Tents & Pyramids

Tents and Pyramids!!

As a nation the UK population is becoming 11 per cent more eccentric consistently every year. Do you know what this means and more importantly what impact that will have on your business.…………assuming you are intending to remain in business after 2009.Eccentricity means we are less concerned about risk, which means we are less loyal and we are no longer worried about detail to name just a few!! This therefore would suggest the UK business community is packed full of entrepreneurs and thousands and thousands of tiny companies, barely appearing individually on the Companies landscape, but collectively contributing significant wealth and generating needy prosperity to the nation. CORRECT.   

These companies are run and owned by the ‘eccentric’ who will have the mandatory 100 per cent share capital – another trait of eccentricity. Never Ever Never Ever Never give any ownership away at any cost! So much so that even the unwritten perk of the ‘other half’ taking five grand out of the business and avoiding personal tax in exchange for a small piece of share equity wont even entertain them.The company will have no more than 5 employees and typically turnover £500,000.00 in their first year. There will be little hard asset, with the accountant’s asset register picking up on only a few laptops if you are lucky. They won’t own their office as that is a long term benefit, something that won’t appear on the eccentric’s Reticular Activating Systems just yet. There will be no structured management, no sign of the traditions of suit and ties (sorry M and BT) and no mention anywhere of hours of work in their employment contract. The eccentric’s product won’t be manufacturing, but a KBA (knowledge based asset) company.

At first sight these companies look like a liability and fragile, possibly with a worrying Dunn and Bradstreet report. However, drill down deeper and look at the returns and you begin to see the successful emergence of a new breed of business. The ‘Tent’ company is here and probably to stay for a while. If we are giving this new breed of company a name then the traditional powerhouses of BT, M &S and Tesco’s for example become ‘Pyramids’ with every conceivable tier of management, immense foundation of culture, Boardroom Management and spreading themselves throughout the whole of the UK commerce like a virus. The Pyramid companies have financial interests in everything and anything that wouldn’t be immediately associated with the product that they are  actually famous for.

However, throw up a storm that’s come across both the Atlantic and the Channel simultaneously, cut of the borrowing that the Pyramids have fed off, add a sprinkle of media ‘recession’ frenzy and soon we have a very different definition of strength and new laws for corporate survival start to apply. As Darwin once wrote, It’s not the strongest of the species that survive nor the most intelligent, but those most adaptable to change.

The UK’s economic landscape in 20 years from now (In my eyes) will be a vast swathe of tents, flapping around in the winds of fortune, but crucially surviving the occasional storm that hits our shores every now and again. Once the storm has passed all we ‘tenters’ will find on closer inspection is the occasional rip here or there to deal with.