Organization Units Within An SME And Free Certification Resources For Personal Development
Each business should have different organization units. Most businesses startup as the dreams of one or more founders but quickly scale to include more team members. This creates the need to share responsibilities aimed at achieving a primary business objective.
For ‘first-time’ startup founders, however, this means dividing responsibilities quickly becomes a hassle. Questions like “How do we structure the team?” and “Who does what?” become imperative. This might mean expanding responsibilities for the founding team or bringing in new staff members that might require more skills to take on more responsibilities until the business revenue grows enough to employ a more specialised workforce.
New businesses are driven by three primary pillars. Direction (management), customer acquisition (marketing) and service delivery (operations). This often covers the startup’s operations end-to-end. Let’s take a closer look into the different organization units. We have added some links to free training resources members of the team can take advantage of for their personal development. Note that while training is free, some may request payment to issue certificates.
1. Management:
These often comprise the founders. They are responsible for defining the ethos, mission, and objective of the business. For startups and SMEs, the management staff almost always doubles as leads for one or more of the other pillars. The primary skills required for this role as culled from Punch Ng includes analytical skills, planning, decision-making, communication, organizing, conflict resolution, among others.
- Leading With Effective Communication (Inclusive Leadership Training)
- Conflict Resolution Skills
- Management Foundations Course
- Adaptive Leadership
- Systems Practice
- Business Foundations Specialization
- Technology Entrepreneurship: Lab to Market
2. Marketing:
These are the market access, team members. Its scope covers marketing, communications, business development and sales. They are responsible for finding customer clusters, understanding how the business products or services meet their needs, and convincing them to offer value in exchange for the business product or service offerings. Important skills include sales, networking, good customer service, good interpersonal skills, great attention to details, and a host of others.
- Storytelling for Change
- Fundamentals of digital marketing
- Inbound Sales Course: Get Certified in Inbound Sales
- Content Marketing Course: Get Certified in Content Marketing
3. Operations:
This is the ‘engine room’ of the business. Its structure or mode of operations is highly dependent on the type of product or service being delivered by the business. Essential skills for here include a good sense of project management, process management, precision, quality control, etc.
Below are some resources to help your team develop their operational skills.
- Business Fundamentals: Project Management
- Diploma in Operations Management (Ops)
- Introduction to operations management
