I work for an up and coming web development firm, that is trying to be everything to everybody. The company is currently poised to enter a large growth phase, as we were acquired a few months ago by a traditional printing company, who is interested in sending a great deal of its customers our way.

The problem is that the owners still have the small company mentality and despite several growth challenges being pointed out to them on a regular basis, nothing seems to be changing (specifically around HR, strategic and formal operational procedures). The small company feel is nice as long as you remain small, but I don't believe that lack of structure is sustainable as a company grows into a medium sized company.

My crisis is deciding whether or not to stay or move on to another company that has experienced its growth and knows how to manage a medium sized company. The learning potential is huge where I am now, but I'm growing impatient with waiting for the introduction of more formalized structures to streamline the operations of the company. Has anyone else ever been in this situation?

-- Annemarie (annemarie.edwards@home.com), November 05, 2000

Answers

Anne Marie it depends if you want to stay in the web development arena. The reason print companies are consolidating with web developers is because a lot of astute web developers know that they have to do something to diversify their business or risk staying in a market where the barriers to entry are shortening considerably each year.

It also depends on whether the kind of customers the traditional print company is going to send over to your company will change the way your company works. I recognize that small web developers usually don't discriminate in the kind of work they get, though the creative people demand much more challenging work, the project or relationship managers will not necessarily send in work that you would want to do. Here is the question you have to ask yourself, will this recent change turn your company into a web development sweatshop or will it retain the identity your familiar with.

Now having considered that, you can look at the growth question. If you hold a junior position your decision will be much easier but the closer you are to the top person, the better it is remain at the current position and do as you say you are doing, which is to learn from your tenure.

The problem with unmanaged growth is of course that everybody in your organization is going to relate to the expression "bouncing off the walls". Hopefully that "bouncing off the walls" feeling isn't the trigger to try to find a more structured approach. A word of warning here is that in implementing a structured approach, it all depends if the structure is going to be right for your type of business. Some web development firms use the ad agency model for their structure and that might not be the wisest choice. So don't assume that structure is necessarily going to increase your opportunities to learn, the wrong structure might consume your time rather than the learning advantage you presently have at your current employer.

The fact that your management seems to have been alerted to growing pain issues and that they seem to be falling on deaf ears is a concern. The question is whether your executive team will be swamped by growth that they fail to take a time out to step back and look at their business or if they are capable of stepping back and looking at their business. If its the latter, it is a no-brainer, you are on a short stepping stone, but if its the former there is still hope even if your gut instinct works against it.

The most important question you have to ask is, does your firm have a business plan? If not, why not? If they don't have a business plan, that's a recipe for going down wild corporate rapids. If there is one thing that you can do right now, it is to challenge your head honcho about her/his business plan, and if none exists, to work together to build it. If they don't want to do a business plan or simply can't see any sense in creating one, then your decision has been made a lot easier. If they do have a business plan, you will be able to see if it's a structure and future projections are ones you can live with or even better still, gets your blood excited. My bet is that they don't have a business plan and have not done one because they donBt understand the how and why of having it.

M.

"To be or not to be that is the question" A quote by the great Willy Shakes. M Profile at: http://www.fastcompany.com/fasttalk/replypost.html? p=9738 Mantra of M. "Life is Private Relations not Public Relations"

-- Mark Zorro (zorromark@consultant.com), November 05, 2000.