19/10/2015
DO YOU HAVE ALL THE SKILLS?
Do you have all the skills you need for your business to thrive? Really?
My findings suggests that many small businesses (SMEs) are held back, in terms of productivity, by their lack of management skills.
Plenty of enterprises springing up – but do they actually have the prerequisite skills required to make a real go of it?
Productivity problem
The Nigeria economy may be growing faster than any “other African nation”,’ ‘but productivity is a problem with output per hour worked and contributions to GDP.
Rising productivity
It’s relatively easy setting up and looking the part. But do you have the skills, within your management team, to really deliver?
If not, that in turn will have its impact on the overall economic picture.
If productivity cannot rise at a steady rate, broadly across the board, ‘meeting deficit targets will be an impossibility’.
One area that might ‘hamper both growth and productivity alike, is the current level of management and leadership skills within SMEs.
Lack of management
Many enterprises' growth is being hampered by a lack of management skills.’ It’s one thing, bursting with ideas and plans; quite another, implementing them well over a sustained period.
Many SMEs die pre-mature mostly due to management low level of skills to handle more challenging tasks and make appropriate decisions at crucial moments of the business.
Leadership and management underdeveloped
To better understand the SME sector, an examination was conducted on the association between entrepreneurship skills, leadership and management skills, the implementation of management best practices and how these factors are related to three measures of performance: turnover, productivity and employment growth.
The results demonstrated that leadership and management skills are underdeveloped in many SMEs.
The most important predictor of positive performance is entrepreneurship skills.
The results indicate that skills matter, but not all skills matter equally.
Across all types of firms and contexts, the benefits of top managers with good leadership and entrepreneurship skills appeared in terms of both revenues and growth, as well as indirectly with productivity and turnover.
Given limited resources, especially time, SME owner-managers benefit most significantly from ensuring that their entrepreneurship skills and leadership skills are well polished.
It seems, perhaps, there can be a chaotic approach, at times, to small business management that might, in fact, benefit from the imposition of more order.
An important practical takeaway from this research therefore’, ‘is owner-managers should understand the fundamental benefits of a formal approach to planning, communication, and adaptation, as well as being able to connect HRM practices to the strategic planning process.
Missing skills are trainable
Creative bubbly flare will only get you so far. Too many people are in love with the idea of being their own boss without the necessary toolkit.
There has been evidence that entrepreneurship skills are trainable and that many managers would benefit from taking advantage of this type of “personal development opportunity”
Deep down, if you know you lack such skills, experience, training? Would you concede the possibility of been trained?
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Submit a brief information on your area of need or call Moses Imohi on 08181918362, you can also visit our website www.bqm.ng to benefit from our resources by subscribing to our month magazine "Business Quotient Magazine'. Ayo Adeyemi, Publisher
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