Want to see the City thriving again? Consider becoming a mentor
A dial-a-business-expert service could save struggling SMEs that just need a bit of advice. But we need more mentors to make it, writes Georgina Waite
If you break your arm, you go to hospital. Your car breaks down, it’s off the mechanic. Boiler breaks? Your plumber gets a call. For most of life’s maladies, society has structures in place, people and organisations we can rely on to get us out of a jam. Yet if a business needs help, where do you go?
Of course, big corporates have management consultancy and professional services firms on speed-dial when they need to hire, fire, cut costs, invest or pivot, while enjoying large budgets for workplace mentoring schemes when they want to keep things in-house.
But what about the UK’s 5.5m SMEs?
The answer is less well known or obvious – and usually less accountable.
Informal networks. Loved ones who tell you everything will be okay. Employees who say what you want to hear, or who struggle to challenge orthodoxy. Or worse, you go inside yourself, where the freedom of entrepreneurship can become a prison of your own design.
Mentoring could help save small businesses with growth potential
In the past year alone, nearly 200,000 companies were struck off Companies House, a 20-year high. The most maddening thing about this figure is the number of firms liquidating voluntarily, a figure which rose at its fastest pace since the pandemic. Many of these firms throwing in the towel were solvent with growth potential.
Very often, they just needed help navigating the uncertainty of cash flow crunches, policy changes and historically low business confidence.
With a challenging Budget on the horizon and a stagnant economic landscape more broadly, it is currently hard to see how next year won’t be another of business losses. The UK’s business birth rate – that is, the number of firms formed to those closing – is precariously close to flatlining.
As the UK’s professional association for business mentors, we at the Association of Business Mentors (ABM) see clearly that an environment where entrepreneurs are shutting solid ventures and not starting new ones, is an environment desperately in need of support.
Our ambition to widen access to professional business mentoring is urgent. Research shows bringing an independent mentor into a firm substantially fuels its performance and growth.
Mentors can help firms challenge assumptions, run lean hypotheses, pivot early. They can offer impartial guidance, fresh perspectives and development opportunities beyond internal networks. Things that might be obvious to a professional, independent, third party might not occur to a leader consumed by difficult decisions.
Connecting business owners and professionals with the support, expertise and inspiration they need to succeed should be a higher priority than it is.
By raising standards, sharing knowledge and working collaboratively with businesses and policymakers, we can embed these practices into the UK’s business culture to everyone’s benefit.
The City needs YOU
There are of course hurdles. One of the biggest is professional business mentors themselves: there’s simply not enough to go around.
To meet our ambition for every business leader to have access to the support they need to grow, we need more mentors, like the good readers of City PM, to consider it as a career option; talented, proven business people volunteering their expertise and perspective to help leaders navigate the business climate.
As a body, the ABM connects experienced business mentors with organisations and individuals seeking their support. We offer a route for people with the right experience to give their time either full time, or on the side as their availability dictates.
We believe the people best placed to help are those who have seen it all before. The Square Mile is home to some of the best and brightest business minds this country has to offer. Mentorship from the expertise within London’s beating heart could be a tide to lift all boats.
The government’s support and endorsement of business mentoring, most recently with the launch of the National Business Mentoring Council is hugely welcome in raising awareness and improving accessibility of mentors. But for it to achieve its goals we need to see mentoring become ingrained within the UK’s business culture, an everyday essential for all businesses and a career choice for business experts.
The story of Britain’s economy has always been one of reinvention. But it is clear that the return of growth, resilience and ambition will not come from Whitehall alone. Your country needs you.
Georgina Waite is chief executive of the Association of Business Mentors