“Dear Rt Hon Blair McDougall MP
Congratulations on your recent promotion to Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Services, Small Business and Exports. Please forgive me for missing this news, but we have rather a lot on at the moment.
Good luck, mate! No time to waste!
I hope you last longer than your six predecessors, who have spent on average less than twelve months in the role. It sounds like you have lots of relevant experience you can bring to your new role. Before becoming an MP last year, I see your previous experience involved helping organisations with their strategy and communications, including a speechwriting service for executives. As an ex-PR man, I’m sure you understand the importance of projecting a well-defined plan that business owners and their teams can understand, believe in, and get behind…”
This is part of the letter I am writing to the new minister. I will be inviting him to pop in whenever he’s passing and come and have a chat about some of the real challenges facing SMEs. I’m not holding my breath.
But I am afraid this is out of his hands. He’s as helpless as the rest of his predecessors. His problem is confidence, or rather, the lack of it. Most small to medium businesses, in fact most businesses, just don’t have much confidence. They’re reluctant, cautious to hire people or invest, borrow, build, buy, take more risks, try out new things – the things SMEs can do really well.
Instead, they’re digging in and making sure they do what they need to do, to protect their customers and their people. Nothing wrong with this, but don’t spend all your time and effort just doing this. Accept you won’t get help from anyone else. Instead, spend time finding the opportunities amongst the challenges because there’s still lots of them.
