Every year, when entering the classroom on the occasion of the beginning of the Administration or Management classes of Small and Medium Enterprises at the University, it is usual to meet a group of students between shy and expectant who are eager to receive a cluster of knowledge and tools to be able to solve the immense and complex number of problems that afflict them every day and for which they feel they do not have the necessary education or training.
They usually come looking for "the" solution or, in many cases, "the magic recipe" that allows them to be able to solve the difficulties of each day almost with a procedure of the "plug and play" type in order to continue with their work.
"We come to study the tools, processes, and models that allow us to control, manage or direct the operations of the company" they often tell me when I ask them why they chose to study Administration with a focus on Small and Medium Enterprises.
“We want him to teach us to solve problems. We want to learn to know what to do when certain situations arise and they explode us in our hands ”.
"We want you to explain to us why what we read in the books written by the great gurus of administration and business seems not to be applicable in our work", are usually other reasons given.
I remember myself every year at that precise moment, myself at his age with the same questions, doubts, lacking elements and absolutely powerless to understand the complex rationale for the operation of the SME (Small and Medium Enterprise) in my family case in the that I was "born" and took my first professional steps.
They relax a bit and feel more represented when I tell them that I am the second generation of a medium-sized family business (actually, they begin to trust that I will know how to understand them fully) and that their need was my own to the extent that my doctoral thesis It was based precisely on the problems of small and medium-sized companies to incorporate modern technologies or management tools.
They smile, shyly and nervously, when I tell them that my own need to understand why it is so difficult for us to solve the cataract of problems that seem to "rain" permanently, began when I was very young when I walked hand in hand with my father through the "workshop "Or by the" factory "(I will never fully understand why he did not refer to it as" the company ") while he spoke to me and told me his dreams of what would happen tomorrow when I was able to work with him and how from that moment on, I began to study and train for that day.
Of course, the longed-for moment arrived and with my university degree in tow, I considered having the support and the "right" to be able to contribute everything I had learned in my college years, but the reality was not as rosy as I had imagined..
On the one hand, my father's voice telling me “this way of working is not for us, but for large companies. We cannot invest, nor do we have those resources, what's more… we can't waste time with those things, we have too many problems to solve for that ”. On the other hand, my own former university colleagues tried to calm me by saying "don't make problems for yourself, you won't be able to apply these management tools in small or medium-sized companies because they were not conceived for them", or "you are not going to change the way of thinking of your father, it is a lost battle before beginning ”.
Of course, they spoke of a medium-sized company and an entrepreneur, while I spoke of my own company and almost my own life project, for which it was impossible for me to meekly accept that position.
For this reason, the first thing I always try to convey is that there is no such "magic recipe" and that approaching the problems of small and medium-sized companies by trying to find a tool, a process or a technique that allows us to solve the problems of the day a day is precisely the root of it, although it seems a contradiction.
The tool, be it a planning, control, specific organization model or an information system, is a means to act, so that through it we can modify and control the environment in which we work. But, in the same way that we know that to drive a nail we do not need a screwdriver but a hammer, in exactly the same way, before choosing the right tool, it is necessary to know perfectly what we need to do and fundamentally the why and why and that's where where, to my understanding, it tends to fail in most cases.
The Study Houses prepare us to handle ourselves within a determined organizational environment and provide us with the elements and techniques to move within it and we as professionals feel "comfortable and protected" within that context, therefore what we try to do, consciously or not, is to always bring the reality of companies towards our paradigm or mental model. Usually the reality of small and medium-sized companies is not reflected in our "list of good professional practices" and when we try to implement the academic model, obviously, it resists to maintain its identity, almost as if it were a fight on which its depends. own survival.
Faced with this reality, and before the successive failures of bringing the SME reality to our professional reality, we usually console ourselves and to feel less responsible we use, in my opinion, the excuse of the existence of an organizational culture that almost irrationally resists change, compromising their own existence.
Resistance to change? Yes, it is true, but from whom or rather, from whom? If we try to characterize resistance to change as that behavior that rejects, prevents and is incapable of assimilating a reality other than the one they are used to, we should conclude that our professional training is at least as resistant or reluctant as the culture of the company which we failed to modify.
Many times, I usually make a comparison of our professional attitude when this situation occurs with the attitude that children tend to have when they first try to play with their matching games. Did you stop to look at the children at that moment?
They usually take in their hand, for example, a cube and instead of placing it in the space represented by the square on the surface, they try to place it in the place of the sphere. Sure, it's impossible for a cube to go into the place of the sphere, right? What then does the child do? He tries once, and since he cannot do it, the second time, he does it with greater force… but… nothing happens then, the third time, already impatient he tries to force by any means so that our cube magically "turns" into a sphere and Faced with the logical impossibility… he throws the cube aside and consoles himself by saying or thinking that the game "is failed or broken."
This behavior, accepted as almost common in children, does not differ much from our professional attitude that, given the repeated impossibility of bringing the SME reality to the organizational environment that our administration manuals pose, makes us marginalize them and we convince ourselves that it is not possible apply modern management tools, for example, strategic planning, an information system, an organization by processes, set up true work teams, etc.
I believe that the main contribution that we can give to the management of small and medium-sized companies is precisely to train professionals capable of breaking with the paradigm that leads us to transfer modern management techniques to SMEs without question. A great master of Organizational Analysis, Carlos Srebrow, once told me in one of his talks "never try to apply tomorrow in the company what we are learning today in the workshop".
He is tremendously right (beyond the years that have passed, the validity of this guide increases) because each management tool, each model that is implemented must respond not only to a specific need of the company but must also be in line with maturity and level of training of human resources. This aspect, which unfortunately we usually do not evaluate or include in our previous analyzes because we tend to consider that people will naturally and spontaneously do everything we need even if we do not provide further explanations or anything more than a simple technical talk of a couple of hours.
When professionally we are in a position to understand the reality of small and medium-sized companies and to evaluate and include in our analyzes all the forces that operate in it, we will realize that, until now, we have only been prepared to work on the surface of the Organizational iceberg that looms over the water and that, as we know, is minimal in proportion to its total volume. We train ourselves to work in the visible structure, the formal one, but we are not in a position to “see” the non-formal aspect that gives it life and maintains it.
The consequence of this attitude, many times, is that we live trying to solve problems, "put out fires" as we usually say in the jargon of the day to day because we only usually recognize and "attack" the effects but never solve the causes and therefore We are not in a position to provide the company with a comprehensive solution to its problem.
It is the moment when what we usually call "growing pains" appear or usually appear. Those that, if we pose them in a simplistic way, we liken them to problems when in reality they constitute a development gap between the real possibilities of the company at a given moment and the management model demanded by a market where the client is not willing to pay a single peso more that is not based on the value that our product provides.
Some of these pains that I refer to usually manifest when:
- People do not understand what their job is or what is expected of them in terms of their contribution to the objectives and goals of the company.The company is more oriented to sales than to generating value and profits. Most of his time solving short-term problems as a consequence of the lack of medium and long-term plans. The company normally does not have good managers (although in reality we should think about whether it has “managers” or only collaborators who have that position as a demonstration of gratitude from the employer for those who supported him when he was just beginning his activity. There is no comprehensive management plan and when it is prepared it is not used (it is carried out for third parties, many times due to banking requirements).Employees feel that the company does not have long-term goals and therefore they see the employer as an impulsive individual and without clear objectives.The will and the best effort is the way to solve the problems of the company.Only the problems are solved, because there is no time to resolve the important and substantive issues since you are usually too "busy" for that.
Obviously they are situations that if we really want to solve them require a vision and a totally different approach than the one that is usually applied until that moment. As Albert Einstein said, "We cannot pretend to change the world with the same tools that we have used to generate it in its present form." In this case, we cannot continue forcing a model that has led us to a situation in which we are not in a position to provide the answers that the market demands of us.
This is the moment in which the small or medium-sized entrepreneur must make a critical decision because in many cases it depends on whether the company survives or not (and for which our participation and advice is crucial). You must understand that the mindset that allowed you to be successful in the past or at least that made it possible for you to reach the position you are in today will not lead to success in the future and to do so first What must change is your way of thinking, your mental model of the company and how you approach the business.
"To do things differently… you have to see them differently" as Paul Allaire excellently put it. We will only be in a position to help the entrepreneur to see things differently when we ourselves change our angle of vision and have a comprehensive understanding of what happens within a small and medium-sized business.
Only at that moment, when we understand the totality of the forces that move "on and under the surface" of the small and medium-sized company, will we be in a real condition to learn and apprehend the needs that it has and then we will be able to develop, manage and implement the best tools to satisfy them. But it will no longer be something imposed or forced, but it will be absolutely understood and accepted by all and it will really be seen as a solution.
A small or medium businessman knows and has full knowledge of the importance that the incorporation of a certain machinery into his plant can have if he wants to maintain the competitiveness of his company, right? Did you notice in that condition or circumstance, any resistance to invest in incorporating it? Did you see many new machines in the workshops covered with covers and left aside because they could not be started or because the expected performances were not obtained? I think not and I wonder then, why doesn't the same thing happen with a management model?
Perhaps it is because we have not managed, professionally, to make you see and have the conviction and certainty that both a capital asset and a management tool are sources of competitive advantages for those who value them as such and who invest in them every day.
Perhaps because until now we have not even been able to build the bridge to help you take the next step in your development and that allows you to feel and understand that your problem is not technical and that therefore there is no tool or technique that can magically solve your company's problems. On the contrary, magical would be that applying more of the same techniques, obtain different results.
