Image via Wikipedia"Any fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius - and a lot of courage - to move in the opposite direction." Albert Einstein
Often in a small company people wear many hats and perform multiple functions. As business increases we specialize and take off some of those hats. We hire people for very specific, defined roles to increase efficiency and accuracy in serving the needs of our customers. Then we create monitoring and compensation systems to manage our growing workforce of specialists.
We wake up one day and realize we can't turn the big ship without a ton of effort. The entrepreneur spirit begins to wither because roles are so specific people refer to their job descriptions before tackling new projects. People assume many aspects of the business are someone else's job. Ironically, at the same time people begin to feel like they are losing their voice and agree that they have far more talent than their current job requires.
I'm a huge Steven Covey fan and in his 8th Habit book he talks about the shift from the industrial age to the information age and empowering the knowledge worker.
Should you grow toward complexity or grow toward simplicity?
Comments welcomed,
Tim Symchych
