Education and the Small Business

Learning, Training and Growth, by David Birchall

At a recent FSB meeting we were discussing Education and Training and how the owners and managers of small businesses were missing out on learning new skills which would hold them in good stead over the coming years.
 
When some of the company asked the question: - "why should we bother learning new skills, we started up our businesses and have grown them to a reasonable size with the skills we have, why do we need to look at getting new skills?"
 
It's a good point and one which I am often asked or reminded of and my answer has usually been to the effect that learning new skills is a way of keeping up with what is going on in your market place and with technology, not to mention making life easier.
 
Then last night I watched Professor Robert Winston's programme "walking with cavemen". If you haven't seen it he uses new techniques to make you think you are actually watching events from 2 million years ago unfold in front of your eyes. In the series he is asking where we came from and who our ancestors were and during the course of the programme the answer to why bother getting new skills became blindingly obvious to me.
 
The story this week centred on three species of apes, two of which were very successful and one who was not as successful at surviving. The two successful species were succeeding because they had specialised in eating particular foods or living in a certain way. The third not so successful family of apes were not specialists in fact they were what we might call a "Jack of all Trades". Their lives were harder and they were smaller, they had to search far and wide for food which meant that they had to eat almost anything that they found to be edible even meat, where the other species kept to their vegetarian diets. In fact life was one long battle compared to the other two species. They were however very inquisitive and opportunistic which made them flexible and adaptable to changing circumstances. They were always on the lookout for something new and learning about their surroundings. It turns out that these down at heel jack of all trades turn out to be the winners in the evolutionary and survival stakes because of their flexibility and inquisitive nature. They happened to be our ancestors.
 
Whilst it may be a long winded way of saying that "if you want to survive you must always be ready to learn new skills and not be afraid of change", it does I think illustrate quite well the point that I have been trying to put over to owner managers at meetings. We should all seriously look at what we know and what we don't know. In the coming months I would like to share with you some of information on the skills, techniques and technology that can make our lives easier particularly in the areas of concern or most frequently raised issues at workshops. These hot buttons are;
 
Owners Hot Buttons taken from our Business Development workshops

1. Marketing (How do you research markets and maximise returns)  
2. Business Strategy & Planning 
3. Sales Skills 
4. Time Management  
5. Exporting 
6. Financial Planning 
7. Debt Chasing 
8. Business Tips – Secrets of "easy" management 
9. Creativity & Innovation (New product and service development)  
10. Identifying the right funding vehicle for my business 
11. Training 
12. Negotiating Skills (Suppliers/Customers) 
13. Business Analysis 
14. Mixing Technology and People effectively 

Copyright David Birchall 2003