In this ninth article, we will examine the eighth in a series of 10 key challenges to growth and how successful owner-managers may overcome them.

In the last article, we looked at how successful high-growth entrepreneurs focus on fashioning a new business for a new tomorrow. In one word, they become strategists. They are able to do so, because much of the day-to-day operational activity is entrusted to a competent and motivated team of people. In this article, we will talk about how to focus on your employees.

TAKE A LOOK AT YOURSELF
Why would anyone want to be led by you? For most of us, this is a question we would prefer not to address. It goes to the core of who we are and what we think about ourselves. For the aspiring owner-manager, however, it is a question that cannot be ducked. Take a long and hard look at yourself, and get some frank feedback from people who know you well. Would you like to work for yourself? If not, why should anyone else? If the answer is that you could work for yourself, but you have reservations, then you need to work on the weaknesses. Senior staff have reported to us that the commonest failings in their bosses are excessive meddling, last-minute decision making, unnecessary secrecy, and poor time management. Is that honestly the boss you would like to work for?

It is not just about money. Ask a broad sample of owner-managers what motivates their staff—at the top of the list comes money, every time. Ask the people who work for them, and you will get a more subtle picture, however. Of course, money is important, but it is far from the be-all and end-all. Key factors in their decision to join and remain with an employer are:

• Opportunities to grow. This factor includes the chance to expand their skills and widen the scope of their role. Talented managers want challenge, not repetition.

• Career development. Good people want to be part of a business that is going somewhere, and everyone wants to be on a winning team. A successful growing business offers better career prospects than one that is standing still.

• Discretion and flexibility. Outside of the army, command and control management approaches just do not work in 2007.

These three points may seem like statements of the obvious, however, if you do not make these aims central to your business planning and communicate them to your staff, you are unlikely to recruit and retain the people that you need to help you grow the business. There is a war for talent, and there are only winners and losers.

Successful growers become mentors and coaches. Having worked with hundreds of owner-managers at Cranfield's Business Growth and Development Programme (BGP), we have observed just how much time high-growth entrepreneurs spend mentoring and coaching their teams. They define the strategic direction, the resources and the measures, and then do their utmost to create an environment that enables their teams to perform. They set aside large chunks of personal time to be available when needed.

Enabling your people to perform to their full potential is just one side of the equation. In the next article, we will focus on how owner-managers may develop themselves to meet the needs of the business and their personal ambitions.

For more information on BGP and Cranfield's other programs for owner-managers, visit www.som.cranfield.ac.uk/som/groups/enterprise/credo/index.asp.