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Brick No98: Secrets from inside a Russian doll
By Matt Weston, Tuesday 28 September 2004 I rattled a few cages last Friday. Some of you even flashed me your teeth. Robert Chapman was one of the first to throw down the gauntlet. (He runs The Training Camp btw). Take it away, RC: " Matt. " You are so wrong about the personality bit. I agree that only focusing on the exit is a recipe for failure but businesses that have a personality to make them successful by definition cannot scale. " (Scale just means that your small business can still function effectively as its size increases.) I promise, earnestly, that I'm not just sidestepping the issue because I haven't come up with a pithy one-line rebuff . . . just bear with me and I'll prove to you beyond question that "personality" businesses CAN scale. But to do that I need you to travel with me . . . to take the Eurostar to Brussels, change trains, then wind eastwards through the lush green hills of the old Belgian coal-mining region around Liege, chug across the River Rhine to Cologne, dive underground through Warsaw, and on past Brest on the Russian frontier. To Russia, home of these things . . . HOW DAVID OGILVY GREW THE WORLD'S BEST AD AGENCY David Ogilvy - founder of Ogilvy & Mather, and inarguably the most successful adman of all-time - wrote this: " Success in running an agency depends on your ability to hire men and women of exceptional talent, to train them thoroughly, and to make the most of their talents . . . " When someone is made head of an office in the Ogilvy & Mather chain, I send him a Matrioshka doll from Gorky. If he has the curiosity to open it, and keep opening it until he comes to the inside of the smallest doll, he finds this message: " If each of us hires people who are smaller than we are, we shall become a company of dwarfs. But if each of us hires people who are bigger than we are, we shall become a company of giants. " Don't you see? What - by definition - could be more scalable than Russian dolls? Ogilvy: "look for young men and women who can one day lead your agency". (That's your Exit Strategy.) Gerber: make a model that "can be operated by people with the lowest level of skill". I'm not saying Gerber's approach CAN'T work. It's just that some people think that the ONLY way to scale a business is to stamp out variability, encourage uniformity and write up a thousand-page policy manual. But surely that's confusing scale-able with clone-able. Of course "personality" and "talent" based businesses CAN scale . . . Ogilvy & Mather is testament to that . . . over 450 offices in over 100 countries . . . and a client roster still second-to-none. Remember to sign up: back to top |
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