Size Does Matter
Most of my working life (six-odd years till date), I have spent working with small-medium outfits. Almost all of these were agencies of some form or another.
I learnt a lot from my agency experience: I learnt the nuances of “agency life” and came to appreciate the importance of “multi-tasking”. I learnt how to make things happen with limited resources, and picked up skills like Client Servicing and Project Management in the bargain. I have also done my share of staying up nights and working weekends to complete that all-important project, only to discover that the client took a week to find the time to review it!
Working in an “agency” has its pluses and minuses. Like most things in life. And, as long as the pros outweigh the cons, life goes on.
But today, I have chosen to go down a new route. I have decided to become “the client”!
It’s only been a week since I joined my new employer – one of the biggest and most-respected private Insurance companies in India. (I have joined their Alliances and Bancassurance team) And already, it feels like I’ve made the right decision.
The nature of the work is substantially more interesting. The scale of operations, significantly larger. And, of course, there are the perks that come with a big-brand job… the corporate plan from my mobile provider, the free tickets to plays and movies, etc. etc.
There are other aspects that have been positively affected too: For starters, I now have peers. (In my last job, I was part of a 20-member team where I was second in command. So there were no peers to share things with. You may not think too much of it, but you miss it when you don’t have it.) Also, after a long long time, people know about the company I work for. (Not all my previous employers were consumer brands. So I often had to provide a background with the name.) Plus, there’s the comfort of knowing that you’re part of such a big operation that there will always be things you can try out (in terms of other portfolios), without having to leave the organization!
I’m beginning to like it here… I think I could get used to this… 🙂
Individuals in the course of their careers attempt to resolve the dilemma that is presented in the choice between being a big fish in a small pond and small fish in a big pond.To my mind neither choice is superior to the other in a universal or definitive sense.There are merits and demerits to working in either kind of organisations if we were to classify organisations by relative size.As an insider in the celebrated IT Industry,I observe that modestly sized organisations claim to be nimble and responsive to a client’s needs but enter the contest for a lucrative project from a Fortune 500 client as an underdog.It is a CATCH-22 situation really.Bigger organisations boast of mature processes and vast experience,not to mention their sizeable work force,to service all of a client’s needs.These considerations are at play in the minds of prospective and actual employees of these organisations. The dimension of growth and mobility of individuals often receives attention in the form of a notion that smaller organisations are intrinsically favourable in contrast to the goliath which has to contend with the layers of its hierarchy.But that view tells only one part of the story.The resources and opportunities for job enrichment in larger organisations are far too important to have a decisive winner in this debate over size.It must be said that this predicament,if it can be called so,is best left to personal judgment and not resolved in the public domain for a cut and dried solution..To conclude the distinction between good and bad organisations,simplistic as it may seem,must be made before any other in considering choices for an employer.