The Friends of Columbus Park of Roses uses 75 volunteers to keep thousands of roses in shape throughout the year. They’ve also recently started getting on the volunteer calendar of companies like Nationwide and Scotts Miracle-Gro.
You can learn more about the Columbus Park of Roses in this month’s Uniquely Columbus.
“We welcome those corporations,” says Tina Bozzuto, volunteer coordinator. “The only request we have is that we really can’t accommodate groups more than 20 at a time, because we’ve had groups that are just too big to really get anything done.”
That interesting thought — groups that are too big to get anything done — led me to think about how a company, or more accurately its processes, may have gotten too big to get anything done.
Find your way back
The very procedures that help a company grow can become a hindrance to its operations. The corporate culture that made your office a “best place to work” is now bogged down with office politics. Somehow you’ve lost your quickness and innovation, and you’re not sure when it happened.
When I think about companies that have had to shed their skin and find their way back to a place where “things get done” in their huge enterprise, GE comes to mind.
GE has become a super-centenarian startup. It is selling off its division that makes refrigerators and microwave ovens to focus on the future with software or the internet of things.
It wasn’t easy and many people thought the company should be broken up when its stock price was at its lowest, but the transformation has started to pay off.
The March 2016 Bloomberg article “How GE Exorcised the Ghost of Jack Welch to Become a 124-Year-Old Startup” is an interesting read.
A few other examples come to mind, as well — Coca-Cola, Samsung, Nintendo.
Transformation, not tweaks
Today’s world, business or otherwise, loves transformation. We’re always going on to the next best thing and upstart business models (think Netflix or Uber) can take over a market.
Business leaders today must at least consider exploring and testing new business models, even if they are disruptive. You don’t want to become too big to get anything done.
