{"id":348,"date":"2017-07-19T00:50:52","date_gmt":"2017-07-19T00:50:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/?p=348"},"modified":"2018-05-30T19:48:51","modified_gmt":"2018-05-30T19:48:51","slug":"bigger-is-not-always-better","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/rwc-blog\/bigger-is-not-always-better\/","title":{"rendered":"Bigger is Not Always Better !"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Among the management roles that I have fulfilled to date, I have had the good fortune of having worked in senior management roles within what I would term a mid-sized company (multi million dollar annual sales turnover) and also a very large company (annual revenue comprising multiple hundreds of $ millions).\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">What I&#8217;ve found is that whilst larger companies enjoy clear advantages which are largely linked to economies of scale, larger companies (generally) tend to evolve at a slower rate where internal operating refinements (e.g. system\/ process adjustments) and workplace cultural development is concerned. Unless large organisations have a strong leader with clear vision and determination to succeed in accordance with the chosen strategy (and is committed to cutting out distractions along the way) I have found that internal politics tend to overshadow practical thinking and decision-making, and the stronger (more vocal\/ opinionated) shareholder voices tend to sway the organisation off the course that is set by directors.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">With considerable internal politics permitted to dominate, commercial journeys can become seriously disrupted as the focus of internal stakeholders and decision-makers becomes more about &#8220;putting out political fires&#8221; than having an outwardly directed strong focus on identifying and pursuing new opportunities. And change for large organisations often takes a protracted time frame to achieve mainly because of the political minefield that a change proposal becomes subjected to as it moves slowly through different decision-making levels&#8230;much to the frustration of the change instigator. Hence why many people around the world leave the corporate environment to instead work within smaller scale businesses.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">My advice to owners of smaller scale operations is certainly do not lose heart due to your level of operation not placing your business among the larger players\/ competitors that operate in the same sector\/ industry as your business does. You can still create considerable comparative advantages for your business, in the form of:<\/span><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Reduced decision-making time-frames, through operating either with a &#8220;flat structure&#8221; where individuals have clearly laid-out realms within which they can largely work autonomously.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Ensuring that levels of decision-making are clearly prescribed, and designated decision-makers are truly empowered to get on and make decisions which fall under their jurisdiction.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Become courageous at making adoption (go ahead) decisions as early-on in your innovation\/ research (e.g. new product development) process as you can&#8230;be &#8220;first-to-market&#8221;. Work through your risk assessment as quickly as possible based on reliable information to hand, and if\/ when you conclude that the opportunity\/ initiative looks like it has strong potential to be successful, then get on and implement it&#8230;before your competitors do.<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">Be prepared to challenge your status quo at a frequency which is at least no less than in coincidence with reviewing and re-setting your Strategic Plan (i.e. every 3 or 5 years). And be willing to change direction\/ modus operandi (or both) to test the effect of trialing something new (e.g. new IT system, practice, client set, direction, market, etc). Allow your &#8220;Pandora&#8217;s \u00a0Box&#8221; to open&#8230;and let some of the treasures that you find within, out.\u00a0<\/span><\/li>\n<li><span style=\"font-size: 14pt;\">A First Class work culture. I have often been asked, what is the &#8220;real&#8221; effect of a positive workplace culture in the context of a business environment. Every time my answer has been, if an organisation leader truly has an innate\/ natural ability to develop strong constructive relationships between people then directors need to make sure that a key objective prescribed to their appointed leader (CEO\/ GM, etc) is for them to actively facilitate the initiation and nurturing of positive relationships between the people who they are to lead. I have found that by cultivating such a favourable workplace culture it can actually serve as the GREATEST catalyst for organisation refinement and achievement. Happy people are productive people.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Among the management roles that I have fulfilled to date, I have had the good fortune of having worked in senior management roles within what I would term a mid-sized company (multi million dollar annual sales turnover) and also a very large company (annual revenue comprising multiple hundreds of $ millions).\u00a0 What I&#8217;ve found is that whilst larger companies enjoy clear advantages which are largely linked to economies of scale, larger companies (generally) tend to evolve at a slower rate&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=348"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":876,"href":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/348\/revisions\/876"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=348"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=348"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.realworldconsulting.kiwi\/rwc\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=348"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}