Nick Smith is co-founder and partner of Manifesto Growth Architects, the London growth consultancy that helps leaders build sustainable, customer-led growth through what it calls growth architecture.

Founded in 2013, the firm lists Wagamama, Which? and Skillshare among the clients in its published case studies. In February 2026 it was one of 11 firms to receive a gold rating in the Financial Times and Statista listing of the UK’s Leading Management Consultants.

He tells Business Matters why every business should behave like a challenger, why values only matter if you live them, and why he wishes he had backed change sooner.

What do you currently do at Manifesto Growth Architects?

If you can get to the heart of an organisation’s ambition, all businesses can, and should, behave like challengers. If your objective is sustainable, customer-led value growth, we think that is ultimately the only way to be effective.

My role is twofold: getting to the heart of the question our clients are looking to answer, and then ensuring they and their colleagues have the confidence and the action plan to execute successfully. Our work is designed to help businesses reach that clarity so they can deliver the outcomes they need to be successful.

What was the inspiration behind your business?

I have worked across many industries and on both sides of the table through my career, and Manifesto Growth Architects emerged from the different challenges I took from each of those. It needed to have the customer focus of the transformational jobs I had done, giving customers solutions that worked for them, not just a one-size-fits-all answer.

It needed to recognise that clients were smart and more often than not already knew the answers to their problems, but wanted help articulating their thinking and turning it into a plan. And it needed to be fun.

We spent the first year proving that we could build a successful business without any pre-existing methodologies. As we grew, we became confident that the philosophy of growth architecture was a thing. Once we realised that, we built our credentials around it, brought in clients we could develop relationships with, and the business blossomed.

Who do you admire?

Adam Morgan and his “transformative leaps”. He was one of the most eloquent speakers on challenger brands and the importance of adopting a challenger mentality.

What I have learnt from him is to mix logic and rigorous assessment with a modicum of bravery in your decision-making. In business we have options, and we often choose the one that is the least scary. In our work, we help clients not to be afraid and show them the choices that can create the circumstances to make good decisions. That approach is inspired by Adam Morgan’s thinking.

Looking back, is there anything you would have done differently?

When I reflect on the early stages of the company, I do not think I did a good enough job of identifying what we needed to change early enough. If I could go back and have a conversation with myself, I would encourage critical thinking about the situation we were in and urge myself to back the changes I knew we needed to make sooner.

Change is not to be feared. If you have surrounded yourself with the right people, people who believe in your ethos and who can offer the right advice, change can be one of the best things for a business. I would remind myself of that.

What defines your way of doing business?

When we started the company, it was important that we did not limit our scope by employing consultants who had been trained to think a certain way. Instead, we brought in curious, super-smart people from a diverse range of backgrounds and, crucially, people who had already had a few jobs and knew they were looking for a new challenge.

As a team we built a clear sense of what mattered to us. Some call it a values system, but too often, as soon as you write down your values, you stick them on a wall and then forget about them. For us they became the core of how we operate. There are four that we chose to build around:

good is never good enough
take responsibility
we are hosts to the businesses and people we work with
we have each other’s backs

All too often, you see consultancy companies measuring personal performance, but we measure as a team. Our proposition is that we will help our team accelerate their careers, but we believe we only borrow them for a while. It is a way of building an incredibly strong team that is dedicated, hard-working and delivers for clients, but that never stagnates.

What advice would you give to someone starting out?

When I look back at the things that have excited me during my career, it is always moments of change: things I helped deliver that changed how businesses operated.

It is not about change for the sake of it. It is about how you deliver positive change now for clients, their customers, the community and the commercial ecosystem without spending a ridiculous amount of money. Our business has become successful because of that driving idea, and I would encourage all new entrepreneurs to find their north star, whatever it may be, believe in it and give it the resources it needs to thrive.

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