Is Small Beautiful?

Speciality Bites with

Paul Hargreaves

Chief executive of Cotswold Fayre

• Becoming a B Corp
• Top trend predictions for Christmas 2021
• Self-sacrifice: The importance of building a leadership legacy centred on others
• Undercover Boss
• Can/should bosses really be close friends with their staff?

It has always been challenging for businesses, as they become larger, to keep that friendly feel that small companies tend to have

Although everyone reading this column is probably involved in an SME (small and medium enterprise – the official Government definition is less than 250 employees), a business of 200 staff is very different to one of 20. In the same way a business of 30 staff is very different to one of 10.

At Cotswold Fayre we currently have just under 30 staff, and there is no way I could be in close contact with all of them. There are a few who’ve been with us from the beginning who might feel put out by that, and it is difficult for them.

But to ensure real growth in the business, I need to ensure the management team is looking after its own teams in the same way as I would be if I was still managing them – with the same values, ethics and motivation.

It has been shown that a human being has the potential to have really close relationships with around 12 people. To use a religious example, Jesus spent his active life training 12 disciples to pass on his message after he had gone – and even one of them blew out!

Studies have shown we are really only capable of mentoring six people, so no one should be managing more than that, otherwise they will become less effective. (That’s a relief, my management team is seven, including me!)
How does this work when it comes to customers and suppliers – both of whom we want to remain close to? Again, this is easy when we are small enough to make our business relationships special and give plenty of time to them, but more difficult as we become larger.

If customers feel alienated, then growth will start to slow. The key is to ensure that these special relationships are going on all over the company. Most likely this will be with a salesperson, but it could also be with a delivery driver, the person on the end of the phone, or even the warehouse worker who may book in the delivery.

I also think that with the growth of social media within business (although not that prevalent in our sector yet!) there is a great opportunity to maintain a feeling of ‘closeness’ with little effort. Of course, this will have to be backed up by real interaction (phone calls and face-to-face contact) but every little helps!

Back to last week, I have had a great deal of feedback from my comments on the Olympics. 38 people contacted me last week – all of them had applied for tickets, but only four actually received any. That is 10.5%, but the Olympic committee is saying 44%.

Okay, this survey isn’t statistically significant, but the trend is being repeated all over the country. I smell a large rat; someone should be investigating this and exposing how many tickets have gone to corporate sponsors and others who haven’t applied for them through the normal channels.