Is your business getting the most it can from you?

Jan 17 2008 By The Journal

THE roles and responsibilities of running a business can often leave key managers with little time to think about themselves and the areas in which they could benefit from additional knowledge and training.

Yet their skills are crucial to ensuring their company’s success and maintaining its competitive advantage.

Taking a step back from the day-to-day demands of running a business and looking at the way you work can be invaluable to your development and business success.

As a manager you’ll be called upon to perform many different roles on a daily basis and you’ll naturally be better at some tasks than others.

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.

On any given day you may find yourself handling issues around finance, sales and marketing or HR and you and your management team need to be able to develop and implement a clear leadership strategy.

Just as with staff training and development, you and your management team need to have the right skills.

Without these key management skills, there is a risk that you may hold the business back and reduce productivity.

Making sure you have the right people with the right skills will ensure your business runs more smoothly.

Taking time to assess where your strengths and weaknesses lie will help you identify where you might benefit from external help.

Businesses don’t always recognise the value of external support, yet it can make a big difference to your performance.

With the right information and independent support you can carry out a thorough training needs analysis, enabling you to identify key areas for management development to help the business run more efficiently and ultimately, increase productivity and the bottom line.

Below are some frequently asked questions around the key issues of implementing management training programmes.

Q. Isn’t management training something for big companies?

Management training is relevant to any business of any size and has a crucial role to play in success. No matter how big your business is, having an effective management team with the necessary skills will play a significant role in your continued success.

Q. What kind of areas should I be thinking about?

There are obvious skills such as finance, marketing, sales etc, but also other less obvious areas, such as leadership, communication and stress management.

Q. Will I really benefit from external training?

Almost certainly. No-one understands your business better than you, but there are many occasions when another perspective can make a real difference and help you see the wood for the trees. Although it is a bit of a cliché, there’s a lot of truth in the fact that you don’t know what you don’t know.

Q. What do I need to consider?

Being honest with yourself is critical and being willing to acknowledge where your strengths and weaknesses lie, this is where an objective pair of eyes can help. Some key issues for directors to consider when identifying their development needs include effective delegation, team-management skills, learning through networking, leadership skills and business coaching.

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Website supplies the information for way forward

DO you need management training answers quickly?

How often do you find yourself looking for information to help in the development of your business and improve your management skills?

The right information at the right time can make all the difference to your profitability and competitiveness.

The Business Link website – www.businesslinknortheast.co.uk – makes it easier than ever to find what you’re looking for quickly and at a time that suits you.

Because the site is open 24 hours a day, you’re never more than a couple of clicks away from access to a huge range of free information and tools to help you build business success.

A wide range of guides on all aspects of reviewing management training programmes can be printed out from the website. Here are just a few examples:

1. Develop your management team;

2. Skills and training for directors and owners;

3. Review your business performance;

4. Turn under-performance into high performance;

5. Prepare a business plan for growth;

6. Reorganisations, restructures and other major changes;

7. Corporate social responsibility;

8. Setting business targets;

9. Importance of knowledge to a growing company;

10. Your responsibilities for health, safety and the environment.

Business Link North East’s substantial team of expert brokers operate across the region in local access points and on a mobile basis. For further information about Business Link visit www.businesslinknortheast.co.uk or call (08456) 009006.