Walesbusiness.org

Leaders need 20:20 vision to see the way forward

AS RUSSELL Lawson wrote in his recent Boardroom blog:

“Yes, it is hard to be an owner-manager: running the business, finding the markets, coping with regulations, finding the staff, looking for finance, dealing with problems. The sector now requires greater management expertise than ever before. Directors and managers need a high level of skills, both professional and vocational, if firms are to flourish.”

In other words, it’s tough out there.  We live in very challenging times with ever increasing competition and there is a need to develop the skills that will equip future business leaders with the ability to survive economic austerity and grow their markets. The ability of SMEs to compete and grow is linked to their capacity to get certain things right – like marketing, branding and selling – but it is also related to their ability to provide business leadership.

People running a business in the current economic climate need all the support they can get. Yet current research highlights the fact that most leadership and management development provision fails to meet the real needs and expectations of SME managers. Too much of the management training on offer is based on practices that have been developed within larger firms. Attempts to down-scale these training strategies to small businesses have not worked because they have not been focused specifically upon the human resource needs of smaller firms.

Government policy has not helped either because it too is biased towards large companies and multinationals. As a result, small business owner-managers are generally skeptical of government supported management training programmes.  This has left a significant credibility gap in the delivery of practical management support to small firms who doubt the relevance of the training on offer.

Discussions with local businesses indicate that there needs to be more relevance, not only to the owner-manager, but also in the industry in which they work – support for developing a new business strategy has to be delivered within an industry context. It was felt that only then would any training be deemed ‘relevant’.

The type of training required was a range of strategic management skills, which owner-managers felt was much more important than day-to-day skills, so that they could better plan their business growth. In particular, the learning needs to be relevant to the daily activities of businesses but at the same time give a strategic overview of how they could be more successful. Firms also want the training to provide opportunities to ask other small business managers for their view on a particular issue.

Finally, the training needs to be provided in ways that can be relatively easily accommodated alongside the normal activities of the business.

As part of the team delivering the 20Twenty Leadership Programme I would certainly agree with these sentiments. The approach adopted on the 20Twenty is to focus on developing a combination of skills that lead to business growth.

Hence, the starting point of the 20Twenty journey is an in-depth analysis of where the participant’s company is now – via an informal due diligence of its management processes and a personality profile of the owner/manager. The programme then assesses where they would like their company to be in three to five years’ time and encourages them to provide a detailed map of how to get there – a three year strategic growth plan. We do this by enabling them to tap into a supportive network of other SME managers, mentors and coaches.

During the programme they experience one-to-one mentoring sessions with prominent business leaders and are trained by an executive coach. Participants automatically become a member of the Chartered Management Institute (CMI) and a registered student at UWIC (the new Cardiff Metropolitan University).

In total, the programme has attracted over 150 delegates since it began in 2009 and it is now in its third cohort.  This began in September 2011 and it has had an impressive take-up with 60 SME managers actively involved in the workshop programme. There are a variety of small firms on 20Twenty – from ‘one-man-bands’ up to much larger companies like Admiral and General Dynamics.

In the second half of the programme, a series of Master classes are provided on innovation and new thinking on a variety of business themes – including, Lean processes, creating a brand, maximising sales and making the business ‘investor ready’. All workshops are delivered by experts in a practical environment where problems are set to small groups who report back to the larger group.

However, the overarching aim of 20Twenty Leadership is to get participants to develop a three-year growth strategy for their business. Hence all the workshops and assignments are based around the needs of the business in driving sustainable growth.

The 20Twenty programme continues to gain momentum and we are now recruiting for the fourth cohort. Prior to that there will be ‘Taster Sessions’ in February/March which will explain what the course entails. Anyone can come along to meet the team and see the 20Twenty Programme for themselves.