LO's & Rapid Growth LO9290

John Gancz (perfesser@geocities.com)
Wed, 21 Aug 1996 01:08:54 -0400

Replying to LO9253 --

Ben Compton wrote:

> Anyway, Stephen raises a really important issue: How can a rapidly growing
> company use the ideas of a LO effectively, so they avoid the mistakes
> common at such a critical time? I saw WordPerfect go from nothing to a
> $700 million dollar company in about 10 years. Part of the reason they were
> absorbed by Novell and then Corel was they didn't effectively manage their
> growth.

The high tech industry is chock full of examples such as this. And the
acquirers (such as Corel) may not fare any better in 3 - 5 years.

I was at a firm which was among the top 20 in terms of growth in Canada,
until it went bankrupt that is. I had just picked up Hammer's Re-engineering
the Corporation when I started there and in the introduction was a tale of a
company that was a receivables mess. It was, it must have been, written about
us (okay, not really, but it was uncanny).

Although I circulated an excerpt widely and it was uniformly agreed that
this was the truth as it related to us, there was no change. I suspect that:

1) There was a sales at all costs mentality. Revenue was the critical
consideration, not profitability. When profitability is key to sales
commissions and financial reporting there is a drive to improve processes
within the firm, i.e. allow for broader input on issues and insure that
customers are happy with the service they receive. Whenever profit
was raised, it was in conjuction with, "The reasons for the reduction in
staff were..."
2) While these issues were considered important, they were never
considered urgent. And when -- as I was told by a senior exec --
there's a fire on your desk, someone yelling in your ear over the
phone and a major client sending you obscene E-Mail, you get a "better
perspective of how life really works".
3) There was a perception among staff that no one minded if you
'schmoozed' the customer as long as the cow patties didn't hit the
fan upwind of anyone who 'counted'.

I just tried to rank the above as to which one is worse. Sort of like
opting for which method of death you would prefer to occur in exactly 1 hour.

Had I been able to influence the situation I think that I would have
attempted to refocus on important issues rather than urgent ones and
proceeded to stress profit (not lowballing to win business that ended
up losing money) and skills training (skill number one - how to be open
and empathic with fellow employees and customers!).

Anyone have another approach?

Rgds

John M. Gancz

-- 

John Gancz <perfesser@geocities.com>

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>