Why don’t we grow? Favorite problem of small business.
Small organizations are much larger than large ones. Some owners do not set themselves the goal of “expanding activities.” And that is their business. But today I want to talk about those who understand that expansion is inevitable. But for one reason or another, the enterprise does not expand, or even decreases.
I recently had two such clients. Two companies of 30-40 people. One trading company, another construction company, the owners of both offices are women (I don’t want to say anything, the men have the same problems).
This is a situation common to all enterprises whose expansion is going with great efforts: the manager is trying to personally manage each employee. It worked very well when the company had 5 people. But then there were 20 of them, the sun went down behind the clouds, the light faded and chaos reigned.
Well. I have good news for you – the situation is resolvable. There are several laws that I want to quote to you, and it is very likely that your situation will change if you apply them.
Here is the main one: A BIG ORGANIZATION CONSISTS OF GROUPS, A SMALL ORGANIZATION CONSISTS OF INDIVIDUALS. This law was formulated in 1966 by the classic of international management L. Ron Hubbard in his article “Why Organizations Remain Small.”
There are, of course, other factors affecting the growth of the organization. Here they are:
The quality of your goods or services and the desire of people to have them.
Talented promotion of goods and services.
The ability of team leaders in an organization to save a situation when their subordinates are not doing their job.
Availability, understanding and strict adherence to workable organization policies.
But the law cited above is a general law determining the size of an organization.
I, as a manager, having experienced all the stages of the company’s growth in its construction, can single out several points when it is necessary to restructure the style of enterprise management and apply additional administrative tools and skills. These are 10, 50, 100 and 200 employees, building branches, going to other countries, the founder’s retirement from maintaining influence. For each stage there are ready-made recipes, so nothing fatal can happen in principle.
Only the leader’s unwillingness to learn is fatal if the intuition didn’t have enough to immediately understand how the issue is being solved. Fatal is the same disease “I know everything,” arrogance to gain knowledge.
So, an organization consisting of groups. What does it mean? What is the size of these groups and how to apply this law in practice?
The answer to this question lies in the anatomy of the group. In this group there must be a leader. In an organization, department, company of friends, club, country – in any such group. And the expression “organization consists of groups” means that the whole team is divided into small teams, which are headed by the most adequate people in these groups. And management of the group is carried out only through its leader.
This makes the job safe for an ordinary group member. He is less depressed. Why? Imagine how comfortable you would be talking to the President of the country, especially if he was unhappy with you or gave you orders in a harsh tone. How would you feel if the President personally began to inspect all your work? Watch TV – government members sweat in front of cameras when they are forced to give a personal report to the President. This post is high even for them.
Here such a mechanism works – a person concentrates the strength in himself in direct proportion to how many people he controls. An employee, meeting with a director, seems to be facing the whole team – in terms of the impact they are one and the same. And such a force will not be suppressed only by those who can communicate with the director easily and in a friendly way. And these are mostly direct substitutes.
Of course, leaders of all ranks should do inspections and personally see how things are going. This is the basics. But the basics of management literacy is also this. During the inspection, the manager only collects information and praises people. He should give all orders only to direct subordinates. Exceptions can be only if the head of the “intermediate” chiefs already bounces on their shoulders, ready to fly off.
The maximum size of any group should not exceed six to seven people. This is the number of subordinates that would be comfortable to manage. More is a lot. Less is boring. So you just need to observe this proportion across the group – and it will grow.
I try to very briefly cover a big question. If this data is not enough for you, just write. We will give you much more.
And finally – the other side of the coin. A leader who does not know how to transfer authority incurs misfortune because he brings down all the work and all the problems on his head. The usual excuse in this case is that the employees are not qualified enough to entrust something important to them. Yes it is. I will say more – this is the case everywhere. Nobody from the sky is let down by personnel with a halo and wings.