Of course, I started from scratch, as most of them started in the early ’90s (although I was to find out later that a minority had stolen the start… and the state…, but about that another time…). But that’s not the subject below.

In 2008 we were a company working in the technological field, more precisely in vacuum technology and automation for electricity and gas distribution networks, with about 50 employees and less than 10 million euros in turnover. I still call it the post-romantic period of the company’s development, which was already 15 years old and had become an established player in the field of activity. Then the biggest development in the company’s history (so far) happened and two years later we had over 600 employees and over 30 million euros in turnover. All in two years…

Today, 12 years later we are about 1,500 and yes, although we are 2.5 times more than in 2010, the growth has occurred in stages over the 12 years.

I want to share here about my experience as a person who has managed this growth, with successes and failures, and, above all, about how the relationships between me and my colleagues have changed, between them and the influence that all this has had on me. It is of course impossible to be able to capture in a few hundred seconds everything that has motivated, challenged and even shaken me in this fantastic journey, so I will start by concluding: now, after 12 years of transformation from a small company to a corporation I am beginning to understand and learn, I am beginning to discover and I think that the second time I would do it better…

Organizations are a communication network and the way communication is carried out establishes the organizational context, that is, exactly the most important thing for its efficiency. An organization of 50 people communicates easily, is easily motivated and each member of it feels directly and deeply responsible for the results. On the other hand, the results in an organization of 50-100 people are easy to see and impossible to dilute. The rules are few and firm, everyone knows when they made mistakes and when they did well. Self-motivation is widespread and personal examples, which lead to the correction of others, exposed to everyone.

By comparison, an organization of more than 1,000 people works totally differently. Its context no longer clearly results from the activity, inertia is high and communication difficult. The results can become vague and the responsibility for them even more vague. Motivation needs elaborate mechanisms and the set of rules plays a decisive role in the sense that their assimilation becomes a rigorous and continuous process. The personal example pushes to areas, of performance or non-performance, not connected to the rest of the organization and can lead to tensions. The waves of growth in the number of employees create segregations and distinct habits. The monitoring and control mechanisms as well as the planning mechanisms increase exponentially in importance and put enormous pressure on management. The team takes on a different meaning, and its management needs to become professionalized.

Another aspect that I would bring up is the external context in which this development took place. I would not like to insist on it, as it is one of the things on which the organization’s capacity to influence is extremely low. Of course, there are countless companies with over 1,000 employees in Romania, but as we are noticing, fewer and fewer companies born in our country and even fewer entrepreneurial and extremely few in the field of industry.

Corporations coming from abroad have benefited from the experience of the group they come from, from their expansion experience. Romanian entrepreneurial companies, lacking experience and rules, have adapted and tried to copy in an aggressive and unstable external environment. Developing in an environment where the only predictable thing was the lack of predictability, large companies become the easy target for competition, for exacerbating their own mistakes and for a total fiscal and legal environment against stability and growth. This is the context of the last 30 years in the Romanian business environment!

But all these difficulties and external pressures do not compare to what is the lack of experience of entrepreneurs in managing growth! Probably, the most powerful “killer” of entrepreneurial businesses grown above a certain level is represented by exactly this fact. Entrepreneurs can manage risk much better than anyone, steep growth as well, but they have major problems in managing stability, consolidation, reduction. I love entrepreneurs and it is obvious what the reason is and I believe that without them the world could not exist in the developed and safe form in which it presents itself today.

However, Romanian entrepreneurs have not benefited from a history and the experience of a liberal society, they rarely had time for schools and even then, let’s not forget that three elements are needed to have performance: knowledge, attitude and experience. If in the first two chapters one could obtain and educate, experience develops strictly from repetition.

Of course, the solution can be professional management, which many have tried, but what do you do when most of those with high and proven performance in this category are taken by corporations and sent to do management in other areas of the globe, and the rest leave on their own…

In the context presented above, my personal experience has shown me that if there is one thing that is of the utmost importance to the business owners who run their company, it is the relationship with people!

There are three elements that make this relationship transform the organization and help it overcome the challenges already mentioned:

• Trust
• Motivation
• Feedback

In the context of a large organization, trust between people decreases and trust-based bonds between them suffer. This also affects the trust they have in the organization as a whole. Trust in people on the part of management suffers and creates either overly strict systems or lack of control, losing objectivity mainly due to lack of information. The lack of a strong and proven brand, as it benefits corporations with seniority, leads to doubt and stress. The number of new people and the turnover of personnel brings circumspection and internal competition in its unproductive form.

Their results and measurement can become a problem and their awareness at the level of each individual is cumbersome, so a large organization will have to continuously and indiscriminately find the right motivation methods. These will not stop only at systems of indicators and bonuses, people need to understand the vision they are part of and the deep goals as well as the social role of the organization. Communication plays an extremely important role in this case and, although most companies emphasize external communication, towards the customer, in a large organization internal communication needs strong support from top management.

Feedback and evaluation are essential elements in large organizations where achieving the result can be too much sequencing and achieving intermediate targets can satisfy the staff in the absence of achieving their major objective. Apart from the evaluation based on indicators, the management staff mainly needs feedback and evaluation from superiors in order to align the activity and the results obtained with the role in achieving the highest objectives of the company.

Notice that in none of the three aspects mentioned above do I talk about operations, those activities that attract the most attention from management. Of course, I am not trying to diminish their importance, without forgetting that operations are a consequence at the intersection of two planes: one of properly motivated employees, correctly evaluated working in a context based on trust and the other, of a solid and correct system of procedures, implemented without compromise and firmly followed.

How good it would have been if these things had been clear to me in 2008, but what is even more important is that they are so clear to me now, that I have learned and am learning continuously. The most important thing learned from this experience is related to the sin of arrogance, in which past successes give us an unjustified confidence in future decisions. Circumspection and reserve have their role, just as self-confidence does, the difference occurs when we know how to use one or the other.

Article published in Careers Magazine.