Small is beautiful, and efficient

Having the opportunity to be a part of multiple projects I have the luxury of interacting and working with various individuals and companies. Some individuals representing themselves and some represent companies. I am not being judgmental in this post. Of course being honest does not tantamount to be judgmental.

In spite of all the differences there is a striking similarity between mammoth organizations. They are equally (or competing to be more) inefficient. Of course I would be alleged to make judgment. But the only counter argument that I would accept here is that I have not found any exception Hence, I do not have the exception to prove the law.

I had the fortune of working with India’s largest private sector bank. Although the reception was clean and shining there was nothing much in the systems that would echo the same feeling. To get one document approved there were scores of e-mails exchanged. To add to that nobody wants to take any sort of responsibility; people are not ready to apply their minds or try to find the ways that would enable the closure of it. There is some sense of joy in lingering on to a task. Makes me wonder, is it the complexness of the process or the fear of having no work at hand once this gets over that there is high attachment to a task.

We have the habit of using the word sarkari in a derogatory sense; it would not be fair to derogate the government machinery in using the term for organizations that work ineffectively.

To add more ingredients to my repertoire for the same project I also happened to work with a quasi government body. Although the hierarchy surprisingly was less but the inefficiency more than made up for it. What I failed to understand is that people are inefficient even with miniscule amount of work. Again the reason that comes to my mind is the same as earlier.

If I were to design course for graduate school I would definitely add the subject Trivialization 101. Obviously it will not focus on teaching students how to trivialize things but actually make them understand what trivial issues are. How not to waste time, effort and energy on issues that by no way would have an impact on the outcome. Swami Vivekananda once said “The propensity of the Indian elite is that they spend hours debating whether to drink a glass of water with left hand or right”. The country would definitely had been different if Vivekananda would have been read more.

We form our opinions based on experience. And definitely the opinions mentioned in this post are based on some unpleasant experiences. However I am not totally against large organizations. If a small organization does well and has the will to grow then it will certainly reach a large size. But very importantly does this large organization cling on to the features that helped it to become large?

If a giant still deploys process that makes a small team become big and hence create these multiple sprouts the growth can be exponential and such growth will never cease.