Small but Perfectly Formed

When I was in merger talks with a larger company (OK read takeover!) I commented to their CEO that they had muscles in placed we didn't even have places! When things get big, do they really need to become more complex or does it go with the territory?

When businesses grow to more than eight people, holding company meetings in the rest room is no longer as feasible as it once was. Structure need to be put in place and when a job becomes bigger than one person, departments evolve.

The trick is to align related functions together and put in process orientated 'glue' to make sure the external world doesn't get exposed to (necessary) internal complexity. 'Join up thinking' and 'non-silo mentality' seems to be the in vogue phrases. Trying to have one department doing everything, so no glue is required, is about as bad as having individuals pulling in different directions and having loads of gaffer tape holding them together (which to be fair is what is invariably the end result of any growth phase for a business).

So I am not quite sure how to react to the government target of reducing 3,000 support projects down to 100 by 2010. Don't get me wrong, I am sure this can be done but why stop at 100? I thought 42 was the answer to life the universe and everything. But as Einstein said: Make everything as simple as possible, but no simpler.