Leadership lessons learnt, growth company vs big companies.

Lessons learnt. I recently finished few years refreshing business transformation project in a growing high-tech engineering company. While planning my next step, I took a moment to reflect what I learnt during these years, after spending 20 years in medium and large size companies.

*1 It's worth it. In growing start-ups you need to innovate and solve the challenges on your own. In bigger companies you often have procedures to be followed.

*2 Cash is king. I understand CFO’s a lot more now. While turnover is ok, positive cash flow is even better. It’s the sign of a healthy company.

*3 Entrepreneurs are the kings and queens of growth and innovation. I have great respect for those people, who have this strange DNA that gives them the motivation and will to try, fail, try and fail better. And stand up again.

*4 Moaning about minor matters is a privilege in large enterprises, where most basic things are, in fact, in good order. 

*5 It’s not straightforward. Often you need to take even two steps backwards to get one step ahead. Which is closely related to my next point:

*6 Learn fast and learn together. There’s no time to fail slowly. You need the minimum sellable product, and you must connect clients, marketing and sales with R&D closely. Developers will always want to develop, don’t get lost in that.

*7 Keep focused. A small company can’t be good at many things. Make choices and package the solutions and services to deliver profitability. Well, this actually applies to big companies too.

*8 There are no boxes in a growing companies to get stuck with “out of the box thinking”. Instead, in order to boost the business development, pick up the best practices selectively based on your experiences and implement them step by step. 

*9 Have fun and keep yourself fit! Work is hard and there is a lot of it.

*10 It’s all about the people. Really. In smaller teams every person and every recruit counts. Use your gut feeling to find the right people and also the right working culture for yourself.

And remember the first lesson: it really is worth it. Welcome back to basics. An asset to be used again in bigger companies.