MEETING AS A MANANGEMENT TOOL FOR ENTREPRENEURS AND SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS

By Nnabugwu Chizoba (Development Consultant/Sustainability Accountant

The argument in some quarters that the activities of entrepreneurs and small business owners; are essential to the growth and sustainable development of the economy is strategic, apt, emancipatory and indeed survival driven.

This draws to mind the essence of entrepreneurial activities, captures the integral nature of small business owners and points to the direction that their combined efforts more often than not generate multiple activities that sometimes baffle citizens. 

Evidence abounds for example, within the BRIC economies and the Asia tigers of what entrepreneurship and small businesses can do for any economy that devotes efforts and resources to create the enabling environment for their activities to thrive. 

Sometimes all it takes is the understanding of the peculiarities of an environment in relation to the nature, resource endowment, dominant behavior style, attitude, aptitude and change dynamics that are triggered off as a result of the activities of gifted individuals pushing to offload the stuff they are made. 

The above is not possible for any nation that did not realize the importance of continuously adapting her efforts, bureaucracies, systems, policies, structures, strategies, and culture towards spreading out and creating essentially, opportunities that enable the system to tap from many people as possible. This requires efforts at increasing citizen involvement, adjusting to superior arguments and opinions, settling differences, strengthening engagements and striving at all times to win opposition through genuine and meaningful dialogue. 

The growth and development of entrepreneurship activities and small scale businesses by individuals require similar efforts, an indication that they are not automatic. Hard work and commitment; and in all honesty the determination to do things differently are also major ingredients for achieving monumental results in business and entrepreneurship. For this reason, I make bold to assert that in today’s business environment, more than in any preceding era, the only constant is the ability to attract minds, embrace new knowledge, skills and cutting edge procedures that are necessary to advance the economy. 

It is essential to note that the preceding argument favours the bold and critical minded; the astute and those willing to take the risk of confronting challenges and doing things differently. Success to this category of individuals’ means moving from strength to strength; doing old things in new ways, in the same old environment. There are also those, who belief in doing new things in a new environment. More important is their readiness to take advantage of opportunities before they become obvious.

Entrepreneurs and small business owners that successfully attract the right caliber of individuals, such that matches effectively with their type of operation and materials, grow and become great, to the point that they have the capacity to employ a chunk of the unemployed populace. This capacity to employ has helped nations to reduce unemployment, poverty, ignorance and the attendant risks to the society. That more benefits accrue to the society through this is definitely not in doubt. 

Successful Entrepreneurs and small business owners, make their activities a thriving one by identifying opportunity (ies) and relevant tools, and take necessary action(s), especially those that make it expedient for them to detect loopholes in their personal capacity, and by so doing force them to take decisive steps to reduce their vulnerability to adverse situations and trends. Similarly, they embrace and effectively deploy those tools that throw up opportunity for them to expand and enhance their decision making skills, processes and channels. 

Meeting is one very important tool available to the small business owners, operators and entrepreneurs, to expand and enrich their decision making capacity. The benefits are numerous. 

From my many years of regular interactions with entrepreneurs and small business owners, due to my field activities as Entrepreneurship and Development Consultant, Trainer and Coach, I have observed that the focused group of this discourse (small business owners, operators and entrepreneurs) do not consider meeting, a management instrument to leverage their operations, develop their business and sustain their activities (market penetration, market and product developments and diversification). 

Part of the problems that led to the above is traceable to the inability of both the government and the early day private sector small business development practitioners to properly orient the focused group on the numerous opportunities that meeting can provide for their business. The resultant problem is the gap in the capacity to conduct meetings effectively and activate the machinery to tap into the huge benefits of meeting, as a tool for business growth and sustainable development.

Small businesses, like the big and medium ones, require partnerships, networks, collaborations, and other forms of teamwork. Meeting provides the opportunity to build, grow, strengthen, sustain and consolidate the benefits of such relationships.  

Interestingly, my enquiry from select members of the small business community, indicates that they are becoming increasingly aware of the existing gap and are yearning for opportunities to improve their skills and enhance their understanding of meetings and how to conduct them. 

It is on the strength of the above that this platform has decided to run some series on meetings, to help desiring entrepreneurs, small business owners, operators and willing members of the public to deepen their knowledge and understanding of meeting. 

The next articles are dedicated to explaining terminologies or concepts associated with meetings. They would be treated one at a time and under different headings for ease of assimilation.

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