Taking the Leap…

The majority of us will have, at some point or another, worked for a big corporate organisation. They’re big old machines and they have their pros and cons. They’re definitely great places to cut your teeth at. They’re vast operations and they tend to offer lots of support and opportunities for training and development. I was lucky enough to have trained at one of the biggest recruitment firms in the UK and the world, and my time there put me on a great footing for the rest of my career.

Typically, working for a big corporate you have an abundance of resources at your disposal and the support, more often than not, seems to be endless. With the right sign-offs and support, you’re really able to effect some big changes and achieve things that you probably couldn’t achieve singlehandedly.

Not only in terms of work benefits, but also personal benefits, be they financial or whatever else, you do still tend to have more of these at a big corporate. Especially when we talk about job security (though this seems to be less the case with every passing day), pension etc.

In terms of cons however, these too exist. Bureaucracy and red tape really are killers, especially in terms of innovation, evolution and change. We’ve all been there, haven’t we? Trying to make something more efficient but having to jump through umpteen hoops and get sign-off from people we’ve never spoken to, and frankly, people who are completely indifferent and/or ignorant of what you’re trying to achieve or why. It’s not only hard but also quite numbing I tended to find, and it’s not conducive to a healthy or successful working environment either.

So, is there an alternative and if so, what is it? Well, I recently took a bit of a leap of faith myself joining a smaller organisation and a lot of people I know have also made similar moves or have even gone on to start their own outfits. Of course, as with being at a big corporate, these too have their own pros and cons – almost the inverse of corporates in fact.

In terms of the cons: a lot less job security, probably lower pay (especially at the beginning of the journey), and less financial benefits in terms of pension et al, as well as less resources in order to make changes a reality – this one, in particular, can be viewed as a pro or con depending on how you look at it and I’ll explain my thinking here in due course…

In terms of the pros of working for yourself or a smaller company: you can get stuff done. You know who the decision-makers are, if it’s not yourself, and you pick the phone up and get the decisions you need in order to effect positive change. The whole environment is more agile, nimbler and really allows you, and your ideas, to progress.

Not only that but, and arguably more importantly, working for yourself or a small company is challenging. But in a good way. You don’t have endless resources at your disposal and so, oftentimes, you have to do stuff yourself. Need a new website and haven’t the first clue about building a website? That’s fine, you’ll learn, as I had to recently. Need some new finance software integrating, sure, you’ll figure it out. No IT department but you’re Outlook is playing up, ok, YouTube it.

For me, it all boils down to getting out of your comfort zone. Sure, comfort zones are great – particularly in the short term – you can cruise through the next year or so and sort your personal life out or whatever it may be that you have going on. But, and it’s a big but, comfort zones are killers, especially over a long period. Remember that. All too often people fall into the trap of thinking they have it sweet doing their job on auto-pilot; and whilst the money might be rolling in for very little effort, they tend not to consider other factors. For instance, personal development. And I’m not even talking about a new skill you can put on your LinkedIn profile, rather that sense of achievement of having managed a project you knew next to nothing about before you began and having successfully completed it all by yourself. Not only will such an achievement offer you knew skills, more importantly, it will boost your self-confidence and this, for me, is the real win here,

So, roll up your sleeves, take the leap, get your hands dirty for once and start mucking in. You’ll never know who you truly are and what you’re capable of and I promise, you’ll surprise yourself!