All family businesses need to balance out the tensions between what I call the "3 forces" that effect family businesses - The force from family business itself, the force from the family ownership and the force from the family system. Having a common mission, high-trust relationships and effective decision-making structures can help to bolster family …
Author: Silvan Mifsud
2022 – Challenges facing SMEs & Family Businesses
At the end of 2021, I have circulated a survey asking businesses to outline what they believe will be the challenges they will face in 2022. All responses focused on the following aspects:- Negative impact from Covid and any further restrictive measures Staff retention issues and new employee shortagesSupply Chain issues and rising costs leading …
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No Time for Strategy
This will be my last Blog Article for 2021. Whilst hoping you will find time to slow down in the coming festive days, I wanted to forward you this Blog article so that you can reflect on it during the forthcoming "slower period". The very first article I published on this Blog, 22 months ago, …
The Challenge for SMEs to Attract & Retain Talent
It is true that businesses of all sizes are struggling to retain and attract talent, however I find that this is more so for SMEs as they often find themselves with an inadequate toolkit to address the challenge. The same old approaches aren’t working in the present circumstances and will not build the capabilities such …
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Employ Carefully
Many business leaders are truly overwhelmed as they are desperately trying to fill various vacant positions. The level of vacant positions is often leading to an increasing burden on existing staff members, creating the potential for dissatisfaction, burnout and hence even more vacancies. Yet the temptation to just employ anyone willing to take the job …
Autonomy vs Micromanagement
As you hopefully know so far, I am dead set against micromanagement. I had extensively written about the perils of micromanagement (Click HERE and HERE to read past articles on micromanagement). In fact I believe that businesses have a great deal to gain, from a performance perspective, when adopting empowerment and autonomy. However should such …
Where can we find leaders?
When I was studying for my Masters degree I was somehow infatuated by the research work of Gareth Jones on Leadership. Unfortunately he died early this year. In his work with Rob Goffee he established that leadership is non-hierarchical concept. Much of the leadership literature is overly concerned with those who reach the top of organisations. …
Digital Transformation
The pandemic has surely accelerated the need for digital transformation of all business organisations. However, the most common mistake I see is that business leaders believe that such digital transformation is only and exclusively related to investing or buying new technology, without going through the extremely important process as to how such digital transformation will …
Employee Retention
All business leaders I meet seem to be facing some sort of staffing problem or another. It has become a common conversation subject. As I keep repeating, while recruiting new staff is important, retaining the good staff you already hold in your team is even more important.The challenge is severe. Many employers are presently seeing …
Incompetence in Family Businesses
I would not be exaggerating when I say that I face and deal with incompetence in various family businesses on a daily basis. If there is one thing that I learnt is to analyse family businesses with an open mind and to build my own conclusions on the facts I see rather than what I …
A Business Blog for SMEs & Family Businesses 