago.

The term was invented by Irish academic and management author/philosopher Charles Handy.

I studied management for six years, and as part of that, I read ‘The Age of Unreason’ by Charles Handy in 1990, and I’ve lived by his views the whole of my career. The book is more relevant today than it ever was. It’s hugely progressive, as was my management thinking at the time, I was only 21 when I read it.

We will not survive unless we adapt to the way the world is changing. This book is an inspiring vision of an era of new discoveries, new enlightenment and new freedoms.

Leadership will be about the disruption of where to take these smaller companies; taking the best ideas and then how to deliver it.

Managing will be different because more of resources will be outsourced, and probably across different continents

Are there any tools that leaders and managers can use to improve their skills?

Yes. Many.

I regularly help businesses declutter and process map, become objective and goal driven.

Stop wasting time on superfluous activity.

Invest in:

Self-development through

Apps

YouTube

Other peers

Mentors

Coaches

Reading

Listening

Any other comments you would like to make?

You can learn a lot from great leaders.