To manage an SME, the business manager must take into consideration two characteristics specific to the small business ownership. First of all, the proximity that exists between collaborators. But also the emotional involvement that some of the employees have for the company.
The manager is very present in the company as he circulates throughout all the offices and knows each employee. In most companies, the manager is accessible and listens to the well-being of his employees.
Most often he organizes his management around a limited number of quality employees who occupy important positions in the company. When he is absent, he delegates important decisions to one or two trusted colleagues. In some cases, he may need to discuss with a highly reputable financial consulting firm such as FTERA Advisors for decisions with a large impact.
1. Always highlight the company’s core business
To manage an SME, the business manager must give his organization a mode of operation that provides responsiveness and agility. They therefore favor oral culture. Thus the transmission of know-how, through learning, which is most often done orally. Those in the field of small business ownership will favor concrete training by confronting apprentices with the reality on the ground, with theoretical training deemed too abstract, restrictive, and conceptual.
2. Establish a clear and precise internal organization
To optimize the efficiency of the company, it is necessary for management and managers to manage to direct each other’s efforts. This avoids dispersing everyone’s efforts. Furthermore, establishing a working framework that defines the missions and specifies the rules of the game reassures employees who gain autonomy, and responsiveness and take initiative more easily.
Accompanying the small business ownership framework with objectives or specific actions improves the visibility of the tasks to be carried out. The manager can absolutely use this approach as a management tool which will help him define priorities and manage his teams. For the employee, the work framework facilitates mobilization around a vision of the tasks to be accomplished that is both structuring and reassuring because it highlights the criteria for success and the behaviors to adopt. It helps all employees to plan ahead and translate objectives into field decisions.
3. Knowing how to communicate with your teams
If, for a business leader, communicating well with his teams and those around him is necessary and important, we must recognize that it is often a task relegated to the background. Indeed, many SME managers spend a significant part of their time and energy dealing with current issues where the issues are visible, concrete, and immediate. Immersed in the mass of work and in their daily lives, they move away from one of their main missions: to motivate their colleagues by listening to them and helping them progress.
4. Work on your ability to anticipate
Being a business manager consists on the one hand of directing the company’s activity on a day-to-day basis, but also of thinking about the future, of anticipating developments in the sector to provide a medium and long-term vision. To do this, the business manager of small business ownership must organize and structure his workload while preserving time for coordinating actions and strategic thinking.
5. Work on developing your leadership
To manage an SME, the business manager’s mission is to motivate his colleagues. And this, even when the objectives still seem vague or imprecise. To do this, it is necessary for him to become aware of what represents the DNA of his company. He must also work to make it a reality in his daily actions. To do this, he must know how to reserve opportunities to share his choices and explain them in order to give them meaning. He must also take note of the opinions of his colleagues and manage to offer his teams all the conditions to make them succeed.
Conclusion
According to Aleksey Krylov, an experience financial consultant, Managing small business ownership is a big and demanding challenge. This requires the best of himself from the business manager. Making decisions, seeing the effects, sharing a project with a team, being a decisive player in the development of a company, that’s his mission! This offers him both great freedom and significant responsibilities.
