To me, it's a fairly vacuous argument that businesses 'have to grow' and keep growing infinitely... in a sort of 'Mr Creosote' style. Rote Management culture would have us all rushing like Lemmings hoovering up greater and greater resource; to what end?
Reality - which to some degree is represented in the statistics - tells us that most businesses are about people making a living; not the Howard's Way/Dell Boy fantasies so beloved of the 'LinkedIn set' and indeed elsewhere...
From the 'Business Population Estimates 2020' published by the Department for Business, Energy & Industrial Strategy:
"The UK private sector comprises largely of non-employing businesses and small employers,
as shown in Table A. SMEs (small and medium-sized enterprises) account for 99.9% of the
business population (6.0 million businesses). At the start of 2020:
• there were estimated to be 6.0 million UK private sector businesses
• 1.4 million of these had employees and 4.6 million had no employees
• therefore, 76% of businesses did not employ anyone aside from the owner(s)
• there were 5.94 million small businesses (with 0 to 49 employees), 99.3% of the
total business population
• there were 36,100 medium-sized businesses (with 50 to 249 employees), 0.6%
of the total business population
• a further 7,800 businesses were large businesses (with 250 or more
employees), 0.1% of the total business population"
Unfortunately I cannot reproduce 'Table A' here... but notably the document goes on to add:
"The 7,800 large businesses in the UK make a major contribution to employment and turnover.
Nonetheless, SMEs account for around three fifths of the employment and around half of
turnover in the UK private sector. At the start of 2020:
• total employment in SMEs was 16.8 million (61% of the total), whilst turnover was
estimated at £2.3 trillion (52%)
• employment in small businesses was 13.3 million (48%) and turnover £1.6 trillion
(36%)
• employment in medium-sized businesses was 3.5 million (13%) and turnover
£0.7 trillion (16%)
• employment in large businesses was 10.9 million (39%) and turnover £2.1 trillion
(48%)"
When you drill further into the statistics it becomes apparent that as a function of turnover (which is a simplistic view; but no less or more so than any other) micro businesses are far more efficient at creating employment than large businesses.
I'm often caused to reflect on the course of Maplin Electronics; which at one time (when I was a child, in fact)... It was an inspirational tale of Doug Simmons, Sandra and Roger Allen starting an electronics supply company from the Allens' spare bedroom. Real grass-roots stuff with people who utterly understood their target market.
The rot really started in 1992 when they started bringing in junk from the far east; they started to 'lose' their core market... turning into the monstrous behemoth most people saw on the high street. By '94 Saltire capital were involved; and the controls were set for the heart of the sun; their Icarus phase. It wasn't so much case of losing the rudder; as unbolting it for firewood.
To cut a long story short; the rote management brigade adopted the very same tactics that had previously driven the (frankly odd) Tandy chain into the wall.
About a year or so before they went down, I had an encounter with Maplins management at Marketing Director and CEO level... I pointed it out directly to them that they'd gone down the same route as Tandy - which died of irrelevance selling over-priced electronic tat; and where they did sell into the original 'maker market' (the foundation stone that they were built on) what they were offering was spurious and irrelevant, because clearly their buyers didn't actually understand what they were buying or selling!
Clearly, they'd done as many 'by rote managed' companies do, and got rid of the staff who actually knew what they were talking about (who would probably sound warning bells and expose the naked emperors!) in favour of those who would comply with the 'tail wags the dog' objective of pauchling figures to provide 'good' metrics...
The stupidity when you walked into their stores was palpable; embarrassed staff forced to provide American-style greetings. Idiotic branding, ill-fitting ill-advised uniforms... Small items priced at 5x-10x the cost elsewhere (Crisis pricing)... The range rendered random and spurious. - And if you had a technical question to ask, nobody working there knew what you were talking about; because they had absolutely zero technical expertise; which wasn't the case in earlier days!
The crash and burn we all know about! It was an inevitable consequence of this stupidity (perhaps it was even the objective!) ! And it gave me no pleasure to be proved right! ...But then; the asset strippers and corporate got their pounds of flesh. Employees... customer base... all the worse-off for this infinite 'growth'.
Wilkinson's - or Wilko as we now know it - seems to be another one sadly too close to the sun; different story of course - and yes such things happen. - I'm not convinced the rebrand was ever a good idea; but hey-ho.
Don't get me wrong; growth and scale are necessary things in the wider context... just not automatically so in many other contexts. - Some of us have had all the 'Icarus moments' we might ever want.
