A Toast to the Oast

When we first started working with Matt Brown, the owner of Kent based n-fuze, in a business coaching capacity in January 2017, one of the first tasks was to identify some outcomes that Matt wanted to achieve. 

Inevitably there were many outcomes on the list, some short term but also some longer term. One outcome in particular however really stood out and caught our attention. 

It turns out that Matt had a dream of one day relocating his team from their Rochester based studio to an Oast house.  

Back then though, the team was smaller and they wouldn’t have even filled an Oast.  At the same time Matt was spending so much time involved ‘in the business’, it was simply not logistically possible to conceive also incorporating the organising and delivering of his dream studio move.

Yet in January 2019, we had the pleasure of being invited into n-fuze’s impressive new location for a couple of days of facilitation and coaching with the n-fuze team.  As you can see from the photos, the studio is simply stunning and a workplace anybody would be proud to associate themselves with.

So how did Matt enable his dream to come true?

The honest answer was with a considerable amount of the hard work, passion, drive and determination that enabled him to get his business to where it was two years ago.

Yet in addition to this, there were some crucial steps along the way.  These included:

• Mapping out his ideal team structure and recruiting thoughtfully
  
  
• Encouraging team members to take on more responsibility, which has resulted in several designers stepping up into team leader roles
  
  
• Empowering Colin, his then studio manager, to step away from much of the artwork in order to concentrate on developing the teams and focusing on building strategic alliances with their clients.  Colin is now in the position of Account Director having worked hard to make this transition.

As a result, Matt himself has created the time to work ‘on the business’ which enabled him to subsequently project manage the move to the Oast.

It became a passionate and all-consuming project, down to personally overseeing and choosing every last interior design and finish.

The irony is that when we were invited to the Oast in January, Matt was actually off site with a new client and left us in the trusted hands of Colin.

We are proud to have played a small part in helping Matt to achieve one of his dreams (there are plenty more in the pipeline) and to see the proof for ourselves that if you really want something and are prepared to work hard enough for it, dreams really can come true.

We look forward to continuing to work with the n-fuze team as the next chapter of this great story unfolds.