Careers Insight: Learning lessons from big firms

Whether you’re working in a large organisation, micro business or setting up on your own, plans need to be put in place to achieve your objectives and meet your goals

In the time since leaving school to September last year, I only knew about being an employee. As 40 per cent of all workers in the UK do currently, I have always worked for businesses with over 250 employees. But did you know businesses of such size only make up 0.1 per cent of all firms in this country?

Micro businesses (those employing between one and nine people) account for 33 per cent of all employment, while the number of those that have no employees at all has grown by 84 per cent since the year 2000.

Many of you reading this will have never worked in a large business before. So why am I bringing it up?

Well, my time at those businesses has taught me lessons on techniques, disciplines and ways of thinking that benefit not only my clients but also my life outside of work too. Take the following examples…

Objectives and key performance indicators

Here, I am not talking about objectives you may set for employees at the start of the year, although these are important. I am referring to being clear about what your business wishes to achieve over a set period beyond numbers (of enquiries, applications, completions, revenue, profit and so on).

I am wary of applying visions and mission statements without doing anything to make them a reality, but drafting a simple list of points you wish to be famous for can be a good starting point for any objectives.

I am sure many of you have been in meetings where you have heard someone refer to ‘key’ KPIs – obviously so important they need to be double-keyed. I have also been in companies with so many KPIs they were impossible to, not only track accurately, but know which ones we needed to focus on.

Most months we would be achieving some but failing on others, so we would be told to focus on the latter for the next period, almost guaranteeing we would fail on the former and so on.

From these experiences I have learned that less is most definitely more for objectives and KPIs. It can take some soul-searching to finalise but it is time well-spent.

Process and plan

In the early stages of setting up a business, you know what you need to do and so you just get on with it, often giving little thought to the future. Human nature is always to repeat what you did before, especially if it seemed to work. However, as your business grows over time, these processes can take on a life of their own, with work-arounds built rather than new processes created.

This can lead to inefficiencies at best and, at worst, problems stored up for the future.

So, ensure you undertake a regular review of processes. Try to involve those in the business that have not been involved up to this point, or even those outside the business, such as consultants. A fresh pair of eyes can be so important.

And there are plans. The techniques and thought processes deployed when building a plan are just as important as the plan itself.

Once a plan has been built, share it to ensure everyone involved in its implementation can monitor its progress. For both processes and plans, be clear how you are going to measure. Do not make it too complicated, as you will want everyone to understand what they can do to ensure targets are met.

While I appreciate it is not for everyone, working in a corporate environment has given me the tools to do what I do now.

Recruiting people from these backgrounds may complement your team and could help you get to the next level.