Dr. Lorcán Ó hÓbáin:

It is hard to generalise about gaps. We have approximately 350 people on programmes and we have 18 programmes running across ten different locations. A couple of issues arise. Sometimes the training needs are fundamental. We encounter many business owners who, by their own admission, are relatively weak in financial skills and financial planning. The concept of having cashflow and cashflow plans is a significant area of deficiency. Small business owners, traditionally, are very good at managing their bank balance. They are very aware of where they stand on a day-to-day basis but not necessarily of what lies six or eight weeks ahead.

The one general finding is the sense of confidence that is coming back to people who engage with programmes. We had a meeting last week with two of our participants who talked about the difference it has made to them psychologically in terms of their confidence about business reflecting on what they are doing. Peer-to-peer learning is a big issue for us. The groups are composed of owner-managers or people at a senior management level in an organisation. The opportunity to engage with people from six or eight multi-sectoral businesses makes a real difference. People are given an opportunity to articulate what they are doing and then to be questioned by others who are not familiar with the type of business, which can fundamentally challenge the assumption business owners sometimes make about their business. That has proven to be useful.

The core programmes we run have an element of mentoring incorporated in them. We find that owner-managers are sometimes a little nervous about that at the beginning because the idea of being accountable to somebody else can be off-putting. Without fail, all of the participants have said that engaging with mentors has made an enormous difference to what they do.

Mr. Nuzum mentioned in his opening remarks that mentoring is part of a learning journey and that it is making a fundamental difference. Two things seem to happen. One is that it is the nature of the human condition that when we commit to someone else to do something, we are much more likely to try to do it. At the end of our sessions the trainers inform participants that they will have a mentoring visit in the next two to three weeks and ask what they expect to have achieved by then. That requires people to make a statement of intent. There is a realisation that the first question they will be asked by their mentor – not in a confrontational way – is how they got on. Most people will try to have an answer.

On a more practical level what also happens is that implementation is never as easy as it seems. When one is sitting in a workshop and someone talks about an idea one can think it makes sense and decide to do it. There is a saying that the best war plan does not survive the first encounter with the enemy. Implementation can be difficult. It is helpful to have an opportunity to sit down with a mentor and say one tried something but it did not work and to ask what else one could do. It allows a review of what was done and how well one understood the task. The transfer of learning from a workshop-type environment to the specifics of a person’s business is not as simple as it seems and mentoring makes a big difference.

We have three regional managers. Someone is based in Dungarvan who covers the south. Someone in Galway covers the west and north and someone in Clane covers the north Leinster and Dublin area. Our experience to date is that the current level of coverage is sufficient in terms of trying to meet the scale of demand we can meet in a pilot programme. In the past three months, through those three people, we have had some level of engagement with approximately 3,000 businesses. I am not certain there is much more they can do at that level in terms of physical numbers. We are monitoring carefully the level of engagement and the response we get. We also engage with people in information sessions. At this stage the coverage is probably adequate for the pilot programme. It is a different issue if the initiative is to be rolled out more substantially and we would have to examine it.