Pandora's Box

A friend of mine offers personnel systems to smaller companies, who are at the stage when they feel that the "shoot from the hip" combination of gut-feel, instinct and opportunism which has brought them to where they are will no longer suffice to grow any further.

At a certain time they look to formalise issues like holidays, staff appraisal, job demarcation, pay scales and all that, and not normally knowing the first thing about how to go about it they call on people like my friend Matt.

Now Matt needs to make a crust like all of us, but he always does an interesting thing before taking the cheque. He always looks the founder/chief executive (or, frequently, founding partners) straight in the eye before they sign up and does his "proceed with caution" speech, which goes something like this: "You have come this far without formal systems, and you are probably right in thinking that if you want to grow any more you will need some systems in place. But once you set off down this road, it's hard to turn back. As well as gaining stability and order, you will lose flexibility and informality."

And, of course, they usually say yes, enticed by the prospect of behaving like a big company with systems and procedures and manuals and rules, and by dreams of marching forwards to glory.

Many of the world's myths, from Pandora's Box to Prometheus stealing fire from the gods to the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden, deal with the consequences of knowledge and progress, and they always illustrate the dark side of progress. With order, whether my friend Matt's personnel systems, or ISO 9002, or a national quality award framework, comes a departure from spontaneity. With systems come a framework to manage ideas and creativity which often, by their very nature, do not fit into frameworks. With analysis comes a stifling of enterprise. As Pandora found, once you open the box, it's pretty hard to get the lid back on again.

We often, in these offices and in my conversations with researchers,consultants and speakers, discuss the problems and challenges of quality systems in small organisations, and the desirability of getting more research and practice reporting published on systematising small business operations and strategy. It strikes me that the Pandora's Box issue is the central one here. Can we really achieve system discipline with spontaneity and enterprise? Can a small business keep the spirit which made it successful in the first place?

John Peters