Flintloque’s ‘Successful Business Relationships’ Masterclass

Since last year, Flintloque, in conjunction with P&Q Consulting, has run Masterclasses on ‘Successful Business Relationships’ in Manchester, Liverpool and Daresbury.  This one-day workshop is based on the relatively new management system standard, BS 11000: Collaborative business relationships.  Given that I have over 20 years’ experience in the implementation of a variety of management systems, why did I choose, in this case, to collaborate with P&Q Consulting?  The answer is fairly straightforward; P&Q is run by Adrian Quayle, Member of the National Outsourcing Association’s Advisory Council and one of the BSI (British Standards Institution) committee members who wrote both the BS 11000 Standard itself and its implementation guidance notes.

A number of our events have been held in the offices of the solicitors, DWF LLP, who kindly sponsored such.  Why would DWF be interested in sponsoring a ‘Successful Business Relationships’ Masterclass?  Well, all formal business relationships must be enshrined within a contract, and it is the solicitors who write our business contracts for us.  There is a growing body of interest in the BS 11000 Standard and a number of major organisations have already achieved registration to it, e.g., Network Rail, BT, EMCOR, Capita, etc.  In addition, a number of public bodies, led by the Ministry of Defence and the NHS, are looking to restructure their procurement activities in-line with the best practise in BS 11000.

Our attendees came from a cross-section of British industry: biotechnology, construction, consultancy, big corporates, SMEs, people who have worked in big corporates, but who are now SMEs, SMEs that are looking to become big corporates!  The structure of the Masterclasses includes formal exercises, which allow all our attendees to work together and join in the subsequent discussion.  Indeed, so much fun is had in the collaborative discussions that it sometimes takes an act of will to bring the session back to the topic at hand!

As demonstrated by the success of our Masterclasses, Flintloque’s own collaboration with P&Q Consulting works beautifully, not only because we are ourselves following the best practice within the Standard, but because Adrian and I come from different worlds but share a common vision.  Adrian’s background is large corporates, mine is SMEs; we are both interested in bringing these two worlds together as efficiently as possible and in a way that benefits us all.  What is good for UK plc has got to be good for the economy as a whole.