GreenSearch People: I Used To Fit Into a 40 Regular

Sometimes, business is like an old jacket. Each company, as it progresses through the various stages of growth, develops and wears its own jacket. Repeated wearings give it a warm, personal feel. The owner describes it as "breaking it in." People who helped start the company understand the "jacket" and all that it symbolizes. It's a warm and fuzzy for them too. They overlook the fact that it's starting to get a bit frayed around the collar and there are stains on it that can no longer be removed. They also ignore the fact that the sleeves are too short and it can't be zipped up any more because the wearer has gotten a bit large around the middle. As the business grows and new customers and employees are added, the common, recurring question coming from those who don't like or understand the old jacket is, "When are we going to get rid of that old thing?"

If companies were old jackets, it would be easy to deal with them. Just hang them in a closet somewhere and forget about them. But, that's where the similarity ends. Companies can grow from a size 40 regular to a 46 long right in front of our eyes. It doesn't happen over night, but there are plenty of symptoms and indicators that present themselves to wary observers. Sometimes we ignore these indicators in favor of the security the old "company jacket" provides.

When the company was a 40 regular, things were more predictable. The customers whom it served were happy. The consistent delivery of high quality services became a hallmark for the organization. The employees who helped start the company were proud of it and were excited about coming to work. Sure, the work was hard and the hours were long, but they shared the vision of the owner. Then, good customers who recognized the quality and dependability of the company started to ask for slight variations in the services they received. It wasn't a big deal at first, but as demand increased, the company began to see that the market response to these new requests was taking them in a different direction from the original mission of the organization. New equipment had to be purchased, straining lines of credit and putting pressure on revenue generating activities to produce new customers. The field people who delivered the services started feeling the pressure of providing new services that were different from what their original jobs required. These new services were not always priced properly and required more time at the job site than they had been putting in before. Customer complaints started to increase because they weren't getting the quality in the expanded services that they had come to expect from the company's basic services.

As discouraged field people resigned, their positions were filled by management people who, in addition to their normal jobs, doubled as technicians to meet customer demands. Jobs became unmanageable in terms of both amount of things to be done and the time available in which to do them. The excitement of the vision was rapidly being siphoned off by sheer exhaustion and confusion. What was the owner doing? He was spending more time in the office planning for "additional expansion" and neglecting the problems that were starting to emerge. And, worse yet, his people noticed that he was wearing that tattered old 40 regular jacket more frequently. And you know what, they all saw that, for the first time, it neither looked good on him nor appeared to fit him very well. Some said he looked ridiculous, dated and out of touch.

From his perspective, however, things looked great. Customers were calling the company to do more things. They liked the work the company did and wanted more. This burst of unexpected success was heady stuff, and as a result, he was planning to implement more new ideas. He had forgotten the fact that he hadn't had a staff meeting in two months with his key folks. He hadn't noticed that things that used to get done quickly were taking forever, even when assigned to the best, most responsive people he had. He hadn't observed that his field crew was short three people and his managers, God bless them, were filling in. He wasn't connecting the dots among the frequency and types of customer complaints he was getting and what the real message they were sending him was beginning to say.

He was consumed with planning for new divisions in the company to meet new demands and had lost sight of the fact that his core business, which would fund these new ventures, was losing customers and good employees.

The company had become a 46 long. Even the people in the company, who had proudly worn the old 40 regular, knew it was time for a change. Old habits and ways die hard. The owner faced two choices, pull up the collar of the 40 regular and hunker down into that old familiar warmth, or make that trip to the mall and find a new tailor.

What would you do?

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