There are two types of business in this world; state sponsored and private.

We all revere the private enterprises that make money, but much like the state businesses that receive their money from handouts we often forget that success breeds complacency.

When a problem rears its head, successful businesses often throw money at the problem and hope they will go away; rather than equipping themselves with the skill set needed to solve the problem.

There is of course a fundamental difference between a small business and a big successful one. Often the small business lives or dies by the leads it creates. It is incentivised by its own survival to sell to every lead and give them each the best service that they can.

But big state and private enterprises don’t feel this issue. In fact because they are often so sprawling, even on a local level they won’t have to fight for leads to sell to, as such there is a disconnect between the service they provide and the job they are doing which you won’t find with small businesses.

This disconnect, one that understand there will still be a job tomorrow if you do a bad job creates the problem of chronic bad service and waste in larger enterprises.

There is an assumption that governments or big businesses are better at handling money than the rest of us but this is untrue.

You see as previously discussed, being small and having no money means that to survive you need to be lean and efficient.

I’ve had many a heated discussion about the waste in big businesses or government organisations that could be so much more effectively used.

This waste usually rears its head in the form of a bloated management, the same management which is then tasked with reducing waste and as such self-perpetuates the problem.

But this isn’t a debate about how to reduce wastage in bloated organisations (there is a point at which the waste becomes so high that employing profit making small businesses to run departments would work).

I’m simply making the point that the basic assumptions we make about big businesses are wrong.

They are no better at managing staff, dealing with customers or at making sales than you are. In fact they are worse.

The reason you don’t realise how bad they are is because they have more money than you, but money cannot be the sole judge of success.

You might have a brilliant lead generation program, sales team and be the best manager of all time, but without cash flow or profit then you might to the outside world look worse.

There have been many times when I’ve doubted my own ability based on the car that I drive but the fact is there isn’t a big difference between you and the chap that runs HSBC.

You’re much similar than you think, but the world values their words more than yours because it’s told to. People forget that the person running HSBC walked into a fully operating profit making machine; they didn’t have to start from scratch.

If they were in your shoes they would probably fare no better.

Chapter summary:

• You are better than you think
• Big businesses and state organisations don’t have to fight to survive
• Not having to fight for survival makes you complacent
• Waste usually rears its head as management

Read our next blog post “Everybody lies”.