Business owners are putting their ventures at risk by failing to adopt long-term managerial strategies, according to research by the Chartered Management Institute.
The study revealed a discrepancy between the areas that were identified as potential weaknesses and the strategies being implemented to overcome these. Nearly two-thirds (60%) said skills and talent management was the key challenge facing employers but only 32% put ‘developing talent' down as a significant issue.
Similarly, with a failure rate of 74% for IT projects, the number of respondents who thought that keeping abreast of technological change was a priority was just 24% and only 10% said effective use of IT and communications was a big challenge.
Other business priorities were protecting the company reputation (38%) and managing the impact of regulation, cited by 35%.
The findings also revealed a worrying level of over-confidence in UK companies, with only 38% claiming managing risks was important in the current climate.
"Questions need to be asked about how UK organisations will be able to manage in the future if they fail to address key operational issues," said Jo Causon, director, marketing and corporate affairs at the CMI.
"Rather than simply focusing on ‘what should be done today', the inability to plan properly might lead to questions of a more critical nature: ‘what opportunities have I missed' or worse, ‘how did the organisation not see that coming'."
The research did find, however, that organisations see themselves as up to speed when it comes to monitoring the competition (with 70% answering positively) and 65% said they were effective in identifying changes in society that could impact on the business.
"In the current economic environment the need for high levels of efficiency are all too apparent, so it is encouraging to see some positive signs," said Causen.
"However, it is not an excuse to become too comfortable with the situation as success depends on the ‘principle of preparation': namely the ability to juggle tasks, manage change and meet market expectations."