Last week I was out of town working on a health care project in a very small town. Over those two days, I met a lot of trained, quality people who knew their stuff, even if they didn't all know "my" stuff. This hospital was well run, people were nice, and everyone knew their jobs.

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That might sound like I'm surprised by it all but I'm not. However, I have a history of meeting people who work for large companies that look at smaller ones and think they couldn't be as good as they are because of their size. I also run into people who live or work in larger cities that believe those working in small towns or villages are not only not as good as themselves, but that secretly these people want to work in larger cities, and would if given a chance.

And finally, I know that there have been bids I've put on projects that aren't accepted because the person making the decision believes a larger company, charging more money no less, will probably do a better job than an independent consultant. This one is ironic because what these people sometimes don't know is that the large companies often call me to do the work for them, and this means they could have saved significant money for the same person and the same results.

I've seen this "big-city vs small town" thing up close and personal. Many years ago, when I was still a daily working stiff, the recommendation came from corporate that they were moving my entire department, along with some other departments, from the small county I was working in to Rochester, NY.

The powers that be came to me and asked how many people who worked for me would probably transfer to work in Rochester. I said maybe 4, but that only one person would probably still be there within 3 months. They were stunned; they needed more people to show up than that for their overall plans to work. They asked me why I thought that. I said that there was this misconception that the employees wanted to work in a larger city. People live where they do most of the time because they like it. Driving to Rochester was going to be problematic for many of them, and some of them weren't going to want to have their kids that far away from them for that significant length of the day.

They didn't believe me, so they threw a lavish party for my staff to go visit them to see where they'd be working. I didn't go, as I'd been there, but the next day when I saw the staff most of them said they were unimpressed and that they'd rather not work than have to be in that location. After all, there were close to 200 people all working in what used to be a former factory; if you're used to a smaller environment you'd feel a bit caught up in something like that.

When the end came I called it on the nose. Four people indeed went to try Rochester out, and by the end of the first month only one of those people was still there, and she's remained there to this day. And the place I'd been suffered for awhile financially because the promises made by corporate couldn't be fulfilled. We were running a quality operation; I made sure we would be hard to top.

Size can be overrated quite often. Quality comes in all sizes and can be found almost anywhere. It only takes a little bit more observation to see this.