John Linton
I sometimes read about the inefficiencies inherent in small companies and the efficiencies of 'economy of scale'. I suppose that some of the issues cited by the proponents of 'size being more economical' could pass the initial scrutiny of a third class mind but the concept of 'bigger is more efficient' is pure nonsense.
Over a 40 year plus working lifetime I've worked for one of the largest companies in the world (IBM) and I've started the smallest possible company in the world (one person part time and unpaid), I still admire the incredible efficiencies of IBM and the ten years I spent there were still the most enjoyable working times of my life to date. (I still wonder how a combination of a totally insensitive manager and my own stupidity ended in me leaving a company I really loved working at).
However among all of IBM's incredible efficiencies and 'self balancing' controls were huge inefficiencies that allowed good people to achieve whatever targets were set for them by spending, in my case and many others, as little as 20% of their working days achieving/significantly over achieving those targets in most years. There was also the incredible waste of time of even those high performing people spent on (to them ) pointless and wasteful 'training courses' and the endless branch and team meetings that were a total waste of manpower time and other resources.
And that was the most efficient company that I ever worked for.
Those past experiences have burned in to my thinking and actions in being totally or largely responsible for running organisations the need to reduce such wastefulness to an absolute minimum when I had the 'power' to do so. I have never succeeded, to date, in actually achieving the operating efficiencies that I know are possible - partly due to my limited experience in managing operations other than sales and partly because of the intrinsic difficulties of working out a really usable 'management' structure that will get the best from all people involved in such a 'structure'.
I learned the incredible management advantages of job goal setting and reviewing at IBM (though I have to say it was done very badly in Australia generally and was largely rendered useless by setting annual job goals and annual reviews - however I soon improved that by using fortnightly reviews and quarterly resetting after I left IBM).
I learned about the removal of management 'layers' from the, only partially successful, "Volvo Revolution" in Sweden.
I learned about Zero Defect standards and processes from Fujitsu factory management in Japan and marvelled at how they produced faster main frames than IBM which had, literally, zero downtime in a five year period.
I learned about dispensing with management offices, receptionists, personal assistants and car park spaces from a book called 'Maverick" and watched a botched attempt at implementing that at OneTel but noted how easy that would have been to implement properly.
I had learned at IBM, and then had reinforced at Univac, Fujitsu and One.Tel the pointlessness of Marketing personnel, Human Resources personnel, advertising and low level sales management and sales personnel.
Over the past four years I've used all of this learned and observed knowledge to help build a company that can grow month on month (every month) and only build to a personnel level of 30 people generating $A3,000,000 of revenue a month and supporting 65,000 customers (no human resources, no marketing, no sales management, no low level sales personnel, no receptionist, no PAs, no management offices, no car parking, no advertising).
All this was/is possible because of the efficiencies inherent in a small company where the knowledge and experience of a few people who start up and run the business is so comprehensive it isn't necessary to employ other people with narrow fields of expertise to 'plug the knowledge gaps'.
...and now Exetel has to grow a little larger and that means/will shortly mean that the efficiencies of 'renaissance man' style company direction is about to become no longer possible.
So yesterday we started the process of implementing the 'post renaissance man' company management processes that, as far as I know, have never been implemented anywhere in the world - but maybe that's just my lack of knowledge. We will scrap the job goal, job goal review, zero defect program processes that I have refined year after year ever since I left IBM and replace them with the, as yet unbuilt, GURUS management system that is due to be in place, in a simple form, on January 15th 2008.
We hope to add a new set of efficiencies that also dispense with 'manual' job goal and ZD setting, re-setting reviewing and the 'face to face' meeting preparation and meeting times inherent in those, to date, excellent management systems with the GURUS computer based management system that advises each person within Exetel every second of every 24 hour period of how they are performing against their agreed job tasks and what needs their attention at any second of the day.
We have put in a lot of work over the past four years ensuring that the systems we have developed will allow this to be put in place and it will be very interesting to see how successful the first iterations of this process will be over the first six months of 2008. If it works even half as well as its done for me 'manually' over the past four years then it will introduce a level of performance direction and personnel 'management' in to Exetel that is more precise and more efficient than exists in any commercial company anywhere.
It will be a very exciting time and, if it's successful, it will ensure that Exetel maintains and grows and operating efficiency advantage over all its competitors - something essential for commercial survival in the very tough times I think 2008 will bring to Australia's communications industry.