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What should effective business development opportunities look like?
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To be successful in supporting small business development, structured learning opportunities for micro and small business need to address the following requirements:
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They need to provide opportunities for active sharing of experience knowledge and skills between people in comparable situations;
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They need to be short, to the point and very tightly focused upon solving specific individual concerns;
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They must be very relevant to the real world concerns of participants and enable very active learning to take place; and
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They need to be cheap to administer and run and take place at a time when business operators can afford to be away from their businesses.
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This set of requirements poses a very real challenge to development professionals.
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From our experience of working with small and micro businesses, training event organisers are often disheartened by feedback which has indicated that the opportunity to network with other businesses was one of the most valuable outcomes of training events, when great effort and expense has been put into attracting speakers and experts in the field. However, this has lead us to consider some basic concepts of adult learning theory, to arrive at a model for micro business development which we feel provides a viable and dynamic opportunity.
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Adult learning professionals have long acknowledged the importance of identifying the learner as the key driver of the learning process (Jarvis 1988, Knowles 1990, Candy 1991). In the sphere of adult learning, formal education and training is merely one tool with which adult learners can meet their own personally defined life long development goals. The role of the adult educator is to support the individual in becoming an active, independent and effective learner.
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The concept of learning circles (Oliver 1987, Gibson 1998) offers the learner an opportunity to be part of a group of people who are seeking to develop and learn within a similar context. Learning circles have been widely used in Scandinavia to support social and democratic change, and have been a powerful tool in the Australian Reconciliation movement of the late 1990's, developing environmental management processes under the Murrey-Darling Basin Commission and Environment Australia programs (Gibson 1998). Their structure provides an opportunity for the learner to actively pursue their own development needs within a supportive environment which, in itself, is a rich development resource. It is our proposition that this type of structure can potentially meet many of the requirements of a structure learning opportunity for micro and small business development.
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'Macro Business' has already acknowledged and embraced this issue (Revan 1971, Dotlich And Noel 1998). Dotlich and Noel(1998) describe the way in which major corporations such as IBM, and General Motors abandoned traditional formal management training processes in favour of an Action Learning approach, which encouraged learning through action and reflection.. Executive development was primarily driven by groups of learners facing real challenges together and applying active information gathering, skill development and problem solving approaches, followed by opportunities to reflect upon their activity and learn about their own effectiveness and development needs. Management gurus, specialists and experts were called upon only when directly useful to the problem solving process Active learning depended upon group dynamics to provide key feedback to participants to enhance their self knowledge and capacity to change and develop.
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Bringing these principles to the small business environment is a major challenge, particularly for micro business which often functions in relative isolation. If we are to embrace the notion of contextualised, learner driven, real world focused, timely and resource effective development, then we, as business development practitioners, need to be architects of effective learning contexts. We can do this by nurturing the development of effective learning networks. These networks can provide a context within which business people can critically reflect upon their own business and personal environment, and performance, and work towards more effective development and action.
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It is our belief that best practice in small business management already echoes this approach. Those business operators who take a reflective, active, learning approach to understanding their own business and business environment, can quickly and effectively identify or anticipate problems and are well placed to deal with challenges and make the most of opportunities.
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But to translate best practice to general practice involves attitudinal shifts and development of different types of business management skills.
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With the support of a skilful development practitioner, a group of active participants who all bring knowledge and experience to share with the 'learners' firmly in the driving seat, it is inevitable that this kind of approach will:
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build upon the shared experiences of participants;
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be relevant and tightly focused on the needs of the participants tackle real life issues;
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appeal to people who like to actively control their own learning processes;
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effectively use the resources available within the group; and consequently
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cost little to run.
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