John Linton
.....that are always challenging and are the next most difficult problems a start up business has to deal with once/if it makes it past the first five years.
Earlier this week Exetel hired its 39th employee in Australia which, together with the 36 people employed in Sri Lanka comprises that figure. This is a 50% increase since the beginning of 2009 and by far the fastest personnel growth in a year (which is not yet ended) that we have ever had. In Australia this is almost entirely due to adding sales and engineering personnel to our corporate sales operations which has grown from 3 to 14 in that period and to our residential technical, provisioning and billing support in Sri Lanka which has almost doubled over the same period.
So far we have coped with the new demands such relatively 'rapid' growth brings with it but it has become very obvious that the 'challenges' are increasing rather than reducing. Exetel has no 'human resources' functions and won't have for as long as I have a say in how the company is operated but we do face the issues that are inevitably brought by continuous hiring and our hiring program, should we continue to meet our objectives, is to add another 50 people over the coming year which, in simple terms, is a 66% growth over today's establishments. Apart from the inherent difficulties in growing the financial side of the business 'watering down' the operational knowledge levels and management experience of any company by these successive percentages is an extremely difficult set of problems.
In my, limited, experiences the major success factor within a small company is the obvious dedication and expertise of the company's founders (presuming they actually have any and the company continues to survive) and the very close working relationships they build with each new person they bring in to the hot house environment of a start up struggling to survive and grow. As the company grows these relationships are no longer possible and inevitably all growing companies lose that key advantage over time. The other major problem is that small companies, of necessity, have to entrust people with key aspects of running and operating the company which if they leave to pursue their careers elsewhere leaves big gaps in both the operational knowledge and skills and the overall 'balance' of any small company. Exetel has been exceptionally fortunate to date that it's personnel loss is extremely low year by year and our decision to automate 'practically everything' has minimised/eliminated the damage of 'operational damage loss' if we ever did lose a 'key' person.
Moving forward to and past 100 people in two different countries we will begin to lose those 'insurances' we have benefited from over the past almost six years. Recognising that is one thing - doing something about it is much more complex and much more difficult. When I worked for large multinationals it always amazed me at how little people only two levels of management up from the 'coal face' knew about what was actually happening within their direct responsibilities and how incredibly ignorant they were about the abilities/no-abilities and attitudes the people they were directly responsible for - but then, as I grew more experienced/older I realised that they weren't running a mainframe business or a telco - they were running a bottom line result with so much 'fat' in the margins that their understanding of what was going on was largely irrelevant.
I would like to be able to say that I know exactly what to do to avoid these, seemingly inevitable, problems of growth - but I don't and I have never found any sensible advice let alone reputable case studies that would provide examples and/or inspiration. Most companies accept the efficiency loss and, if they continue to be successful, bury it in revenue and profit growth and never miss it. My one real experience of growing a business from start up to several hundred people provides no usable lessons because it was a long time ago and I was a very different person then with very different objectives. Obviously hundreds of thousands of companies in Australia have made such a transition successfully and have found all sorts of ways of accomplishing it with a huge variety of managements that haven't found it to be any problem......so I shouldn't concern myself with such trivialities.....but I do.
I suppose the best way of looking at it is that Exetel has grown slowly up to very recently and I didn't even notice when our number of personnel passed 50 so what has changed? That is obviously true in many ways and it's a comfort. If our business is as soundly based as it appears to have been and is today then there should not be the problems I have speculated about here and for the past few days , or more correctly nights. We have our monthly board meeting today and I will raise the issue for serious future consideration.