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| Titolo News |
What about CHANGES in the family-owned SMEs |
In your opinion, which is the difference in performing changes between SME Ownership and Leadership? For these companies, hire an external manager could be a solution to impose a radical change?
In Italy, for 59% of total companies, ownership and management are the same person, against the 22% in Germany. Considering Germany industry as benchmark, this percentage tell us that the division among Ownership and Management can be a win-to-win solution.
Let us review first the two figures: the Owner is the investor, who defines the strategy and vision; the management, however, is some thing different.
The Owner in the SME is usually the Leader, but it can even not be in this way, nevertheless he remains crucial as he has the responsibility of the selection of the Leader that will keep alive his business.
Unfortunately some time we faced Owner with limited experience or capability. Frequently they are only concentrate on their enterprise spending most of the time in the plant without being able to look around. For example what happen when a company is forced to compete in a new world, or a new technology is coming out. Are all Owner able to survive? Did they all have enough education to adjust process and implement a radical transformation to the company? Are they all able to move/penetrate in a new market?
We cannot forget that the Owner is the person who decides its future and the future of its company. But which Owners in an extreme situation like the actual crisis would prefer to see his company closed? Thus we are forced to consider the concept of the succession to the Owner, which should be seen as an opportunity to grow his business if a skilled Manager follows this and his process.
But a Manager in a SME represent also a cost that frequently the Owner is not ready to accept, and/or represent a risk. Therefore this is a change to be planned in the long terms with a transparent approach, organized without to forget the cost impact of a manager in an SME.
This can be seen as a point of challenge and excellence for SMEs. It ‘obvious that the Owner must have a strong predisposition to change and must begin to respect and allow opinions and visions that are not based simply on his intuition but also on a Manager data.
In this case, it is important the owner starts putting clear and reachable goals to the Manager, and then behave in order to allow him to reach them.
Paradoxically, the actual crisis could be the right stimulation for changes, the reshaping also of new profiles, which can substitute the “Owners” of SMEs. But if we want to consider a Manager, we must assume more responsibility in case of mistakes, otherwise…