Why both Tenby Powell and Tony Alexander miss the point

A little tiff has blown up between the BNZ chief economist, Tony Alexander and Tenby Powell self-proclaimed champion of NZ small businesses.

Alexander started off with his regular newsletter

In this month’s NZ Observer we make a suggestion for how course providers can get more SME owners showing up to improve their skills.

Powell rebutted in this article where he does confirm that the statement quoted by Alexander from the Business, Innovation and Employment Ministry’s latest Small Business Sector report was about TRAINING not skills (check your facts).

But Alexander added that big firms’ dominance might be a good thing because their workers were more skilled.

“Given that people in large firms get paid more, churn less often and are more skilled than people in small to medium-sized firms, this seems like a good thing.”

The last comment attracted opprobrium from small business advocates, who called the comment “odd” and “unhelpful”.

“There is genuine anger about it. I’ve had a lot of phone calls,” said SME Business Network founder Tenby Powell.

“It’s a very unusual comment to make from a bank that hails itself as a supporter of small business

Both miss one obvious solution.  If business owners are too busy or choose not to invest in training for skills, there are other ways of acquiring those skills and putting them to work for your small business.

The answer is sitting under our noses.

• Fact 1 – there are lots of ‘skilled’ suppliers in the market who can help small business owners. They are often small businesses themselves.
  Fact 2 – Xero is teaching us how to sub-contract services which are non core, specialist and can be acquired more easily from outsiders than building / training the skills ourselves.

SOLUTION: Owners of small businesses can compete with larger ones without changing their investment in training by buying in advice, skill and expertise when they need it.

Outsourcing provides the answer.

Creative Agency Secrets was founded to be the outsourced marketing execution provider for business owners.  We’re leading this trend.

What do you think?

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