Your own advisory board meets you online, roughly every eight weeks, to work on what’s holding your business back. It’s The Productivity Programme, from the small business productivity charity Be the Business.
Apply for your board Find the right programme
Registered charity 1173660. Every board member is a volunteer: a senior figure from a top company, an independent consultant or a respected retiree.
Photo: business leaders at a Be the Business event, January 2025.
Four of the five cost you nothing. The fifth, your own advisory board, is £299 + VAT a month.
Four volunteer board members, four board meetings and two 1-to-1 mentoring sessions.
Test new ways to hire for digital and tech roles, with a senior leader from a larger organisation as your monthly 1-to-1.
Monthly online sessions with experts and peers, events around the UK and The Bolt newsletter.
A day inside an Amazon fulfilment centre, a six-week innovation sprint and a chance at one of four £25,000 awards.
Four months with an advisory board that includes a Medtronic leader, focused on one challenge.
Four experienced business leaders, all volunteers, meet you on Microsoft Teams. We match them to your challenges and take care of the admin, so you can plan your next moves.
Board meetings last 90 minutes. The first two run in consecutive months, then meetings and mentoring alternate, subject to diaries. You can also join up to two online Spark sessions with other owners and use the Get Ready tools from day one: a 360 assessment with your team, a learning module and a balanced scorecard.
A real board from our earlier Boards programme, working with a 3D printing company. Choose a seat to see who sat in it.
Enable Manufacturing
The business: a 3D printing company with plans to grow through digital factories, partnerships and acquisitions.
“We have a better strategy now and better ideas about how to get there.”
Annette Lacey, finance director, Enable Manufacturing
Read about Enable’s board (opens in a new tab)
Boards on that programme had five members for 12 months. On The Productivity Programme today, you get four for six months.
When we talk about productivity, we mean how much you achieve with what you put in.
Our estimate: if every UK small business that employs people improved by 1% a year for five years, it would add £94bn to the economy. Here’s your share of that, in hours.
How it’s worked out: a working year is your team’s weekly hours times 46 weeks (52, less 5.6 weeks of statutory holiday). Each year’s 1% builds on the last, so five years comes to 5.1%.
Each of these owners brought a problem to the table. Here’s what they changed, in their words.
Strive advisory board, with Mastercard
Read Bala’s story (opens in a new tab)“I had four experts who were guiding me through what I needed to do.”
Read the story of Hydraulics Online (opens in a new tab)“If we can turn that dial up just a bit it would make a massive difference to our bottom line.”
Read the story of Silverstone Composites (opens in a new tab)“They actually validated what I was doing.”
Read the story of Collins Limited (opens in a new tab)“It removed a large element of debate and allowed us to make quicker decisions.”
Read the story of BeGenio (opens in a new tab)“To get feedback from five experts at the same time was really helpful.”
Read more than 80 stories from owners and volunteers (opens in a new tab)
SQW compared about 2,600 businesses on our main programmes between 2017 and 2023 with similar businesses that didn’t take part. The businesses we supported grew turnover and jobs faster.
£516m
9,500
3% to 10%
Extra employment growth: 3% to 7%.
Source: SQW, Impact evaluation of Be the Business SME support, August 2024. Value added (GVA) in 2023/24 prices. Read the evaluation (opens in a new tab)
Productive Business Index
Our survey of how small business leaders run their businesses, published with Oxford Economics since 2021. Edition eight came out in November 2025.
Read edition eight of the Productive Business Index (opens in a new tab)On the Inspiring Leaders Programme, your managers join two small business advisory boards for six months each, then chair meetings and mentor an owner. We run onboarding, delivery, coaching and impact reporting, in cohorts of 6 to 10.
“I have this desire to help companies be successful, by getting close to the real business problems.”
Talk to our partnerships team Inspiring Leaders Programme (opens in a new tab)
Organisations we’ve worked with
“After 40 years in automotive manufacturing and in government, I felt strongly I wanted to give something back.”
Lawrence Davies MBE, former General Motors executive, board member and mentor
We’re fully recruited for volunteers at the moment. Register your interest in volunteering (opens in a new tab)
Anything else, email programmes@
Owners and decision-makers in established UK businesses, ideally with around 5 to 50 staff, who are past the start-up stage and facing growth or change. It runs online, so you can be anywhere in the UK.
The standard price is £299 + VAT a month for the six-month programme. If you’ve done Help to Grow: Management, it’s £199 + VAT a month. Some places are funded by partners for their customers and suppliers.
Four 90-minute board meetings and two 1-to-1 mentoring sessions over six months, plus up to two online Spark sessions if you want them. Everything runs on Microsoft Teams.
Four experienced business leaders, all volunteers: senior figures from top companies, independent consultants and respected retirees. We match them to your challenges, and a board administrator takes care of the scheduling.
You can carry on with your board on a rolling monthly subscription, with board meetings and mentoring in alternate months, or stop there.
Yes. It’s run by Be the Business, a not-for-profit, so its events, workshops and programmes are free to join.
Two short steps. We’ll use your answers to talk to you about places, timings and any funded options.
