Leading SMEs into the future
Medium-sized companies have a different culture than corporations. But their management culture must also change – partly because their employees and their expectations of leadership have changed.
Owner-managed small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) usually have the following strengths:
They are customer-oriented and accustomed to providing service and carrying out small orders
They are quite agile in their everyday work, because the division of labour is less pronounced in them than in corporations
They and their employees react flexibly to new (customer) requirements
These strengths are often countered by the following weaknesses:
A systematic business development does not take place
There is no foresighted competence development
Further training takes place largely on an ad hoc basis
