Grow Fast, Grow Smart

A large audience gathered for the first of Day Two�s workshops in the Main Hall to participate in a discussion that largely concentrated on the cultural change issues of growing businesses in the new media sector.

The session opened with a consideration of what we mean by growth. We know that growth typically refers to a number of �hard� factors such as increased turnover, increased profits and employing more people, but one of the speakers suggested that we might also want to look upon stronger relationships with partners, stronger brands and better process methodologies as more qualitative indices of growth. The issue of why grow at all was also raised � given that everyone agreed that there will continue to be a role for small, creative and niche agencies within new media. A variety of explanations were offered in response that included: the need to expand product and service offerings (towards �full service�); a desire to attract �bigger and better� clients; and a feeling that growth can sometimes be inevitable and unplanned. One speaker wondered if there was an optimal size for a company � around 30-45 employees � and that this might be behind some corporate strategies within the sector that limit the size of individual company offices, to achieve growth by pod replication of this medium sized unit.

Much of the session was taken up with detailed histories of growth across a number of prominent new media firms. The problems associated with growth that were reported most commonly were: the loss of vision and focus; difficulties in processes (and in particular how to scale these); how to make staff feel accountable and valued within large organisations; how to maintain the company�s original culture (particularly in the face of takeover by a larger parent and/or by an overseas company); how to manage external relationships with freelancers and partners through acquisition and merger; how to keep knowledge, ideas and gossip circulating through an expanded company structure; and more prosaically, chronic IT infrastructure problems (�your network goes pants up at 40 people, pants up at 70 people, and pants up again at 140 people!�).

In turn, the panel offered a large number of ways in which their companies had managed growth successfully (if painfully at times), and these were all sensitive to the different ways in which growth had been achieved (i.e. organic growth or growth via merger and takeover). The most recurring solutions to managing growth revolved around maintaining effective communication with the staff and, in particular, �managing meaning�: in terms of the values of the company, of its future direction and of its working culture. In practice, this translated principally into taking time out to engage all staff in regular �re-visioning� exercises and establishing fora for sharing ideas, work in progress and for networking with external partners.