Chapter 1
An article series on Benefits of Organisation Structure & KPIs in SME in India.
How long to remain as an SME?
Most SMEs fail to become corporates. I have come across many things on my journey searching for the cause for SME remaining SME for long. But I found the following are the most important of them.
An entrepreneur
- Is not giving shape to his dreams;
- He is ignorant of ‘Joyous Quadrants’; (We will talk about this concept in more detail in another article series).
- Not structuring his organisation; So, he is not able to turn his dreams into actions;
- Unaware of the natural stages of business growth similar to the natural seasons; this results in a lack of prioritisation and
- His failure to learn the right things from developed companies leading to wrong interpretations.
Why this article series?
This is what I have embraced as my professional goal – to identify the SMEs that did not achieve its fullest potential despite having noble causes, the best ideas, the resources, and the opportunities, and help them to improve themselves and become great corporates. I know it is going to be a long journey.
These are the 5 points I have learned in the journey to achieving this goal. I have been proffering these five pointers to my clients through my consulting support.
In this article series, I write about the third reason, ‘Not structuring his organisation; So, he is not able to turn his dreams into actions’ and we will try to find the remedies.
You can send your comments, questions and queries to my email address kannan@csensems.com or by clicking on the WhatsApp logo visible on this webpage.
Does your SME need a Structure?
An amazing fact – our body has approximately 500 million muscles! One of them is the heart muscle, the 700 bone muscles, and the others are the muscles like the ones in the intestines, the stomach, the liver, and so on.
Have you ever slapped an insect that was flying into your eyes? You would have considered as one of the common events. Most of us would not even realise it. But, that is nature’s greatest evolution. How did your hand move without pausing for an order? You would have realised what happened after you knocked down the insect with reflex action. This is how our brain controls millions of muscles.
Why should hands come and knock the insect? Can any other organ help? May help; But in an emergency, you should not waste time thinking about who should attend to it. You can’t wait for the leader’s (brain’s) order. You need to get it done ‘at once’. For that, nature follows a secret path. We are going to unearth this secret thru this series.
How does an SME grow?
In most cases, a specialist starts a small business on his own. He runs his business effectively for some days as the One Man Army. That helps the company grow faster. Then he employs relatives and friends to help him with growing needs.
He hopes to expand the business after tasting his initial success. Friends and relatives who joined in the first phase of the expansion will continue in their original work. The newly recruited skilled managers and technicians are pushed to work under these seniors.
Sometimes a senior manager is reluctant to hire a competent employee. He is not ready to accept some junior to be more efficient than himself. In a few years, the capacity of a department becomes limited by the capacity of the senior employee.
Thus, the company fails to grow above a certain level. The entrepreneur does not have a system and time to self-examine and investigate the causes of failures and correct them.
Has this happened to you?
“Sir, we don’t need the new machine that you are planning to buy for two more years – looking at the capacity in hand and the demand. And that machine costs more than the budgeted price. So, I cannot allow this Purchase Order. Why don’t we buy a smaller machine? ” Did your accounts manager ever tell you that?
“We need to meet customers in this new location to increase our sales next year. I have got appointments with 3 major customers. I want you to join the meeting. We’re going next week! ” Did your marketing manager tell you that?
“During the peak season, often our staff leave the office or shop late at night. People going by bus (or train) find it difficult to catch theirs. We need to arrange a van temporarily to drop them at the bus stand until this season ends. We can manage the additional expense out of the employee benefits budget. ”Did your HR manager come up to you with such requests?
Coming up next is…
How to make your organisation as one such great company? This is what we will discuss in this article series.
In the next article, we will discuss the fundamentals of organisation structure. Also, we will see what is the ‘business’, how it works? What is the organisation? How is it structured? What should be your role as leader?
In future articles, we will also see How many departments should an organization have? How much time should an entrepreneur invest in each department?