Small Is Beautiful
Small is Beautiful
The ET Global Business Summit 2015 has been in the news for some time now. Narendra Modi’s address on the first day spanned various developments in the Indian economy and its revival ever since the new government took over. Words like “Swacchagraha”, “more crops per drop” were the highlights of the speech. But what really did catch my attention was a simple 3 letter phrase “Small is beautiful”. A book by EF Schumacher of the same name, this ideology stresses on economic simplicity and advocates that development is indispensable but never at the expense of humanity and nature.
Small is beautiful is typically in contrast to the widely accepted belief, “Bigger the better”. Be it an economy’s development or a company’s growth, the success has more often than not been measured at the macro level. However a truer reflection would be assessed by indicative parameters at the micro level. Undoubtedly, a company’s top line growth over a time is an important factor to assess its growth, but it cannot be a conclusive one. But shouldn’t the appropriateness of measuring success in plain jane numbers be questioned? Rising sales is good but not rising employee turnover. Employees who feel that they are merely being treated as a means of earning those bucks wouldn’t be interested in serving an ungrateful employer. A company cannot boast of progress if its growth has been achieved by disrupting the work life balance of its employees. In a similar fashion, a country will not have progressed in a true sense, if its people, the very reason for its existence are the victims rather than beneficiaries of such growth.
Simply decoding the title, “smaller” has a greater probability of being more efficient than “bigger”. A bigger problem will be solved only if the smallest of its root cause is done away with. They always say to look at the bigger picture in life. But the bigger picture is always achieved by winning the smaller milestones that take us to our destination.
The ET Global Business Summit 2015 has been in the news for some time now. Narendra Modi’s address on the first day spanned various developments in the Indian economy and its revival ever since the new government took over. Words like “Swacchagraha”, “more crops per drop” were the highlights of the speech. But what really did catch my attention was a simple 3 letter phrase “Small is beautiful”. A book by EF Schumacher of the same name, this ideology stresses on economic simplicity and advocates that development is indispensable but never at the expense of humanity and nature.
Small is beautiful is typically in contrast to the widely accepted belief, “Bigger the better”. Be it an economy’s development or a company’s growth, the success has more often than not been measured at the macro level. However a truer reflection would be assessed by indicative parameters at the micro level. Undoubtedly, a company’s top line growth over a time is an important factor to assess its growth, but it cannot be a conclusive one. But shouldn’t the appropriateness of measuring success in plain jane numbers be questioned? Rising sales is good but not rising employee turnover. Employees who feel that they are merely being treated as a means of earning those bucks wouldn’t be interested in serving an ungrateful employer. A company cannot boast of progress if its growth has been achieved by disrupting the work life balance of its employees. In a similar fashion, a country will not have progressed in a true sense, if its people, the very reason for its existence are the victims rather than beneficiaries of such growth.
Simply decoding the title, “smaller” has a greater probability of being more efficient than “bigger”. A bigger problem will be solved only if the smallest of its root cause is done away with. They always say to look at the bigger picture in life. But the bigger picture is always achieved by winning the smaller milestones that take us to our destination.