Get Ahead: Start with a Small Organisation

Observation of the day: People who start their working career in small organisations go further than people who start at the bottom of large organisations. People who start their career in growing small organisations go the furthest.

I’ve observed this phenomena a number of times, some of it within the Organisation where I work, some external.

There are a number of people within my own organisation who were outsourced into the organisation from a smaller organisation, or a small part of a large organisation. These people thrive in the new large organisation in a way that people from existing large organisations do not.

I’ve also noticed large organisations buy small organisations. Within a few years the senior management of the large organisation is dominated by people from the small organisation.

I’ve wondered for some time why this should be? I have come to some conclusions around experience.

The first conclusion is that it’s the breadth of experience that matters, not the depth of experience. People in small organisations need to be able to cover a number of roles, they can’t be a specialist in a small part of the operation. This breadth allows people from small organisation to understand the whole. In large organisations this holistic view immediately places them at an advantage over someone with a more narrow view.

The second conclusion is that it’s breadth of experience, not scale of experience that matters. Within a small organisation you get to understand a lot about many things but on a smaller scale. It would appear that scaling that experience up is easier than broadening the experience.

The next conclusion is that people from small organisations have far less respect for hierarchy than people brought up in larger organisations. If you have been in an Organisation where you know the Chairman and the Cleaner you realise that the difference between these people is very small. You’re also less likely to have a “not worthy” attitude when working with people more senior than you, something that they are likely to respect.

My advice to anyone thinking of starting out in a new career – start in a small organisation, it will work out much better in the long run.

My own experience is that I initially worked as a System Administrator for email systems before they were mainstream. This was in a large organisation, but a very small part of a large organisation. That experience put me in front of very senior people as well as shop-floor people trying to get the job done. This was in the days when we used to give people training courses on how to use a mouse. I was one of only 4 people who did what I did, it was a small organisation within the large organisation. During that time IT and email in particular exploded, businesses also became reliant upon IT. There are things that I haven’t done since those days which inform my understanding of customer today, some things haven’t changed that much. My broad experience within the small organisation still feeds my experience today, it was invaluable.

I have no scientific evidence to say these things, only personal experience. I suspect someone has done a study on it somewhere but I don’t have the time to go and find one right now. Even if I did go and find a study it wouldn’t be a fully fledged research of the area, it would be just me looking across the Internet trying to find someone to back up my own opinion. For now, though, personal observation will suffice.