Forget consultants - small businesses should focus on DIY strategy

I can recommend Mike Southon’s writing on entrepreneurship in the FT and his piece this week has some interesting things to say about small business approach to strategy…

I wholeheartedly agree with Mike’s view on strategy for the startup or SME entrepreneur:

“One of the advantages of working for a small company is that you do not have to worry too much about strategy.”

How true.  Life in a small businesses is largely about tactical choices; moving fast, twinkle-toed to land a blow against the big boys and then running away before they turn round and clout you with their clunking fists.  That’s the way it feels for us in educational publishing - large, multinational competitors trying to put us out of business, but so far they haven’t landed the telling blow!

Southon’s article describes an interesting example of how a small Vodafone was able to move quicker and smarter than large competitor Cellnet.  One reason - Vodafone management didnt rely on external consultants. They worked as an effective team rather than wait for the advice of so-called experts.  I buy into this.  I had the misfortune of working in a large quoted travel business that became too heavily reliant on outside consultants and, as a result senior management seemed to lose the ability (probably a confidence thing) to make their own decisions.  The result? The business was becalmed at a time when dynamic change was affecting the industry.

The size of a business, in terms of the number of employees, seems to be crucial here.  Mike makes some interesting comments about the “magic number” of employees, beyond which certain entrepreneurial aproaches lose their effectiveness.

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