Introduction

In the past few years the growth in micro businesses (10 employees or under for the purpose of this analysis) and self-employed businesses has accelerated to become the primary source of employment growth in the economy. As these small firms operate on a daily basis, grow and expand the owner/operator is faced with ongoing management challenges that will make a significant difference in the success or failure of the business. The dynamics of growth among these businesses is quite volatile with a high percentage failing in the first few years of operations. There is significant evidence that the failure of micro businesses is managerial incompetence - a lack of managerial skills, where the owner/operator is responsible for many management activities. On the other hand, management skills, after entrepreneurial values, contributes to much of the success to these businesses.

The question is not whether to improve management skills but how. The process that was envisaged by the Steering Committee of Sector Councils is to address this need in a systematic way by providing a flexible framework to improve the management skills of small business owner/operators; a way to help them achieve success. A useful set of management competencies and skills that are performance based would go a long way to guide learning, training and product development targeted for this client group.

Many observers are quick to suggest that there is no shortage of management programs available for the small business owner to deal with improving management skills, however, most of this material is designed for line function management and not as practical for the small business owner/operator. It is now becoming more apparent that the current design of training products and delivery mechanisms are not always appropriate for learning. The designers, developers and delivers of management skills training must understand the needs of the niche market for management skills defined by the small business owner/operator in the form of a competency/skills/standards framework.