Better skills for better business
Modern business lore is founded on the idea that anyone can set up shop in a bedroom or garage, hire uncles and sisters and spin the smallest ideas into a personal fortune.
It doesn't always work quite like that. There are plenty of business people along the spectrum, selling boxed tomatoes at the roadside or manning front-desks at family-owned dry-cleaners.
Small enterprises offer freedom for important innovations and change; and stakeholders stand to gain a much greater piece of the pie than they might as employees of multi-national corporations.
In fact, small and medium sized businesses have long accounted for the majority of business operated throughout the region and employ well over half the entire working population.
They are the norm and yet, until recently, SME owners across APEC received very little guidance. Advisors offered limited perspectives: they may have been trained in accountancy but not in marketing, or they may have been experienced in managing staff but were perhaps unfamiliar with business legalities. SMEs looking for help often received information that was biased or incomplete, depending on the interests of the professionals they consulted.
Aware of the importance of SMEs - which do, after all, create the majority of employment and have the potential to transform an entire economy - APEC Ministers endorsed the creation of the APEC International Network of Institutes of Small Business Counsellors (APEC IBIZ). The network now provides training and certification for consultants, counsellors, and other professionals who assist entrepreneurs and has quickly developed a larger and better equipped pool of business advisors.
David Byrne, Principal Assessor at the Small Business Counsellors Programme in Australia explains that, in the past, advice was not holistic. Many of the most astute professionals were simply unable to communicate their knowledge to clients: "In the small and medium business sector, advice was being given by people with very specific skills and narrow perspectives. They couldn't help, personally. Maybe they had an expertise, but they didn't necessarily have the people skills to counsel."
The need for a holistic approach is perhaps even more pronounced in developing economies where private and professional lives are often more closely linked. Says Byrne, "It is more than numbers and marketing... Many businesses involve families and in a small, developing economy, the whole city might be your family! So business has to run smoothly... and counselling has to involve a bit of psychology."
The programme complements the education that is received in business and other schools. Students of the programme are often people who already hold degrees and giving advice but who need what Byrne describes as "polishing of what they already know."
For Jesús Tapia de Miguel an Industrial Mechanical Engineer-cum-Business Counsellor, some of the less-obvious areas of study have proven to be the most practical: "One of the most important subjects I took was Ethics and Professional Principles of a Counsellor... Counsellors should respect customer confidentiality and imagine new and innovative ways to help each of them. Every customer is unique and deserves a unique service."
The coursework is short-term - maybe only six or seven days - but carried out full time, through non-profit Local Delivery Centers. To whatever extent possible, programmes are flexible and self-directed. Each economy is different and so are the experiences and skill sets of each student. Requirements for certification are standardized, consolidating best practices from around the world but leaving flexibility for indigenization for each participating economy. Coursework is devised by the student in collaboration with the learning centre manager and takes into consideration the abilities that student possesses already.
In addition to demonstrating competency in seven distinct areas, each student is required to have amassed 400 hours of experience to complement training, before they may be certified. Once certified, they may be hired by government business entrepreneur centres or be employed as consultants to small businesses.
Apart from expanding the abilities and range of opportunities available to graduates, these newly-certified counsellors also assist entrepreneurs to improve and expand the scope of their own business.
At present, Tapia de Miguel is advising a company that has created a new product to help to prevent the transmission of Influenza Type A H1N1, the impact of which has been significant for Mexico. He has assisted a school in creating a marketing campaign, to retain and attract new students. And he took third place for innovation in a competition for energy saving. He will apply the project as he assists one particular company to modify its industrial production line to manufacture products that are more environmentally-friendly.
New counsellors may also be nominated for training as a trainer for others so that the programme is self-sustaining.
According to Byrne, what really makes the programme unique is the art of counseling which, he distinguishes, is much different than advising. "When you counsel, you help someone to help themselves. That's different than telling them what to do."
To date, APEC-IBIZ has certified 185 Small Business Counsellors. For more information, go to: http://www.apec-ibiz.org/