ESP Offers, Structures and Practices That Work
The following is a brief narrative describing Suboski and Company’s current Appreciative Inquiry. If you have questions or are interested in participating as a CEO or owner of a business, please send an email to info@suboski.com with the email and phone number that is most convenient for this purpose. Someone will contact you directly.
Those participating will receive a summary report of the findings. Non-participants will be able to purchase a report in the Fall of 2009.
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“We live in a time filled with great opportunities for positive change in the way that businesses are conceived, led and operated. Our companies are now driven by the need to innovate quickly. Those that consistently succeed will be the ones able to quickly adapt to the changing marketplace. Simply being adept at “running” a business is becoming insufficient to maintain a competitive advantage. The “entrepreneurial” qualities of the Business Leader are becoming more essential to continued success. This added pressure to constantly scan the horizon, learn new skills and change one’s business is amplifying the need for CEOs of small businesses to develop networks of support around them to augment their own personal skills. Fortunately there is a vast quantity and variety of Entrepreneurial Support Professionals (ESP) who are committed to provide strategic assistance to CEOs and Business Owners. This presents a challenge to the small business CEO to find the most effective resources in this plethora of offers. It is also a challenge to the independent ESPs and the Entrepreneurial Support Organizations (ESOs) (where many ESPs work) to identify the practices that produce the greatest effect for their constituents, the business owners – and ultimately the economy in which they work. The intuition of many of these ESPs is that much of the work done for Business Owners is ineffective or even destructive, and many longitudinal studies come to the same conclusion.
“This study is a search for the entrepreneurial support offers, structures and practices that support and contribute to the success of CEOs and Business Owners. This inquiry will allow us to disclose those practices that work so they can be reinforced and enhanced. Our objective with this inquiry is to inform those that are actively conspiring to improve business performance in our economy so they can support and extend what already works, and ensure that effective practices in place today are not inadvertently lost when new ways of supporting businesses are put in place.”