When does a company morph from being fast paced and entrepreneurial to stodgy and bureaucratic? Is it cultural or systematic as a company grows? Is it caused by management and can management even stop its inevitability?
As the CEO of an early stage company, albeit one with lots of significant brand clients like Regent Seven Seas and Legacy.com and Little League Baseball, among others, this is something that I think about a great deal. I have had an opportunity to play major roles in both types of organizations and, of course, continue to work with vendors large (Xerox, Chase Paymentech) and small (M5, Acorn Press). I think I lean towards size being the major determinant.
I remember when SharedBook first signed Little League Baseball as a client. This was 2005 and we were excited about the myriad opportunities to provide personalized ‘yearbooks’ for Little Leaguers. Each day, we would congregate to throw out ideas of ways to target our audience. The Little League World Series was around the corner and we needed to find a way to sell our books even though there was no Internet access in the parking lot in Williamsport where we would be exhibiting. One morning we asked, “Why not sell vouchers to make the book in the future?” So Bridget, who heads business development at SharedBook, called her creative and supportive contact at Little League who liked the idea. By that very afternoon, vouchers were being offered.
While just one small detail in an expansive marketing plan, I went home that night euphoric. My husband Mark could see that my steps were lighter than usual. Why? Because we had effortlessly taken an idea from concept to fruition in the course of a day, an unheard of phenomenon in a large company, with its layers of management and hard-baked processes.
The question now: How do we keep this spirit alive, even as we experience our first tastes of marketplace success, and the growth that comes with it? What do you think? What causes a company to lose its entrepreneurial spirit and fast decision making?
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