New Job

Started a new job on Monday. Nice company, lots of opportunity and potential. I'm looking forward to how it develops in the near and long-term future.

It's a lot bigger company than what I'm used to working in. They have 50 employees and I've been in the habit of working in companies with less than 20 employees. With me, it was always, "The smaller, the better."

After a week at it, I have several observations. One of them is this: With all of the people working there, I find that I and others are hugely burdened with the interruptions of people coming and going and starting extraneous conversations, etc. etc. I find that I have about half as much time to get things done. So far. Also, the burden of communications is increased a great deal which also impairs my ability to get things done.

Here's how it has worked for me in the past. I've always worn several hats due to the small size of the companies I've worked for. I love doing that. I have a lot of power and that translates into an ability to get a lot of things done and get them done quickly. If I put a task on my to do list, it generally only lasts a moment or two because I'm the head of several departments and instead of asking other people questions, I simply answer them myself, tie up the loose ends and move on.

In this larger company, I've discovered that because I have fewer hats to wear, it's more time-consuming to get things answered and resolve the issue at hand. My task list gets a LOT of churning because each task needs to be updated every time something happens to affect that task. Finally, after several trips through the list, a task here and there will pop out which has enough info to finally wrap it up.

Incredible. Different. A learning experience. A challenge in the extreme.

People running around here and there is a problem. Impromptu conversations happen a lot more often and socialization takes up a significant amount of time. Interruptions, both business related and non-business related occur regularly. I'm not 100% sure about others but for myself, if I'm working up to my elbows in a project and I get interrupted, even if it's for a business item, it takes me quite a while to regroup and return to the project when I'm done dealing with the interruption.

So, it got me to thinking: Do business owners and company HR departments attempt to calculate the cost of having MORE employees added to their personnel lists? Is there a cost to having too many employees? Every time you add an employee to your company, are you increasing the amount of time lost to them? What are the costs of more communication interactions between employees?

Are these costs mitigated by narrowly defining the scope of each person's position? If you have a guy whose job is sticking tab A into slot B over and over and over again all day and he only has to interface with one boss, is he going to be the most efficient and effective employee in the company?

Just some basic thoughts. I dont' have a lot of reason to complain about anything just because it's too early in the game to tell. These are just observations generated due to the culture shock I'm experiencing! The reality could just as easily be that I'm having to learn new skills and it's going to just take a little time.

With any luck, I'll come back to this in a year and readdress the questions and the conclusions. I like the long experiments, I just have to remember to follow up!

--Wag--