Well welcome to my business-oriented blog, where I'll be sharing various thoughts and musings on doing business in the not-so-rosy economic environment of 2013, and hopefully the occaisional gem which might help people weather the financial storms (or doldrums) that many find themselves in.
So firstly a little about me - I've been in commercial roles since 1995, and have had a pretty wide experience of sales, marketing and management since that time. I've worked in small companies, and for large global organisations worth billions of dollars.
So does this organisational size matter at all? People are often phased by the size of a business, but actually I don't think there's any direct correlation between the size of a business and either how well it is run, how profitable it is or whether it's nice to work there or not. It can be easier to hide waste and inefficiencies in a larger business, but many larger businesses are more attuned to this, and so can be more effective at combatting it. Small businesses often employ a process because it works when they're in a single office of 10 people, but hang onto it when they grow to be hundreds of people, just because they've "always done it that way" (this, by the way, is one of the most abused phrases I've come across in business, and will undoubtedly return in many future posts!).
So does size matter? Well, it certainly changes things - most businesses have ambitions to grow, sometimes growth is "organic" (that is to say, comes as a natural process of the product and current market conditions), and others are in the unfortunate position of having a structure that isn't supported by their current revenue. In all of these scenarios (and many others), the size of the business has to change, and as the size of the business changes, processes and structure should change as well. It is not enough to look at the small business and just multiply it by a factor of "x". Likewise in a business with shrinking revenues, the last thing you should be doing is just dividing by "x".
This might seem blindingly obvious, but believe me, I've seen people who really should know better doing exactly that - business is not an obvious process for everyone - if you're an inventor or engineer, for example. You might excel in your field, but the structure of a business is not necessarily the same as your field of excellence. This is an important lesson for anyone to take on-board - the really successful teams and businesses I've encountered make the best use of a group of individuals who leave ego at the door.
Big businesses in the past have sometimes relied on their size as an indication of their success. This is a pretty blunt instrument, as it really only indicates that at some point in their history they did things well enough to get to their current size. To be really self-critical as a business, you need to compare how well you are doing with how well your competitors are doing. This can be challenging to ascertain, but if you're growing at 10% and your competitors are growing at 15%, you're losing share.No growth might not feel good as a business, but in a marketplace where competitors are shutting down, you're playing for the long-term win.
A small business, on the other hand, can have more of an issue defining what their goals and measures are - does a small specialist tobacconist compete with giants like BAT & Imperial? No, they compete with local newsagents and grocery shops. Concentrating on basics like footfall and local awareness are much more important to the immediate success and survival, even if long-term plans are wider. You don't need to look at the books to know no-one is buying.
This mention of "back to basics" brings me rather nicely to the original question of whether the size of a business matters or not. In an obvious way, the size of a business makes a huge difference - how you interact within it, how other businesses view you and work with you, if you get a company car etc. These are all pretty tangible concepts which impact on both sides of a business relationship. These, however, are really all by-products of size and scale, and not fundamentals of what matters in a company. If we then turn back to the basics of what fundamentally makes a company work, it's the people and processes which define the way the business works. People created these processes within the framework, so people are once again at the bottom-line of any business. Mess up your interactions with people - at any and all parts of a business on any scale - and you'll run into problems.
So does size really matter? Yes and no, but one thing is certain - no business, large or small, works without people doing their jobs well. Get the people part of your business (and the way it interacts with other people) right, and you're setting out on the right foot. We're all human, after all.
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