Last week Vistage member Dag Andersson was invited to participate in a seminar at the Swedish embassy in Berlin on the topic “Health and Care of tomorrow: How to handle limited resources and a growing demand.” Present were H.R.H. Crown Princess Victoria and Price Daniel together with Göran Hägglund, (Sweden’s Minister for Health) and Social Affairs Daniel Bahr (Federal Minister of Health in Germany) and Alan Milburn (Former Secretary of State for Health in Britain 1999-2003) who is also a board member of Diaverum.

It is clear that health care is facing enormous challenges over the coming year. The population is growing older. We are living longer. In the 20th century life expectancy increased with 30 years in the OECD countries. An amazing increase! And it is predicted that 50% of all children born after year 2000 will celebrate their 100th birthday (OECD countries).

This is obviously good news, but a longer life unfortunately does not necessarily mean a healthier one. Currently, 2/3 of all deaths in the USA are attributable to one of five chronic disorders: cancer, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, heart disease and stroke. And with this comes a giant bill – 75% of total health care expenditure in USA is spent on treating chronic diseases!

The picture is similar in other industrialized countries. It is not uncommon for governments to spend 10% of their gross domestic product (GDP) or more on public health care. At the same time, there is an increased demand for improved quality and accessibility.

As the CEO of Diaverum Dag is fully aware how the needs of dialysis are constantly increasing due to the growing number of people with Chronic Kidney Failure (which eventually results in End Stage Renal Disease).

So, how do we handle the seemingly impossible equation of limited resources and growing demand? The seminar in Berlin did point at some possible solutions.

Freedom of choice drives innovation
Current trends in health care include giving the patient more freedom of choice. Studies show that this has a positive impact on both cost and the quality of care provided. Freedom of choice increases competition and this in turn drives innovation.

Outcome based payment models
Another possible solution is outcome based payment models. The health care industry has a tendency to look more at the quantity than actual results of the care provided. Several countries, including Argentina, are now implementing outcome based reimbursement models.

Results are no longer measured by the number of patient visits or medication prescribed. Instead the quality of care, seen from the perspective of patients, is put into focus. This trend will definitely increase in the coming years.

Preventive measures
The WHO believes that 80% of chronic disorders could be eliminated by implementing appropriate preventive measures. However, a very small portion of the health care budgets is dedicated to prevention. In the USA less than 4 cents of every dollar spent on health care goes to preventive and public-health measures, and the numbers are not much higher in other countries.

Leadership in Health Care
Studies in the UK have shown that hospitals with an autonomous status and clear organisation/leadership are performing better than hospitals and health care institutions with no clear organisation and leadership. The more autonomous the units become, the better they perform both medically and operationally.

It is clear that the challenges are great and Dag can only urge all health care providers to think how they can contribute to a more efficient and successful health care structure in the future. Focusing on preventive care is such a measure to be taken.

 His funeral was held at Birmingham Jewish Cemetery on Sunday where hundreds of people paid tribute to him. He led Rudells Jewellers for decades, helping to build on the success of the family business which also has a branch in Harborne, Birmingham. He leaves behind Patricia Rudell (Ricky) and an extended “family” of close friends. Mr Rudell, who was Jewish, was buried on Sunday. Born in 1946 to Justin and Etta Rudell, Roundy, as he was known to friends, was involved in the family’s Wolverhampton based jewellery business from the age of 20, starting as he meant to go on by expanding the business into a neighbouring vacant store during his parents first holiday when they left him in charge. Under his leadership Rudells has become a fantastic benchmark for customer service.

 As well as developing the business, charity work was also an important part of Roundy’s life and he tirelessly raised money and awareness for a number of causes including Cure Leukaemia and the Variety club. He was a great supporter of Vistage, approaching 10 years of membership in 2012. He will be sadly missed by his V3 Vistage group and the many friends he had made through Vistage, including many of the speakers. Jon Weston, Managing Director of Rudells, said his friend would leave a lasting memory with those who knew him as a man with indomitable spirit, unlimited kindness and an inspirational love of life. He said: “To say that he will be greatly missed does not adequately cover the huge loss that so many of us will feel. I have lost a very, very close friend. Roundy has been like a second father to me, I will continue his wishes of ‘the show must go on’ and practice the great things he has taught me over the last 22 years.”

To celebrate the move to premises three times the size of their last building which they moved into in 2009, local professionals were invited for canapés and wine following the cutting of the ribbon. Of course free professional indemnity advice was also available on tap!

Jenny Carter-Vaughan, the Managing Director of Affinity Select and member of Vistage 41 commented:

“I would like to thank everyone who came to the office opening, but more importantly I would like to thank my staff without who this would not be possible. Their continued professionalism and impeccable service has been invaluable while I have been taking care of this important office expansion move.”

Fighting against the doom and gloom of the recession, Affinity Select has had a fantastic period of growth, going from employing three staff in 2009 to 11 in 2011.  Based on the business development plans, and with the support of her Vistage group, Jenny expects to double the size of the business in the next 12 months .

Mike Carter MD of Orchard has been a  Vistage Member for over three years and is passionate about his membership. Orchard is the North of England’s largest digital, creative and marketing recruitment consultancy. Offices are situated in Manchester and Leeds and they place talented people in freelance and permanent jobs online and off-line within Agency and Client side companies.
In this interview Mike discusses his role within Orchard and how his Vistage membership has helped his business to remain in business.

WAA  combine commerciality with creativity to mine raw customer and business data, craft strategic insights, create compelling strategies and impactful communication ideas. They then plan and execute across the right media channels to stimulate conversations, influence behaviour and deliver real ROI. It’s an unique approach they call Business Creativity.

See what they have to say about Vistage

Well, many of us are now in pretty much the same situation. I know that for many it’s not much fun, especially for those with small children stuck in a foreign country and trying to get home.

But you know, at times like this it’s important to keep a sense of perspective on things. It’s very interesting to see the lengths that people will go to in order to get home or get to their business meetings. Here’s just a small selection of stories in the news – some of them great examples of ingenuity and initiative!

• Thom Noble, 52, from Highgate, north London, is managing director of the marketing company NeuroFocus UK was forced to buy a woman’s bicycle to board a ferry in a bid to get home in time for his wife’s birthday. He said Norfolkline, the ferry operator, had no foot passenger tickets left and would allow him to make the journey only if he was a genuine cyclist.
• Dan Snow, the historian son of Peter Snow, the television presenter, had commissioned powerboats to carry people across the Channel in true Dunkirk style. He was hoping to transport 200 people on three round trips per day.
• Seven businessmen from Northampton paid £1,200 to hire two drivers to act in relay for a taxi ride from Northampton to Geneva to attend a vital business meeting.
• Gary Lineker, 49, kept up his record of never missing a Match of the Day by making a 2,000-mile trek over 24 hours from a holiday in Tenerife with his children and second wife. It involved a plane to Madrid, a hired people carrier and a Eurostar train to reach the BBC studios in London at 7pm yesterday. Lineker, who compared it with a Top Gear challenge, told viewers: “Today we had games of volcanic proportions.”
• See http://bit.ly/aOCafW for the full stories of the above in The TimesOnline.

 In addition to the above, what about these examples…

• A group of businessmen and medical staff stranded in Belfast paid Joe Duffy, a taxi driver, £700 to take them on a ferry and then drive them more than 300 miles to London.
• John Cleese, the Fawlty Towers star, paid £3,300 to take a cab from Oslo to Brussels after being stranded in Norway where he was filming a TV appearance. When he arrives in the Belgian capital he plans to take a Eurostar to London and hopes arrive home by 3pm today.

Thanks to The Telegraph for the above – see http://bit.ly/bWNPTO    The  latest news is that the UK government is now sending Royal Navy ships to help pick up stranded citizens – so look out for HMS Ocean or Ark Royal docking at a port near you soon.

So, what other examples of ingenuity and initiative do you have? I’ll arrange for a bottle of Champagne to go to the person who sends me in the best example…

In the run-up to Christmas last year, I was introduced to a business organisation called Vistage. At first I was sceptical because I thought it was another one of these sales networks, the type of organisation where the members meet for breakfast on a regular basis and are expected to generate sales leads for each other. I was wrong.

I’m now a paid-up member of Vistage, which was started 50 years ago in the US and now has over 15,000 members around the world. When you join Vistage, you join a local group (there are two in Northern Ireland) of up to 15 other people – typically they’re business owners or lead directors, led by a facilitator and coach, who chairs the group. So far, I’m getting great value from my membership and feel pretty humbled that the people sitting round my group table, all of whom are running businesses much larger and more successful than mine, have accepted me and are prepared, when asked, to bring their collective knowledge to bear for my benefit.

Last month, we were given a brilliant presentation by a guy called Ed Charvet who was speaking on the topic of ‘Extracting Commercial Value from Web 2.0.’ Doing my best not to get into internet jargon, it was basically a talk on how to win business using the web and in particular, social and business networking on the web (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, Linked-In etc). Working in the field of public relations, this is a topic we are very involved with on behalf of our clients and one of the other members, the owner of a diversified group of companies including a large and successful marketing services arm, similarly provides professional advice in this area. Some others in the group have relatively large amounts of sales going through on the web and others, such as those in the construction and agriculture related sectors, would have had little exposure to the practices discussed by Mr Charvet. However, no matter where we were on the knowledge spectrum of these issues, I think we all came away from the session thinking very differently about social networking and its value to business.

 For many people over thirty, the social networking explosion  is what the New York Times described as ‘modern narcissism taken to a new, supermetabolic extreme – the ultimate expression of a generation of celebrity addled youths who believe their every utterance is fascinating and ought to be shared with the world.’ I have a fair bit of sympathy with that position and don’t have the time and am not really interested in the daily minutiae of too many of the 350 million users that Facebook now claims to play host to or the 26 million people, projected to be signed up for Twitter this year. But what about when you boil it down to small business – for instance Curtis Kimball who opened his crème brûlée cart in San Francisco last year and after a few weeks of business, noticed a stranger among the friends queuing for his desserts. Kimball asked the man how he’d discovered the cart – the man said that he’d read about it on Twitter. Kimball signed up for his own account and now has more than 5,000 followers who wait for him to post the current location of his travelling cart and list the flavours of the day.

Much has been made elsewhere of how big companies like Dell, Starbucks and Sony use Twitter to promote their products and answer customers’ questions. But today, small businesses outnumber the big ones on the free ‘microblogging’ service – micro-blogging meaning that you have only 140 characters to say what you’re going to say. As a result of the Charvet meeting, I went to see one of the pioneers of the social media networking world in London the week before last and he told me he’d won two £50,000 contracts off the back of Twitter in recent months. Sounds easy, but then it’s important to understand that he is a well-followed and well-connected figure on the various sites and his chances of generating business are far greater than those who are only starting their journey.

Having said that, in getting ready for our monthly meeting this week, I see from one of my Vistage colleague’s monthly reports that the adoption of one immediate social networking practice through Linked-In, preached to us at the Charvet meeting, has already yielded three good quality sales leads for his business. And this was from one of the members in the construction sector who hadn’t really considered social networking as a potential sales generator before.

The bottom line is if you’re in business, you can’t ignore this stuff, not if you want to compete and win in a very changed environment where the digital world has a definite role to play alongside good old fashioned face-to-face and telephone contact.  In my view, that’s the way to think of the potential of social networking in business terms – a forum for getting better information, allowing you to make better decisions and ultimately, to win new business.

Paul McErlean is Managing Director of  MCE Public Relations.

We’ve all seen the headlines. In the current economy, many businesses have tried unsuccessfully to raise finance. Their experiences have varied with lots of “flat no”, some “protracted maybe” and very few “definite yes” responses from lenders. The financing prospect for many businesses looks very bleak:

• Banks continue to strengthen their balance sheets. Lending is available, but is much tougher to achieve with higher rates, more security needed and more ‘setup’ or ‘consultancy’ fees than ever before.
• Government loan schemes have had a very low take-up, with demanding information requirements.
• Reduced trade credit insurance limits have increased debt requirements just to maintain existing trade.
• Venture Capital firms have focused on recovering lost value in their existing portfolios. Many funds have dried up.

According to a recent survey by the Institute of Directors, nearly 60% of UK businesses were refused credit by their banks last year, despite the government’s efforts to boost lending. The survey found that 57% of businesses were denied money, and 20% used credit cards to finance their business. The report contradicts recent claims by banks that they are lending to companies that need finance.  Recent editorial in The Daily Mail took a blunt view with headlines such as ‘SMALL FIRMS LEFT TO STARVE’ and ‘IN PROFIT BUT BANK SAID NO’ and ‘WE’VE HAD ZERO HELP’.

On the 19^th of February, the Bank of England revealed that bank lending to businesses fell by a record 8.1% last year. It also said that lending to businesses ‘fell across all the main sectors’ for the third successive quarter’.

John Wright, national chairman of the federation of small businesses said that many firms faced huge problems in raising capital.

Economists, business associations and some high-profile business leaders seem to agree that 2010 will be no different, and businesses should not expect a return to 2007: businesses need to get used to the new economic environment.

Behind the headlines, the reality is that all of the banks are desperate to lend more money to increase their profits, BUT their credit departments have raised the bar in terms of criteria and commercially they have increased their prices. So, better-presented business cases are essential.

Another perhaps surprising aspect of the current situation is that entrepreneurs and business leaders with good business cases often don’t trust the banks, and so hold back on their true business growth plans.

So, despite their thirst for more business, banks are making it harder for entrepreneurs to borrow, and entrepreneurs are being more cautious about expansion and investment, especially when this is on borrowed money.

So what can you do to maximise your chances of raising finance in the new economy?

Well, the general views of those in the finance business seem to be saying that businesses need to get much smarter about where they look for finance and how they ask for finance. The days of simply relying solely on your local bank have gone – you need to be prepared to look at other banks, other options. And whatever options you look at, they all have one thing in common – they are looking for solid business cases, with good data to support your case and evidence of having the right talent in place to achieve your goals. It seems that many business owners are woefully ill-prepared when asking for financial support – from their bank or from any other source. Simply relying on your trading history just doesn’t cut it any more – lenders need to see a good business case and have confidence that you’ll achieve your goals despite the current economic situation. It’s never been more important for your business to stand out from the crowd – so you need to have your case more prepared than ever before.

Guide to Raising Finance in The New Economy

Vistage is the world’s leading Chief Executive organization, with over 15,000 members around the world. To reflect this new economic landscape we’re now in, we’ve produced a brand new UK Guide to Raising Finance in The New Economy that tells you what your options are and how best to present your case for business finance. To download your copy, simply visit www.neweconomyblog.co.uk/rf5 and fill in your details.

I wish you the best of luck if you are currently searching for business finance. I hope that this brief article helps a little, but be sure to request your copy of our new Guide to Raising Finance in The New Economy – it has much more detail and tips that might help you.

Best of luck

Steve Gilroy
Chief Executive
Vistage International (UK & Ireland)

Today we have MediaSnackers back in the Vistage office, training, guiding and improving our social media skills. Take a look at the video to see what we’re getting up to!

 Just mastered DELICIOUS, saving all our bookmarks in one place – one giant brain! What a great way to share all the great things you find on the internet.

Looking forward to implementing the new stuff learnt today. Check back for the video we took of the MediaSnackers guys.