A question that I am asked quite frequently is how big do I want Open Box to be and how fast do I want to get there?
We have been lucky – we have been in the very fortunate position of being able to decide for ourselves what we want to do and how we want to do it. This applies to our growth.
We have also been lucky in that we have always been successful – or at least my short-hand definition of being successful (having really great, dedicated, people who liking working together, working on projects for good clients, with solid revenues, which in turn support the continuation of good people working with good clients). As a result I have been quick to point out that we haven’t had to grow to be successful (it isn’t part of my measure of success). This has left us with the opportunity to grow only where it makes sense and where our clients need us to.
I read recently that McKinsey, which holds itself out as one of the world’s leading repositories of knowledge on how to manage a business, say that they will never grow their company by more than 25% per year because otherwise it is just too hard to transmit the corporate culture. Obviously this isn’t a helpful guideline when you’re a 5 person start-up – doubling in size is not a difficult thing to do in 12 months – McKinsey is certainly not at that stage. But for companies that are no longer 5 person start-ups (and who are growing fast), it does beg the question: “What do you know that McKinsey doesn’t?” or perhaps the better question is: “What does McKinsey know that you don’t?” It does also highlight a challenging aspect of growth that starts to potentially have an affect on my definition of success – that of the culture of the company not being transmitted.
What all this does clearly indicate is that every company is like every individual – they may share some common high level similarities but no two are the same and therefore it is dangerous to assume what works for one will work for another, which brings me to my answer: It depends…….
