The Trouble with working in a big organisation

If you work in a large organisation and deal with the corporate structure when it comes to creating new products and services, as in the need for lots of different teams to be invlolved at every level, to have the whole process broken down into tiny parts and distributed widely in the hope that when each part has been mutated to fit individuals preferences that those pieces will all come together nicely again which inevitably they do not which lends itself to another whole layer of programme office management, endless meetings and the slowing of the process to glutinous proportions then I encourage to ask yourself these questions (not in order of importance)

• of the people you deal with - who would you invite into a startup you were funding yourself

• would it be the same people if you were not funding the startup yourself

Another thing you can do is add up the time you spend on the following:

• reporting status (RAG) to programme office
• mailing people to get their status
• mailing people to get their view/opinion on something you have a firm view on
• mailing people who don't respond to the above
• calling the people who dont respond to the above
• texting/IM people ......

Add all that time together and add the IT resource cost and your time and when the product finally launches compare the launch product specifications against what you wanted in the first place and then see how much cheaper it could have been done for if you just had the ability to make those decisions ..... (of course all that takes time but trust me, if you are good at what you do, and have knowledge and most importantly common sense then I **guarantee** it would have been cheaper and quite often better than what gets released)

I do work in such an organisation as you can probably tell, one that is now choosing to evolve rather than change (since we have been in constant change for so long that guess what!!! the staff are fed up) and the is right sizing itself whilst retaining a vibrant and enthusiastic and hard working staff..... if you see no irony in this then you simply can't be as jaded as I currently am