SKILLS AND TRAINING
FOR
DIRECTORS AND OWNERS
As a business owner or director you need many different
skills for your business to succeed.
You may be a first-class engineer, but
unless you can sell your product, your business could fail. Likewise, you could
be a wizard financier, but unless the people you employ are well managed, your
business could collapse.
Running a
successful business means being able to access many skills. As your business grows, the
range and complexity of skills your business needs will grow
too.
This guide
outlines the kind of skills that businesses need to function successfully and
outlines the skills required by those heading a business, e.g.
people-management, leadership, team-building and strategy-setting. It will
advise you on where to go to find help and training to ensure all these skills needs are
met in your business.
THE
CORE SKILLS ALL BUSINESSES REQUIRE
As a business director or owner it's
essential you can identify and meet the core skills your business needs to be
successful.
These skills will be the same whatever
business you run - whether you're a self-employed graphic designer or you head
a manufacturing company employing dozens of people.
There are intangible skills you will need, such as
leadership skills, the ability to cope with long hours and hard work, and the
inner resources to deal with stress and risk-taking. They also include
strategy-setting and the ability to build and manage a team.
There are also functional skills that
all businesses need. The smaller your business, the more of these skills you
will need personally:
·
finance - including cash flow planning,
credit-management and managing relationships with your bank and accountant
·
marketing - including advertising, promotion and
PR
·
sales - including pricing, negotiating,
customer service and tracking competitors
·
procurement and buying – including tendering, managing
contracts, stock control and inventory planning
·
administration - including bookkeeping, billing,
accounts preparation and payroll handling
·
personnel - including recruitment, dispute
resolution, motivating staff and managing training
·
personal business skills - including computer, written and oral
communication, and organisational skills
To run a successful business it's
essential you recognise the limits of your abilities. So, as a business owner
or director you also need the skill to know when it is best to hand over tasks
to others by either:
·
delegating
·
recruiting
·
outsourcing
SKILLS REQUIRED BY GROWING BUSINESSES
As your business grows, the skills your
business needs to access will grow too. For example:
·
as your finance
arrangements become
more complex, you'll need staff to, for example, manage company accounts, and
find and manage outside investment
·
your marketing may need to be more sophisticated -
therefore you'll need to understand, for example, advertising and the media
·
the number
of employees may
increase to a point where you need to hire HR professionals, who may also help
your business comply with employment law
·
if your business
is involved in a sector where health and safety is particularly important, e.g.
construction or manufacturing, you may need to hire health and safety
professionals
·
• new
equipment and/or processes in
your business may mean that you need to hire technical specialists
·
as your IT
system becomes
more complex, you may need to have in-house IT knowledge
As the owner or
director of a successful growing business it is essential that you recognise when new skills are needed and you
take the right steps to meet them.
You are unlikely to be able to find the
time or have the ability to meet most of them yourself. Consider:
·
building a
management team
·
delegating
responsibility to other staff
·
recruiting to fill
a skills gap
·
outsourcing the
work to a specialist contractor
·
training existing
staff to meet your skills needs
KEY SKILLS FOR OWNERS AND DIRECTORS: LEADERSHIP
Strong leadership and a sense of
direction are hallmarks of almost all successful businesses. Good leaders offer
direction to people, get them to share his or her vision for the business, and
aim to create the conditions for them to achieve results.
You can show leadership to staff by:
·
involving them in
decision-making
·
providing personal
encouragement
·
recognising and
rewarding good performance
·
helping to build
their confidence to use their own initiative
·
inspiring them
with a vision for success
·
ensuring good
two-way communication
Both you and your directors will need
to use different skills at different times - there's no "one size fits
all" approach to leadership. In addition the right leadership style will
depend on your business and your own character. A softer, mentoring style of
leadership may be appropriate - or you may opt for a more charismatic approach.
KEY SKILLS FOR OWNERS AND DIRECTORS: STRATEGY
All businesses need a strategy to
succeed. A business strategy is different from a business plan. It is longer,
looks further ahead and is more visionary.
It's easy to lose sight of the larger
context when you're busy running a business, particularly a small one. But
spending time on strategy will help you:
·
know where your
business is heading and how to position it to get there
·
understand the
challenges and opportunities your business faces and the best ways to address
them
·
improve the
overall performance of your business
Importantly, the task of forming a
strategy for your business should not be delegated. Rather, as your business
grows you can spend more time on it as others handle day-to-day activities.
Tools to help you determine strategy
Many business
tools can help you determine strategy. A popular one is a SWOT
analysis, in which you:
·
consider all your
business strengths
·
consider all your
business weaknesses
·
identify any
business opportunities
·
identify any threats facing your business
Analysing your results carefully will
show you how to build on strengths, resolve weaknesses, exploit opportunities
and avoid threats.
Another strategy
tool is a gap analysis, in which you analyse in detail where
your business is now and then consider where you want it to be in the future.
Next, you analyse the gap between the two in order to find ways to bridge it.
Forming your strategy
A business
strategy should be realistic,
putting in place measurable targets
for the medium term. It should be reviewed regularly.
KEY SKILLS FOR OWNERS AND DIRECTORS: DELEGATION
Delegating
involves passing on the responsibility for
completing a task or controlling a process in your business. You may find it
difficult if you are used to completing most tasks yourself.
Some business owners and directors fear
losing control. Others fear nobody will be able to do a task as well as they
can. Some resent the time it takes to train people to take over, and some
insist they want to remain in touch.
Effective delegation, however, makes
good business sense because it:
• frees you up for
forward and innovative business thinking • ensures your team's potential is maximized
• builds trust between you and your employees
How to delegate
Write a list of everything you do. Ask
yourself whether it is essential you do all these tasks. Could your time be
better spent? Could others be trained to take over? Might others even be better
suited to the task than you?
Delegate if it
will prove more cost-effective to
do so.
Remember though:
·
Training can take
time. Don't expect to reap dividends immediately.
·
Others may do
things differently to you - but their way could be better.
·
Your team members
should feel supported and
have their work reviewed. However, overbearing supervision can prove
counter-productive.
·
Good communication makes good delegation.
·
Delegation might
be best achieved through outsourcing.
Remember that you remain ultimately
responsible for delegated tasks. You cannot delegate control of your team or
your final responsibility for its success or failure.
Above all, you cannot delegate your
responsibility for the direction in which your business is heading.
KEY SKILLS FOR OWNERS: BUILDING A MANAGEMENT TEAM
Building a management team is an
essential part of any growing business' success. It is not just the concern of
big business.
A dynamic
management team that works well together will impress clients
and give your business the competitive edge.
A badly run management team is likely to put off customers and investors
however brilliant an idea or product your business may offer. At worst, it can
prove the undoing of a business.
When building a management team it is
important to:
·
Bring in a mix of
skills that complement and
reinforce each other rather than simply duplicating each other.
·
Find people who
are team players, who trust each other and will interact well.
·
Define everybody's role and responsibilities within the team
clearly. Relate these roles back to your business strategy.
·
Ensure those you
employ are in tune with the goals of
your business and the way in which these will be achieved.
Remember - you may have to look beyond
your existing employees to build a successful management team.
KEY SKILLS FOR OWNERS AND DIRECTORS: MANAGING
YOUR TEAM
If your business is to work at maximum
efficiency and achieve its full potential, all your employees need to work
together as a well-functioning team. This means you must acquire
team-management skills.
You may have different teams that need
to be managed in different ways. For instance, it's just as important to manage
your senior management team as it is to manage your more junior staff members.
For your teams to work well you should:
·
ensure everybody
knows their role
·
set clear goals and communicate them
·
put in place clear
lines of communication
·
clarify lines of responsibility
·
involve all team
members in decision-making as
much as possible
·
introduce ways to
manage and resolve differences
·
learn how to lead
effective meetings
·
encourage training and personal development
·
build in regular reviews
·
be a ready and
willing listener
·
encourage and
promote diversity
·
motivate team members
·
reward initiative
SKILLS AND TRAINING FOR COMPANY DIRECTORS
When you take on
the role of a company director you take on very clearly-defined responsibilities.
An obvious responsibility is ensuring
that certain documents, such as annual returns, are filed with the government.
There are also
non-legal obligations for directors, such as the requirements to form
strategy and to manage
your team well,
which are necessary to ensure your business succeeds.
See the pages in this guide on key
skills for owners and directors: strategy and on key skills for owners and
directors: managing your team.
Training can prove very helpful for
building both legal and non-legal skills areas.
SOURCES OF LEADERSHIP TRAINING
As a business owner or director you
could benefit from leadership training, i.e. training designed to help you maximize
your own and your business' performance.
Leadership training will help you:
·
inspire your team
·
influence others
·
bring about
positive change in your business
Leadership
training is as much about personal development as it is about learning set
skills through formal training. For this reason, mentoring is often chosen as the best way to
develop leadership potential.
Mentoring is an informal, generally
unstructured process in which a mentor, usually someone very experienced in
business, spends time developing the inner resources of the mentee. It is not a
teacher-pupil relationship. Rather, the mentor is more of a guide and somebody
against whom ideas can be safely sounded out.
Networking is another important type of skill
development for business owners and directors. A wide variety of business
networks exists - including those for new businesses, young owners and women
owners. These allow you to learn from people running similar businesses and
facing similar obstacles.
Original document, Skills
and training for directors and owners,
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·
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