MISTAKE #27: You don’t value your size

Why does size matter?  And why is bigger generally viewed as better?

Companies seem to have just as big of a complex related to size as people do.  Somehow, somewhere, most business professionals must be taught that puffing up and trying to fight in a higher weight class is a key secret to success.

So many people love to get associated with size.  And I just don't get it.

I understand that the big players like P&G or Unilever or Colgate have a lot going for them:  They have amazing access to resources, experience, and talent that I remember well from the time I worked for one of them.

But that size comes with immense drawbacks and tradeoffs.  Bureaucracy and politics and process and inefficiency all drain a lot of those resources.  They create too much reliance on repeating past experiences (versus trying innovative ideas) and they frustrate a lot of talent to the point of resignation.  Size makes them slow.  And, to some degree, size has made them act old.

In the same way spell check has ruined my writing ability.  Having the option to rely on other “experts” allows people to be less concerned about developing their own expertise.

The biggest companies in the world have new product success rates that aren’t that much better than the industry average.  When you consider the astronomically higher investment put into many of those failures and the built-in advantage they should have based on beginning with established brands and existing distribution, one could argue that bigger companies are actually worse at launching new items.

That is why large companies tend to be so dependent on buying up smaller companies to acquire innovation or new ideas to grow sales.

I’M SMALL AND PROUD OF IT

My name is Thomas Tessmer and I own a small business.  My business is not a ‘boutique’ and it is not ‘exclusive.’  I accept the vast majority of projects I’m given the opportunity to work on.

My business is small because I have not placed any priority on making it big.  I want to know my business is great first because I’ve lived through the embarrassment of conducting business in ways I’m not proud of today.  Things I’ve done to make more money have actually pushed me to the brink of bankruptcy.

In fact, I really want to know I’ve built my business to be strong enough to withstand that draw toward mediocrity that comes with growth…if that significant growth should ever actually happen for me.  I’m scared of growth because I fear it will threaten the ideals I value more than size.

I have this fear because I’ve seen it happen to a lot of other small companies.  I’ve known people that are smarter than me, willing to work harder, longer hours than me, and have stronger character than me end up running mediocre organizations.  The slippery slope seems to always begin with an unexpectedly fast growth in their business which morphs into an unspoken motto of ‘growth for the sake of growth.’

Greater growth creates a bigger organization that both demands more business to sustain it and even greater future ambitions to maintain that growth rate.

FAST GROWTH CAN PRECEDE FAST FAILURE

I’ve also seen a frightening number of companies become shooting stars that came crashing back to earth.  Where a smaller, sustainable business had been possible, the owners chose to go big and then go bankrupt.

I hope you see the parallels of trying to grow a business too quickly for the sake of growth just like you can try to grow distribution and sales too quickly.

After reading this, I hope you, too, can embrace whatever size you are today.  I hope you have ambitions to grow, but that you find more meaningful metrics to measure your success and your worth.  Growth should be the result of achieving other objectives.  It should not be the objective itself.

I personally think this misguided approach to getting big at all costs may be one of the biggest root causes of new product failure.  There are lots of great product ideas that are perfect for 500 stores, but not 2000.  Or maybe 5,000 stores and not 20,000.

I’ve seen too many good ideas try to be too big only to have their artificially inflated growth eventually implode.