Growth / 5th Aug 24

I talk about it a lot and I love to make it happen. After all, it's fundamental to my profession.

My daily work is modelling where the greatest growth opportunity in market might lie, then working out how to get at it.  

But here inside my mind, growth has become the one concept that defines my craft. You might say that “How much, by when?” has become my goto question for every founder or leader I meet.  

Over familiarity is of course a dangerous thing, and I fear I may be taking growth for granted.

I use “growth goals” as the ubiquitous first step in every project. Naturally, those goals dictate the pace and eventual strategy that we test.  

So I ask my customers for their growth goals. I write them down. Then metaphorically toss them over the side to anchor the project. It has become an unthinking reflex, where I rarely challenge what those goals actually are, provided they represent adequate ambition.  

“You want big?  I think we can do bigger.”

But last week I was stopped in my tracks when a long standing customer asked me a question I’d never faced before.

“Why do we need to grow”?  

Bloody hell. My mind whirred, frantically searching for any experiences that could help me handle this one and save my dignity.  

“What’s the point of more?” they calmly continued. “What’s the cost of growth and is it really worth it?”

I’m rarely rendered speechless, but the existential profundity of their question really deserved more than this consultant's on-the-fly bluster. Especially coming from an old customer who I admire, one who is ambitious and by the usual measures, very successful indeed.  

When I’d regained my composure, we sat down to find out if we knew “just how much is enough?” Predictably enough, we couldn’t and the elephant took up a prominent position in the room for the next two days of workshop.

I’ve been mulling on the courage needed to challenge our sacred belief in economic growth. Strangely this courage is bemoaned by commentators in New Zealand business. They describe our nation of SMEs, business owners settling early for the bacchic pleasure of beach, bach and BMW. The attitude that strangles the unicorn before it can paint the national rainbow.  

But I think that’s missing the point.

What I experienced wasn’t my customers' lack of ambition. It was a surfeit of gratitude.  

Gratitude for what they’ve already built and how it provides for those around them. Their family, their team, their community.  

Growth without purpose is simply mindless risk. And after you’ve built something that provides so well for those around you, it important to ask how much more do you really need?  

So I’ve been inspired to think again about growth, to give those KPI’s more than a second glance. To ask my customers not just “how much, by when?”  

But more insightfully, “how much, and why?”