As I meet various business leaders and business owners, I am still amazed at the lack of proper financial analysis that such businesses undergo to evaluate and track their business performance. I am not speaking about just the issuing of timely monthly or quarterly management accounts. I am referring to what you are doing with …
Sources of Finance
The most popular source of finance for SMEs and family businesses is bank financing. You can read that latest statistics about the sources of finance for SMEs, HERE. Are there however other sources of finance which are not being explored or used enough? The answer is Yes. The first port of call is the Prospects …
Pricing Strategies
As I keep repeating, strategy is not something you do once in a while. It is something that needs to be integral as to how any business leader views the business organisation they are leading. It is a mindset. As we all know, many businesses are being faced by inflationary pressures from various quarters. The …
Culture eats Strategy for breakfast
As the great Peter Drucker once said, Culture eats Strategy for breakfast. Yet I still see a multitude of business leaders that fail to understand that virtually all of the things that annoy them in their business organisation, find their root cause in the lack of attention and work on setting the Structure and Culture …
Tensions in Family Businesses
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 …
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 …
A Business Blog for SMEs & Family Businesses 