What does Allia do? What was my role? 

Allia is an organisation made of three arms: C&C (social finance), Future Business Centre (workspace), and Venture Support. The Venture Support arm, which I completed my LiA with, provides business support programmes to a wide range of small businesses, social enterprises, and aspiring entrepreneurs. Allia runs three core business support programmes: Start Your Business (SYB), targeted at small businesses and social enterprises in the ideational phase; Grow Your Business (GYB), once more, targeted at established small businesses and social enterprises who are looking to gain traction; and the Impact Accelerator, for seed/pre-seed start-ups with a Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and can demonstrate traction. Allia also runs other programmes, dependent on partnerships and funding, such as the Green Business Impact Programme and the Accelerator Challenge in partnership with venture capital (VC) firm, Balderton Capital.

Also worth noting is that Allia operates in three locations: London, Cambridge, and Peterborough. This means that the programmes and the operation of these programmes are slightly different in each. In London, Allia delivers its SYB and GYB programmes as the main organisation in a consortium called Hackney Impact. In Cambridge and Peterborough, these programmes are delivered through another consortium with local partners. The impact of this consortium model on Allia’s operation, and my experience, will be detailed later.

So where did I, and my project, fit into this? I will give a brief description of my project and its aims. My project contained multiple elements. First, I had to assess Allia’s competitors in the social enterprises support ecosystem, and research their offerings and funding, to find any unique offerings that Allia could develop. Second, I needed to find creative ways of visualising this support ecosystem, and where and how Allia fits into it. Finally, in combining these two previous elements, my project required me to strategise on Allia’s future, providing recommendations and delivering these in a final presentation. This, as I will continue to detail later, was to provide a fresh perspective on the Venture Support Team’s strategy.

As a final thing to note, my project was very much concentrated on the SYB and GYB programmes, these council/combined authority-funded programmes focused on early-stage small businesses and social enterprises. The world of start-ups and venture capital, delivered through the Impact Accelerator and corporate partnerships, was a world away.

Challenges and Leadership Learnings

Having summarised the scope of my LiA, this feeds nicely into the issues experienced during my time at Allia. I faced two core challenges: value/confidence, and direction. I will describe these challenges, and more importantly their leadership learnings, in turn.

Firstly, I faced major challenges in interpreting the value that my project genuinely brought to the organisation, in both the immediate and long term. This brought a sustained period in which my confidence declined, both in terms of my abilities and my technical knowledge. To me, this was caused by the requirements of my project. To be able to provide insightful and valuable strategic recommendations that could bring real impact, as someone who has little technical knowledge of social enterprise or business, to a team of business coaches/experts, felt impossible. It felt as if there would be little I could produce in six weeks that would be of use. As I learnt in my mid-project meeting with the Director of Ventures, however, honesty was a valued insight. In this meeting, I spoke my mind and described the support ecosystem and Allia’s place as I saw it – as nothing unique. To my surprise, he agreed. As it turned out, that insight, which I had felt was wrong, was quite valuable for Allia. Realising this helped me to provide strategic recommendations which could be impactful.

Second, my project often got sidetracked and overall lacked a sense of direction at times. After spending my first week acclimatising to the organisation, shadowing their programmes, and planning for my project, I quickly focused on the “ecosystem mapping” element of my project brief. Initially, I sought to either have access to participant feedback or have the ability to outreach to participants, to find out what other support they were receiving. I would then use this information to create a network diagram, displaying relationships, places where support may be weak, and where Allia fits into this. However, I was denied both access to the data, and the ability to outreach. Whilst understandable, this was a major setback which saw me hyper-fixate on this element of the project, neglecting the rest. To overcome this, I sat down with my line manager to explain the issues I was facing, and she helped steer me back on the right course. The personal learning here was to ensure communication with colleagues, in this regard to ensure I never neglect the bigger, more important picture.

Lasting Impact

I’ve discussed the challenges I faced, and the subsequent leadership learnings, but what tangible impact has my LiA project had on Allia and the small business they support? I believe there are two core areas of impact: the ecosystem mapping, which had been the core focus of my first few weeks at Allia; and my strategic insight, delivered in the final presentation.

First, the various ecosystem maps I produce were valuable in that they: a) were used for promotional material, in specific the geographical map I produced of all the small businesses that Allia has supported in Hackney; and b) allow for Allia’s staff to better visualise the relationships between Allia, their consortium partners, funding, competitors, and beneficiaries. This could help inform their decision-making process in future.

Second, the main message put forward, as discussed above, was that Allia was not intensely unique within the support ecosystem. Accordingly, I recommended further integrating the three arms of Allia to provide a cohesive, and unique, business support programme that combines workshops, funding opportunities, networking, and co-working space. In this recommendation, I suggested a timeline for implementation. I also suggested various platforms and implementation strategies for a new participant-alumni social network.

Regardless of whether these suggestions were translated directly into action, these recommendations provided fresh insight for the team, helping to inform their short- and long-term development strategies.

Conclusion

In sum, my LiA project with Allia was vastly challenging, but this was for the best. Most importantly, the challenges I faced regarding my project’s value and direction necessitated strong communication skills. Whilst the project often felt very isolated for Allia’s day-to-day, it ensured that, whilst it strongly developed my time and project management skills, I could communicate effectively with my colleagues and managers. Though my technical knowledge may not have improved a great deal, these soft leadership skills have been greatly impacted by my time at Allia.