Big Company to Small One: 7 Tips to Make the Switch
Here's the scenario: fresh out of school you started work at a big company. You worked hard, gained skills and moved up the ranks. But then you started to feel restless for more responsibility -- more of a sense that you were making an impact. A bigger gig at a smaller company fit the bill, but now that you've found that gig how can you make the transition from huge company to tiny one? What skills and attitude that served you well at Mega Inc. will hinder your progress at its more agile competitor?
Serial internet entrepreneur Michael Fertik took to the HBR Conversation blog to answer these questions recently, offering seven tips on how to thrive after the transition from big to small:
- Forget influence- and empire-building. Successful larger company managers know how to build influence and consensus for their initiatives within the organization. These instincts kill small companies. Establishing and wielding influence is intended first and foremost to shift a growing portion of the limited budgets of people and funds toward your team and away from others. While the final goal may be to grow revenues or market share, that's not the chief interest. At a smaller company, that kind of behavior will simply create a tax on everything the business does.
- Solve everything yourself. The axiom applies to all matters. You can't wait around for someone from "IT" to set up your computer. There is no IT department! Plan to schedule your own meetings and organize your own recruiting pipeline. If you're going to do something bigger like investigate a new channel opportunity, research it yourself, call prospective customers personally, make some mock-ups, model the growth, and create the PowerPoint deck. Small-company heroes are consistently self-reliant.
- Never cover your a$$. Even though they're (appallingly) standard practice at many big corporations, CYA emails, meetings, and even quick asides during conversations are toxic at small companies. They sow division and mistrust at exactly the early stages when the business most needs to build precious esprit de corps. The main purpose of a CYA comment is to defend one's own territory and career path, not enhance the company.
- Go faster. Large companies move slowly because a) they are usually in reasonably good financial condition, so there is little urgency b) they perceive themselves as having a lot to lose from making bad decisions, and c) they have built barnacled layers of management and compliance over the years, so it's hard to get anything done without getting many people to sign off. These conditions usually don't apply in a small business.
- Don't solve problems you don't have. Managers at large companies often have the obligation and luxury of thinking about problems that may arise at some future time if things go well.... for a small company, taking obvious, easy steps to minimize future risks can be good common sense. But spend little time on this -- the risks of enormous success are so remote they aren't worth major planning.
- Get used to waterfall budgeting. Large companies usually operate with annual budgets, and often the budgeting process is locked down months before the start of the fiscal year. At start-ups and smaller businesses, budgeting can happen opportunistically, monthly, or even on an ongoing basis. For a successful large-company manager, it can seem difficult to operate without knowing the resource pool for the coming year. The good news is that planning at a small company often takes no more than walking over to the boss's desk and saying "we've got to get another customer service manager to handle the load."
- Understand that your daily impact is huge. Many of your managerial decisions will have enormous and possibly existential effects on the business. Larger companies rarely face life-or-death opportunities or threats. Small companies can face them daily. Discovering that your impact at the small company is massive compounds both the excitement and sense of responsibility.