It goes without saying.
I trust that the majority of professionals in the workplace acknowledge one point: there are more growth opportunities in small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).
On the one hand, this is due to the high growth potential of SMEs; on the other hand, it's because, with a less established hierarchy and set of institutional rules in SMEs, it's easier to make achievements and innovate (here innovation does not refer to being the first nationwide but rather being new within the enterprise).
If these two factors are to translate into tangible career growth opportunities, it lies in the employees having to seize the opportunities from the company’s growth through personal effort. As the saying goes, "One must achieve in order to have a position." Clearly, large companies are just the opposite: "achieving" is strictly defined by duties and processes, and the prerequisite for "achieving" is "having a position," which should be expressed as "having a position enables one to achieve."
This is an extremely self-evident truth. Is there anything else to say?
Negative employee behavior
The problem is that the more self-evident a truth is, the more often and easily it is neglected. This is also the reason why many people have advocated returning to common sense in recent years.
For example, in SMEs, a very prominent issue is when faced with something new within the company—something that has never been encountered before, with a certain level of difficulty or risk—especially when this work requires cooperation from multiple departments, many employees prefer to position themselves as specific executors, or assistants, avoiding roles such as brainstorming ideas, making plans, or taking overall responsibility.
Of course, such tendencies can also appear in large enterprises, but the probability of this happening in large enterprises is lower. Moreover, since large enterprises often establish relatively clear scopes of responsibility, any given task will eventually be specifically assigned to a particular department and employee. In SMEs, however, such situations arise frequently, and the allocation of such tasks often relies on direct designation by senior management, or simply being "assigned" to someone. When it is impossible to assign, the senior management has to take over personally.
Faced with such "assignments," different orientations lead to vastly different employee responses. One type of employee sees this as an opportunity and is willing to take on the challenge, even if they may simultaneously request various resources from their superior managers. However, most employees instinctively exhibit resistant behaviors, finding multiple excuses to decline. The higher the difficulty and the greater the risk, the more likely such a situation occurs.
Cause analysis
Why do we see behavior contrary to our understanding? This is mainly due to the following reasons:
1. Due to lack of rules, it becomes very easy to develop a tendency to shirk responsibilities. In the absence of rules, once a matter sets a precedent, subsequent similar situations will be handled according to this "precedent." Once you take the lead on something, that matter becomes yours. Therefore, many employees in SMEs tend to be exceptionally cautious at the first instance, leaning towards "shirking."
2. Lack of support for innovation and tolerance for failure. The probability of failure is obviously higher the first time doing a particular job. Success determines the king and failure the loser—this is the employment law of many companies. Thus, no one is willing to bear the risk of failure for experimentation.
3. "Not seeking success, only seeking no mistakes" is the prevalent mindset among many employees. For employees, "the more you do, the more mistakes you make," so this mindset spreads. It is clearly completely contrary to the awareness of "achieving leads to having a position" and "the more you do, the more opportunities you get."
4. Low-risk preference. Whether there is evidence supporting whether people's risk preferences conform to a normal distribution, entrepreneurs are often those with high-risk preferences, and entrepreneurs are a minority. That is to say, it is likely that the vast majority of people are more inclined towards low-risk preferences. Therefore, the previously mentioned "achieving leads to having a position" should apply to employees with a certain ability to bear risks.
Daring to take on responsibilities
It is precisely under such circumstances that daring to take on responsibilities is a particularly emphasized quality for employees in SMEs. It refers to employees' willingness to take on pioneering work and exceed their own limits based on their own abilities, the difficulty of the responsibility, and external conditions.
If any employee believes that failure is inevitable, then it is obvious that he would not accept the task. Thus, employees must start from their own abilities, believing that under certain specific conditions (such as resource support), there is a possibility of achieving the work objectives. The size of this possibility and whether they commit to taking on a particular task depends on the employee's level of risk preference.
Clearly, if the company fosters a culture that supports innovation and tolerates failure, along with a strong incentive mechanism for innovation, it would be more conducive for employees to choose to take on the task.
However, no one can guarantee 100% success in an unknown task, so this includes the courage to take on pioneering work and exceed oneself. This can also be understood as a motivation for achievement.
At the same time, such work not only requires employees to "follow the rules," but also necessitates quick learning and creatively combining the company's reality with general methods. In other words, such work involves mental labor, not just physical labor.
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After asking those same tiring background investigation questions, what would you do next?