Business Advice

Mentoring For (Sm)all Business Growth

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...understand the specific requirements in each case as every business had different needs and know how to choose the right tool for the job. In particular, they will need to understand the key difference between coaching — where the the solution comes from the person being coached — and mentoring — which is much more about giving advice and guidance from experience of similar business needs. Both have their place for developing businesses.

Despite the announcement of 40,000, in my view, it isn't really about quantity but much more about the quality of the advice. Training of the...

...mentor group will be important and there will need to be quality control, too.

The Academy as a business is ready and willing to help with this initiative. As an experienced coach and mentor in my own right, I’m also ready to support in any way that I can. If we are to grow the country’s economy our of the position we currently occupy, significant business growth is needed and that should be driven by business people.

The Academy has proven experience of doing precisely what the Business Secretary is seeking. In the Birmingham Enterprise City High Growth Project in 2008/9, sixty individuals took part in the project and 40 of those contributed to the project evaluation, independently undertaken by the University of Birmingham.

The evaluation report noted a number of benefits “as a direct result of participation on ECHGP”:

• 25% of participants claimed to have taken on extra employees

• 60% of participants had increased their turnover (15% by more than 10%)

• 80% of participants had engaged in new markets

• All respondents claimed to have increased networking activities as a result of their participation and several reported that this had “opened doors” to new market opportunities

• Specific improvements in marketing capability were... continued on page three >

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