There seem to be a lot of “rules” in business. With all those books, periodicals and other resources telling us exactly how to go about things, it can seem fairly cut and dried. Not to mention the fact that people actually get degrees in business so they can come out knowing all the ins and outs of how to run a business. But how “corporate” do we need to go in our home businesses?
It seems that any time you have more than one employee in a business, there is a temptation to start to structure the business in a traditional way. After all, there has to be a boss, right? Well, as many successful small, micro, and start-up businesses are proving–a business doesn’t have to follow a corporate outline at all.
The basics of a corporate arrangement is that you have a top-down dissemination of authority. This can be effective and handy in a large corporation where it is important to know who does what, who answers to whom, and what the “chain of command” is. But, in a small two or three-person business, you may need to distribute the authority and responsibility more evenly and it might not need to be a “chain of command” structure. I’ve said it before and I’ll mention it again here–flexibility is the hallmark of the small home-based business. We don’t necessarily HAVE to do things the way a big company would, unless we want to and it is in the best interest of the business.
If you are planning to stay small and personal, you may never need to consider “going corporate.” However, if you goal is to build a big company that will rival the most successful of corporations–it does pay to consider whether you want to start out with a corporate-type flow chart from the very beginning. That way, as you grow, you can fit new employees and departments into your overall plan.
For the one-person consulting or freelancing business, however, we may never need to think of ourselves as anything approaching a corporation.
See Also: Could You Use a Business Coach?