Is Your Company Focused on Growth or Great?

The media tells you, you have to grow! Investors want growth too.

But is growth necessarily a good thing?

We’re so distracted by growth that we fail to ask ourselves, why does growth even matter?

Sure, growth can mean that you make more money (though not necessarily!). It can mean that you get to do new things, innovative things.

But if all of that is at the expense of great, is it worthwhile?

One of the reasons the companies I work with focus on impact, whether it’s social or environmental, is that their founders feel that impact is part of what makes a company great. Abandoning great in favor of growth can lead you to abandon the values that are most important to you, and abandon the vision of impact that made your company great.

Great depends on a thriving and nurturing culture. Great depends on a high quality product that contributes something. Great depends on the impact that you have.

Growth can be good, but not when it happens at the expense of quality. That’s dangerous territory, because it jeopardizes the value of the company.

You don’t have to be big to do great things – size is not the only determinant. Everything you do has an effect. It affects your employees, your suppliers, your customers. That effect ripples out.

Consistent growth is desirable, when it’s not at the expense of quality. More often, though, growth plateaus, so that the rest of us can catch up. You become a better CEO, one who is able to handle the bigger company. Your staff gets better at handling the increased capacity. Your customers are bigger, and you need to get used to that too and create the necessary systems.

Growth is about more than numbers. Growth is about human growth too, about our capacity to effectively manage an expanded portfolio.

As your company is growing, keep asking yourself, am I sacrificing greatness for growth? It’s a tradeoff that you may not be willing to make, and you may not have to.

Focus on making your company better, not bigger.