The Hindu Business Line : Can you become big and also remain wonderful?

Being small gives an organisation a better opportunity to establish a level of connect and intimacy. As Indian companies become big and global, the task of continuing to stay beautiful is what will engage them in the years ahead.

While big companies offer its employees a wider range of opportunities, they find it hard to meet the diverse needs of different groups of people.

Bo Burlingham, the author of Small Giants, a book that looks at companies that choose to be great instead of big says, "... there is generally an inverse correlation between the number of people who work for a company and the strength of their emotional ties to it.

Not that you can create a great work environment just by keeping the head count down, nor will you necessarily destroy one if you expand your workforce. But there is a limit to the number of employees a company can have and still maintain those intimate personal connections.

Most people recognise it, though few agree on exactly where it is. That may be because the limit varies from company to company, depending on the nature of the business, the imagination and skills of the managers and the personal preferences of the leaders".

Is this true? Can a company grow big and also remain a wonderful employer and wonderful place to work for?

Even as I look at the results of the Great Places to work 2007 results as well as the Hewitt Best employer 2007 results, this is the questions that is uppermost in my mind.

Consider the facts:

Of the 40 largest Indian companies (Forbes list) with revenue in excess of $1 billion, there are only four which figure on either of the two surveys. Of these, three are in the information technology space and one in the power sector.

For many of us who are witness to Indian companies growing larger and larger, this is an important question to ask debate and explore.

In its answer lies not just competitive advantage but also macro strategies to managing the needs and aspirations of the growing number of young employees in Indian organisations.

(The purpose of this article is to draw larger lessons rather than to critique the surveys or the merits of specific organisations.)

Some more facts

First, some more interesting facts from both the surveys:

While in one survey, about 80 per cent of the top 25 workplaces are multinationalcorporations, in the other, close to 50 per cent are MNCs.

In one survey, while about 50 per cent of those who made it belong to the IT industry, in the other, about one-third are from the IT industry.

Clearly, therefore, multinationals seem to emerge as being better places to work, or are certainly perceived to be so.

It is also evident that the information technology businesses are emerging as better workplaces or are at least perceived to be so.

It could also be that the level of awareness and keen interest among IT companies in participating in these surveys was higher, given the acutely competitive pressures for talent experienced by them.

What certainly emerges is the fact that if an organisation is not an MNC or in the information technology industry, its challenges in competing in the talent market, at least at the entry level, seem very high.

The challenges of size

I would now like to turn my attention to the central subject of this article — the subject of size. It is certainly obvious that being small certainly gives an organisation a better opportunity to establish a level of connect and intimacy and also in the words of Bo Burlingham, makes it easier to "address a broad range of their employees' needs as human beings— - creative, emotional, spiritual, and social needs as well as economic ones."

Obviously, smaller organisations have the ability to permit a certain level of adhocracy, characterised by a low emphasis on hierarchy.

As these organisations grow, they inevitably see the need for a certain level of functional bureaucracy, a certain emphasis on hierarchy and a high level of formalisation through policies and processes.

While big companies offer its employees a wider range of opportunities they also, perhaps, see the need for offering a fairly standardised employee value proposition and find it hard to meet the unique and diverse needs of different groups of people. Being everything to everyone becomes much harder.

How can big also be wonderful?

If you look at the Fortune 1000 list, you will see that only 37 of them (a mere 3.7 per cent) also figure in the 100 best places to work list!

The challenge to remain best and great even as you get big is therefore global. Having said this, it still seems possible for companies to get big and stay wonderful, albeit in smaller numbers.

While there is lack of empirical data on what the exact reasons are, I would like to present a few possible hypotheses for further exploration:

Large companies remain great and best by running their companies as many smaller companies;

Large companies remain great and best by ensuring that as they become big, they define their employee value proposition in much sharper terms and communicate it in clearly so that the prospective and present employees are clear about what they can and cannot expect;

Leaders in large organisations make "managing people" their single biggest agenda, given the enormity of the task and its criticality to the future;.

Most importantly, large companies have the benefit of a strong continuity of leadership, which ensures the nurturance of a strong and supportive culture.

These are, of course, in addition to all the other things that all great companies seem to do well.

That small is beautiful is a forgone conclusion. As Indian companies become big and global, the task of continuing to stay beautiful is what will engage them in the years ahead!

(The author is the founder and CEO of totus consulting. totus consulting is a strategic HR Consulting firm that designs and implements HR systems and processes for Organisations across diverse industries. He can be reached at ganesh@totusconsulting.com)

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