Series 1 Episode 02: Mary Carty
On the second episode of Strategy Sheroes I speak to Mary Carty.
Mary is an entrepreneur with a background in the arts, innovation and technology. Over the past decade, she has founded and managed two successful technology start-up companies and been nominated for an interactive BAFTA.
Mary is a passionate advocate for women in STEM, co-founding the OutBox Incubator, the first ever Incubator for girls in STEM. She is also a Strategic Advisor and regular keynote speaker.
Mary is definitely an inspiration in terms of what she has achieved, the opportunities for women she advocates for, how generous she is with her knowledge and time and the importance of trying to drive positive change, even if small.
I speak to Mary about -
How her creative background prepared her to become an entrepreneur
What you need to plan for when launching your own company
Short-term vs long-term goals and how these can work together
Planning effectively for change
And much more! Some of my favourite take-aways below.
Managing Change
Any type of change is difficult. Humans have been around for a long time and yes we can get scared of change. Sometimes people don't have the vocabulary or the words to describe or express what this change means to them. It’s absolutely normal to be threatened by change, even if that change is a small thing. We need to open up that dialogue early whether or not its organisational change, transformation to digital or a new building, restructuring a team, negotiating a funding round that’s going to change the fabric of how that team works.
All those things need to be negotiated. As leaders we have to understand that change is difficult. I think the biggest struggle can be how we communicate that change and how we take that feedback from our teams, from our colleagues and that takes time.
On business strategy
One of the biggest lessons for me was that our target market grew and learnt what they needed much faster than I anticipated. The target market we were looking at wanted more bells and whistles than we could provide at that time. We also needed an upsell that we hadn’t factored in. So strategically what I learnt from that business is that you need to plan for when it all goes great, not to plan 3 steps ahead, you need to plan for what’s the next iteration for this business, what’s the next chapter, actually what’s the next 5 chapters and be ready to service that when it goes in that direction.
On the importance of a robust operational foundation to scale effectively
I’m a stickler for bank-end operations. Any company I speak to the first question I always ask is how is your back office? You cannot scale, you cannot do a better job unless your back-office is solid. How do you send out invoices, who do you have in your back-office, who makes sure your emails are responded to? If you can’t watch your numbers, who in the office does that stuff for you?
