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Summarising the "Musts" for successful accelerated business growth programs for home-based business
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Devising a program for accelerated business growth in the small and micro business sector is essentially a process of facilitating the development of a learning business community. For business development practitioners to achieve this they must address the following essential issues.
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Finding an effective way of identifying and recruiting appropriate participants.
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This is no easy task. As we have discussed above owners of very small business are difficult to identify and contact. Once you have found them there seems to be an historic if not inherent resistance to being involved in structured development activities. The way in which this process is approached needs to be subtle and persuasive.
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Creating opportunities for development of networks within business communities in which participants are able to share knowledge, take risks and provide each other with support.
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Business Developers and Enterprise Facilitators are experienced in promoting positive group dynamics, but this type of approach requires more in the way of group development and building of trust. Participants do not only participate alongside one another but also form the core resources through which their business development issues can be investigated and tackled.
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Nurturing the participants' capacity to identify individual and group learning needs.
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The key to independent learning is the capacity to identify and accurately articulate development needs and effectively recruit resources to help meet those needs. The key to devising a successful business development program is to empower the learner in this iterative, ongoing and life long process. Being able to share experiences with others in a similar situation is a powerful way of helping individuals to identify their own issues and place them in a broader context.
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Having knowledge of local resources to support the process by which participants resource their individual and group learning needs.
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Creating a learning and development network provides a pool of resources which can go some way towards supporting problem solving, but development professionals have a responsibility to facilitate the participant in effectively networking with other local agencies who can add real value to the process.
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Encouraging reflective learning.
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Encouraging a context in which reflection, feedback and evaluation is actively pursued is probably the most powerful way of promoting ongoing business learning and development. However, there is a certain reserve about showing their business weaknesses or insecurities, an expectation that business people should or wish to be independent and natural desire to focus on the next job rather than reflect on the last. Helping small business to incorporate reflection into their everyday business activity provides a key to ongoing business development.
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Creating structures, which will live on beyond the life of the development event.
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A program which nurtures business support networks, promotes an individual's and a communities needs identification and resourcing skills, and helps businesses and communities to incorporate active independent and reflective learning into their normal business processes, leaves a legacy in the business community which will have far reaching and long lasting (and therefore dollar effective) benefits.
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