If you've ever recruited, you'll probably have heard this phrase:

"We're a large company with a startup feel."

This statement was probably bollocks.

Bollocks

Startup companies feel like it's easy to get stuff done. You just do it. There's no-one else. If you need help from someone, you can just walk over and ask them. You don't need to have many meetings, because you probably know everything already. I mean, if you ARE the design department, you can trade having a meeting for just having a think about something. Isn't that wonderfully efficient?

In large companies, it's inherently harder to get stuff done. Someone else might have done it already. They might have left last year. Their stuff might be on the fileserver somewhere. You might need permission to do what you need. You might need data from someone. They might be an asshole. Sensible large companies do their best to fight this, but it's a losing battle. These companies are full of incredibly smart people - so why does this happen?

• Someone realised that the company was doing the same thing in different parts of the business, like data analysis. "Ooh,", they thought, "why don't we just have one person do that for everyone?" They're right - it's more efficient that way.
• As more and more people join the company, they need to make sure everyone does things right. So, someone creates a set of instructions on how to do something right, and requires everyone to follow it. This way, output should be consistent.

Are there any ways around it?

There no absolute solution to this - larger companies have more capacity but are less efficient. But don't give up - there are certainly ways to help.

• Do everything you can to get people to talk to each other across departments or cells. The more people you know, the closer you are to just knowing everything, so you don't need to have so many meetings.
• Encourage people to be generalists. The more specialists you have, the more efficient you are - sure - but the less people rotate from place to place, and the less they care about what's happening elsewhere.
• Don't grow. There are a whole bunch of good reasons why a company should grow, but by restricting your growth deliberately you really can keep small company feel.
• Some companies (like Apple) get around this by completely siloing parts of the of the business. That's radical, and does create serious inefficiencies.

There's no best place to be, just a best place for your company right now. You have to balance scale with making it easy for people to get stuff done.