If you are a Small and medium business (SMB) you have to face challenges on various fronts. While the obvious aim is to get more business at best margins, this simple “breathing” exercise for your organization is supported by various parts of your organizational body. You would need able support from your sales, finance & accounting, sourcing and most importantly the “brain” behind all this, the people!
As an SME then your challenges are not very different from any big multinational organization. It’s only the scale and speed at which these would impact your operations that matter. In a growing economy you are probably best suited to take benefit of the growth in the market as you are very agile and communication can reach the last mile very easily. However equally true is for not so good times of the economy like we are experiencing currently. The impact of recessionary times would spread quickly to your organization, unless you operate in a niche area or have an innovative business model.
Thus the need to constantly communicate and educate your workforce and keeping them ready for the next challenge is far more important and business critical in an SMB environment than in a big corporation (Don’t worry the big guys have their own sets of problems to deal with!)
Though the need to develop and constantly keep the workforce engaged to the cause is well established in every organization, the mechanisms deployed to achieve the same are as varied as there are organizations. I compare this to the learning methodologies that you and I adopted while we were in school. Though we both get similar marks, (ok u scored 5% more than me!) we definitely deployed different methods to study. However the school teacher taught us in essentially the same manner.
What happens in any learning effort is also very similar to this experience or exercise. We immediately expect the trainer to be the teacher who is supposed to know more than us and hence “pour” out his wisdom onto us, we are then supposed to figure out the best possible way for us to make use of this information, thus converting into knowledge or skills or both. However our busy lifestyles don’t always permit us the time for reflection and introspection on the inputs received, thus making this effort more complicated than we imagine.
Apart from these challenges an SME is also highly pressed for resources like time & money! Hence here’s some wisdom for you to evaluate options to ensure that your teams stay connected and stay on top of that next wave!
Actively support individuals who show high commitment to self-learning. Reward such people with cash & kind. This would help you spread the message that learning is as much important for the individual as it is for the organization. After all you studied first to get hired, why that equation needs to change if you want to continue in your job!!
Use technology. Today you have umpteen options available, which help in reducing/optimizing your one time costs or start-up costs. If you figure out that you need to train your sales people on your products, create an e-learning package, it would help you in solving two aspects – One it’s cost effective and more sustainable than a person! Two – since its one on one I can choose my pace which is so very difficult in a classroom session! (SaaS- Software as service is the key delivery mechanism being developed by organizations for SME’s like you)
If you value learning you need to reward knowledge or skills. Install programs in your company wherein a person is rewarded based on his contribution to the community and not the company alone. We all would be operating in some community like IT, metallurgy etc, reward your team members who have contributed to this community knowledge in terms of paper presentations, industry seminars, blogs, wikis etc
Traditionally our parents decided what we should learn; we continue that practice in our organization by giving that power in the hand of the managers! Instead make employees responsible for their development and allow them to choose what they want to pursue! There are various models available by which you can make this functional in your organization to ensure that people pursue what’s relevant to them and the organization. Believe me! Its only 10% of the population which would be looking at exploiting this for personal gain, if any.
Support a culture of learning and sharing, the person who not only learns but creates a resource to share with others in the organization/community is more valuable than one who holds knowledge close to his/her chest! It does not require huge infrastructure (like IT etc) but needs a whole hearted support and encouragement from you, the leader!
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