Train your staff before Eu funds

European Funds –Yes, but what to do meanwhile to survive?
Train your staff before its too late

In the recent years the topic of European funds has become very popular in our country. In the last 10-15 years not a few people received funds from those funds under one form or another and that helped them develop their business and stabilize their position on the market.

After Bulgaria joining the EU this topic became even more popular. Varieties of grants for training, qualification and re-qualification of personnel, for purchasing machines and materials for production started to be given. As a result companies from different sectors begun to see the EU funds as a possibility for stability and prosperity. 

This is understandable. No one would find a few hundred or a few million Euro for machinery, buildings, production etc. as unnecessary.

Here however there can be a problem, a trap. Lots of people would say to themselves: A! If I could get somehow a few hundreds or million Euros from the EU funds this would solve my problems”. As a results people start looking for channels and connections, to fill in big packs of forms, to hire consultants and to direct their efforts in that direction. This takes months, sometimes an year and the outcome is unclear. At the same time the market is changing, the competition becomes stronger and the company makes ups and downs. The problems remain.

Actually gaining EU funds is possible to solve a few problems but will surely not resolve the main problems, i.e. those problems which create the rest of the problems. Lack or the insufficient amount of money is not the main problem – it is rather the inability to find the optimal way of its gaining by the direct or indirect activity of the company. It is good that someone gives you a kilo of fish which solves the problem in a short term. But it is much better if this someone shows you how he caught it. This will solve the problem in a long and stable run.

What are in this case the main problems which the Bulgarian business is facing in general? Of course this topic is very broad but I would like to mention some of them which I and my colleagues faced in most of the cases.

1. The company has difficulties with its management – the managers have difficulties in setting accomplishing their goals, in delegating responsibilities, in coordinating their teams, with non-ethical actions, with demotivating their staff, in creating a sane and productive atmosphere, in the correct positioning of their company on the market, in creating an organization, an administrative structure which can function in an optimal mode.
2. The company has a problem managing its human resources. It is about recruiting demotivated or incorrect people for the posts, the existence of confusion concerning the functions of the different posts and people, badly working communicational channels, demotivated personnel and inability to keep the key specialists.
3. Inability to set up and realize winning financial strategies.
4. Maintaining conflict environment – internal and external conflicts;
5. Lack of enough ability in selling and bad service to the existing clients;
6. Lack of skills to make a good PR with the purpose of a positive image of the company and its personnel and getting a new people interested in its products.

I am sure that this list can be enriched with more problematic points which are the fundament of the non-optimal results. If companies can find an adequate help concerning the aforementioned problematic points then the need of external funds would be considerably less. It may sound a little far-fetched but there is no fund or a sum of money which can give a solution to those problematic points. Two or three new machines from the EU funds, a new building or other external help would just be a patch of a new fabric on an old and worn out dress. A person patches one hole while the whole dress is tearing apart allover.

   

That’s why lots of managers are facing the question of finding global, holistic solutions for themselves and for their companies, a “know-how” – administrative and industrial which is able to place them and their companies on an survival and prosperity guaranteed ground. 

Moreover in his book “Ethics” Mr. Hubbard whose management system my company is using in its trainings, consultancy and coaching speaks about the so called Conditions, level of operativeness in life as a whole in all of its manifestations and specifically in business. There are precise and correct formulas which are connected to these levels of operativeness. If they are applied as indicated in the book of Ethics this will surely lead to stability, expansion, influence and well-being.    

The formulas for the different condition form a scale which shows the degree of success and the potential for survival of a given person, post, department, company, holding. The main instrument for measuring the condition, the potential for survival is statistics – a number or a volume compared to earlier numbers and volumes of the same things. The lowest conditions are Confusion, Treason, Enemy, Doubt and Liability. The upper levels are Non-Existence, Danger, Emergency, Normal Operation, Affluence, Power Change and Power.

For example in the condition of Non-Existence in which a person is when starting on a new job – with or without experience has the following formula:

1. Find a comm line;
2. Make yourself known;
3. Discover what is needed or wanted;
4. Do, produce and/or present it.

Lots of people with some experience on a given position when entering a new job do not know this formula and act as if they were in Affluence or in Power. They immediately start to introduce changes, to look for the easy way, to impose their style of work and the way to do the work they now from before. This gives them and the company headaches.

So it is important for a person to be able to identify what condition he is in and correspondingly to apply the formula for this condition and to go up to the upper one.

Again I would like to say the following: there is no fund or a chunk of money which can substitute the lack of administrative know-how, the knowledge and skill in regard of management and human resources and knowing and applying the formula for the Conditions. Those funds would help those who already know these things and who are able.

And it is good that the companies in Bulgaria which realize the necessity of training and that the training and bettering their personnel is the key to finding a solution the problematic points, which were mentioned above. It is good that they allocate annual budgets for training or decide on the spot when a need arises or when they receive an offer for a training they need. This on one hand is a question of mentality. On the other hand it is a question of what is available on the training market and how an owner of a company or an Executive can choose who should train himself and his personnel and how to measure the benefits from training. But this is another topic. 

So the question is: European funds – Yes, but what to do meanwhile to survive?

The EU funds and subsidies for different programs are an important element for survival and prosperity of people from different branches of economy.

But in my opinion even more important is the training and improving of personnel so that a company or a person may find the solution for the six problematic points. These points if remaining unsolved can create a danger for a person or a company in a long run.

I would like to end with a quotation from the book of Mr. Hubbard “Problems of work”. He writes: “A workman is not just a workman. A laborer is not just a laborer. An office worker is not just an office worker. They are living, breathing, important pillars on which the entire structure of our civilization is erected. They are not cogs in a mighty machine. They are the machine itself”.