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Big Ships Move Slow: The Perils of Working With Big Companies

By Michael Stelzner

Voyager of the SeasI remember the first cruise ship I ever stepped foot on. It just so happened to be the largest ship in the world—The Voyager of the Seas, by Royal Caribbean. This thing was literally a floating city. It was 15 stories tall, the length of four football fields, and even had an ice skating rink (yes in the middle of Caribbean).

When I looked into the control room, it looked like something straight from NASA. Every move was carefully planned based on dozens of factors, including wind speed, weather, wave height, expected arrival times, etc. Behind the scenes, more than 2,000 workers made everything come to life. When the ship moved, it did so gracefully, yet slowly.

Now for the link. Do you strive to add big name clients to your rooster? If so, I want you to know what you are in for.

Big businesses move slow. Really slow. Everything from getting a purchase order, to arranging schedules for conference calls, to getting final approvals are VERY slow procedures. With Microsoft, FedEx, HP, NEC, Monster and many of my other large clients, there seems to be no exception. The bigger the company, the slower it moves.

What does this mean for the freelance writer? Well, you need to be prepared to wait for things to happen. Legal departments may slow you down. Many layers of approval may set your project into perpetual revisions. Longer payment terms may mean you must wait 90 or more days for payment. Mismanagement may cause painful restarts.

You also need to be prepared to push, light fires, motivate and encourage. Although working with giants can be a real challenge, the rewards can also be huge—mainly repeat business. To keep sane, I recommend you mix your client base with smaller and medium sized companies.

Tell me about your experience working with big business.

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This entry was posted on Monday, July 31st, 2006 at 1:10 pm and is filed under Freelance Writing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

  • pen
    it is not good, i have been there.it looks like fish market and there's less than 200 people. they kidnapped my son and can't find my son!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
  • Gokul
    We should not leave out companies if not in the scale of MS, HP as they are in the continuous state of flux in mind caught between bureaucracy and agility. Due to this , such companies select inappropriate processes early in the life cycle and fumble when they need to scale
  • It's true that big businesses move slowly.

    That's why they need freelancers who can be politely persistent in pushing things to completion.

    That's also why I typically invoice half of the project cost up front.
  • It takes a few weeks to become an approved supplier for Microsoft, i.e. you have to wait quite a while before you can start. But their payment process is greased lighting.

    You also find that you complete a paper for a bit company but it takes forever to get it approved and therefore get an invoice into the system. The best companies are small and nimble but unfortunately most of them are short of funds.
  • True enough, Michael. That's my experience also -- but persistence pays off.
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