Float like a butterfly…
“Float like a butterfly and sting like a bee” – that’s how Ali described his style, a rare combination of agility and power. I say rare because agility and power are usually mutually exclusive in the real world – agility comes at the cost of strength and power, and vice versa.
The agility and power tradeoff is so apparent when you compare SMBs with big businesses. The SMBs of the world are agile, they can make decisions without having committees or too many meetings. They see an opportunity and go after it, turning on a dime. The big companies of the world are much slower at making decisions and changing directions. No decisions are taken without due deliberation and gathering large quantities of data. They lack the agility of a small company to react to upcoming market opportunities. While the SMBs float elegantly like butterflies, changing their direction in an instant, the big companies tend to buzz like bees to even stay in the same place.
However, what the big companies lack in agility, they make up in power via their size and concerted action — at least the sucessful ones. Once a decision is made, various departments kick into tandem action and work towards implementing the decision. Which is why usually the SMBs do not stand a chance of competing with a well-run big business in the same segment. The big companies come better equipped with systems and discipline in place to deliver better service to their customers.
Can SMBs do the same? Can they have the best of both worlds — a combination of agility and power? The answer is yes but it comes with a catch. It requires the owner or the principal to take a pause and put systems in place to deliver consistent quality to their customers. Systems that do not let deadlines go by, that remember the unique requirements of each of their clients and cater to them, systems that can make the whole company run smoothly and not entirely on the heroic efforts of a single individual.
A well customized business automation software empowers the employees to serve their clients better. It hardcodes the entire business workflow in a way that delivers a client experience that is at par with that of the big companies. It doesn’t mean that SMBs can take big companies head-on but they can definitely go after new markets much more confidently by ….
Floating like butterflies and stinging like bees.
