John Linton
A recurring issue in managing a business of Exetel's current size along a development path that is based on steady but constant growth is making decisions on just what developments should be pursued with the constant evaluations of how best to pursue the constantly changing opportunities that are available to you - and how to deal with the acquisition and development of personnel and processes and the logistics of simply 'housing' the increasing numbers of people involved with the company to cater for that growth. Sometime when I haven't been paying attention Exetel has 'suddenly' grown from being the 'small company' I always thought of it as to something bigger than that (I do realise that in terms of Australian data communication companies it remains a minute company).
There is no rationale, that I'm aware of, in commercial life that requires a company to continually grow but it seems to be a general methodology for the majority of 'start ups' as they all have some sort of ambitions that require/desire the involvement of more than the founders of the business working in their back rooms/garages to provide some sort of product or service. Although I am, and have always been, heavily involved in the planning functions at Exetel there have been few times (perhaps none) when I have had any real idea of what might or might not be possible for Exetel to achieve. We have always stayed on the very cautious 'side' in making growth decisions and this has certainly meant that we haven't grown as much as we perhaps could have. Our approaches of making very little money and only paying cash for anything we need has also slowed our possible growth.
Sometime over the past 12 to 18 months, Exetel has grown from less than 50 people to something very close to 100 people with more 'demands' coming every day to grow even faster than we currently plan to do. Apart from the 'frightening' nature of these commitments we are also faced with fact that despite the move to our own purchased floor space in North Sydney in June 2009 and increasing our rented space in Colombo by around 40% in August last year we need more space and facilities in both locations in the very near future to cope with the additional personnel we are contemplating hiring.
Annette and I ponied up the almost $A2 million that was required to purchase the North Sydney floor space and fit it out which, while we were happy enough to do, came at a time when we didn't think we would still need to be investing, for us, big chunks of money in Exetel. We are now faced with the situation where, if we continue our 'rental money is a waste of money', attitude we need to find a further half million for a six month or so 'stop gap' solution to the Australian floor space needs and around a further million to buy somewhere suitable in Colombo; if such space could be found which appears to be problematical. We can solve both those problems by renting of course which is not something that we are particularly keen to do.
However, leaving aside those 'minor' issues, the real issues are the logistics of of managing a more rapidly growing business and one that is growing in two locations some 8,000 kilometers apart. The equally real issues are deciding the product/service directions which in turn are complicated by the unknown status of the Australian communications market after the coming election......... the result of which now seems less certain than at any time in the last two and a bit years - particularly in terms of Krudd's insanity regarding his meddling so stupidly in something he knows nothing about.
We will review the current Exetel business plan over the Australia Day 'week end' and will have to make some fairly decisions over those few days. After 6 years of steady growth in directions we were pretty sure about and in markets that despite their various 'palpitations' didn't really change that much year on year nothing now is very certain at all other than it will be very different in 2011 than it is today. Perhaps it's the further largish (for us) financial investment that is concerning me more than it would normally do because of the Krudd induced uncertainty? I really don't know. I think my real concern is how 'dangerous' it is to pursue the doubling in size of a 'small' company in uncertain times given the enormous changes that are involved in doing that.
There is no need for Exetel to 'grow' for the sake of just becoming bigger with the possible exception of generating better 'purchasing power'. That would be useful but I am thinking that the really big advantage that Exetel currently has is its operating efficiency which will become less if the company grows too 'big' too quickly. Sometimes, and more often than at any time in the past that I can remember, I wonder whether the effort to operate a company of Exetel's size is worth the effort it takes.
Then I think about the many good things that can be achieved by doing such a thing and I get on with doing something more useful.