Wales lacks a coherent management training policy, and the resulting failure to fund and provide management skills training can only deepen the competitive disadvantage faced by small businesses, in both domestic and international markets.
Because of the very nature of small firms, the skills of owner-managers and their attitudes have a major impact upon the internal decision-making and performance of their respective firms. There the aptitude of individual owner-managers has significant and obvious consequences on the success of the economy in general. Only by firms becoming a lot more productive can the economy grow without sparking inflation.
Yet almost all research highlights the fact that most publicly funded management development provision fails to meet the real needs and expectations of SMEs.
The issue of management training in this sector has largely been neglected by development and management specialists who, until recently, were content to suggest solutions which were more relevant to the business strategies of larger firms. Attempts to down-scale and forcibly fit large-scale training strategies to resource-starved small businesses have resulted in a relative paucity of material focusing specifically upon the human resource needs of smaller firms.
The comparative professional neglect that has affected the small business sector was further compounded by the economic policies of successive governments, which tend to be biased towards large companies and multinationals. As a result, small business owner-managers are generally sceptical of government involvement in management training programmes which leaves a significant credibility gap.
This has meant that the management development at even the most basic level is in danger of not being properly addressed within the vast majority of firms, aside from a preoccupation with the skills of owner-managers at start-up and during early growth.
A number of years ago, the Wales Management Council conducted a research study into management training, and its findings concluded that the majority of management development and training provision was supply-driven and focused towards large employers. Also, the quality of published information on management development varied considerably, and frequently failed to sell business benefits.
The WMC concluded that there is an unclear and unfocused demand for management development which leads to dissatisfaction with provision and with outcomes.
This issue was also identified in a body of research conducted on behalf of the FSB which involved small business owner-managers, and was concerned with the relevance of the training, and whether this took into account the context of the different businesses.
It found that there needed to be some relevance not only to the owner-manager, but also in the industry in which they worked. In particular, some attention needed to be paid to the development of a business strategy 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 plan their businesses.
It follows that learning needs to be relevant to daily activities of businesses but at the same time give a strategic overview of how they could be more successful.
If small businesses, and particularly owner-managers, are to engage more in training then it needs to be provided in ways and for a duration that can be relatively easily accommodated alongside the normal activities of the business.
Ironically, such a massive challenge requires, as far as the small business owner-manager is concerned, a simple solution. It is up to the greatest brains in Wales to tell us what that solution is.
This article is about financial infrastructure solutions for the Welsh Economy and Welsh Business. Originally published (in edited form) in agenda the magazine for the Institute of Welsh Affairs ( summer 2010 No.41).
Adolf Hitler rose to power during the Great Depression of the 1930s because of fear and loathing of bankers coupled with racism and economic collapse. We all remember nightmare images of people paying for bara brith with a wheelbarrow load of paper Reichsmarks. It is a vision embedded in the collective unconscious of Europeans such as ourselves, or, to use modern parlance, it’s in our DNA.
Karl Marx clearly recognised how Capitalism is built on the flow of money and this, in turn, puts the ‘levers of power’ in the hands of people who understand this or are in positions to control it: i.e. the banking systems. Communism and its many re-interpretations by the likes of Lenin was built on this understanding.
Two main factors helped the USA emerge from the Great Depression, where a hatred of the depredations wreaked by banks, especially in rural farming communities, was more than equal to that of Europe. These were US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s New Deal infrastructure programmes and the huge re-employment provided by an emerging military-industrial complex at the outset of WWII. To a certain extent the New Deal programme saved America from a descent into demagoguery and the equivalent of German National Socialism. For those interested in the history of the implementation of New Deal structures and their political and socio-economic ramifications, Robert.A.Caro’s immense Pulitzer Prize winning biographies of Robert Moses and Lyndon. B. Johnson are a ‘must read’. There are lessons here that those in power both in the UK and in Wales, need to learn.
It is clear therefore, that an awareness of the political zeitgeist, history and what has worked before and is working now, is intrinsic to any sustainable regeneration of the Welsh economy. Our current governing class appears to show lamentable ignorance in these matters, is far too parochial in outlook or vision and seems also to be hell-bent on ‘re-inventing the wheel’. But the wheel has already been invented; what is needed now is fuel for the engine and suitable lubrication – which brings us back to … money.
How money is used, and how it flows is the only key to any solution that can unlock our economy and thus enable the realisation of any kind of social or public service agenda to which we may wish to aspire to as a Society.
I wonder if @Peston and @piersmorgan still want Martin O'Neill to replace Wenger...
Oh god, am I really listening to AC/DC on Strictly? Bon Scott would be revolving!
“@BBCBusiness: Homeserve probes mis-sells claim http://t.co/dBJsW3HL”
As a Homeserve customer myself these claims don't surprise me.
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