Few thoughts about growth

While working for companies I have been involved in many growth initiatives - either in leadership role or actively participating... and watched from sideline multiple other growth initiatives. So few thoughts about growth more as a flow not as a complete story.

I've been in fortunate position that in most of the cases initiatives I have been involved have been successful but more interesting situation (for this text) is an occasion when growth initiative fails. Not for business itself but more as a managerial and leadership learning point - how the organization will handle failure. For small business it is a true business crisis where even the whole company is at stake but for a large company it is something to just painfully swallow to minimize damage. So it is more about people than business.

Organization is a blend of different individuals with varying career motivations and aspirations. In the case of failure many people show their other side because career is at stake. There are managers with sand bagging mind set who will dig all the proof points they can find how they through the process warned and highlighted possibilities of failure. (In the case of success they would have naturally highlighted their personal contribution) Then we have managers who put the blame only to external factors: market timing was not optimal, customers behaved in unexpected manner, channel didn't buy the idea, etc. But internally everything was done according to plan. Then we have managers who will blame their own people or even want to name some one or a group of people to take ownership of the failure. Of course then we have many humble and analytical managers who will analyze the failure and take it as a learning point - what went wrong both from internal and external point of views. You can pick your own trait how you behave when things go wrong.

One interesting aspect of growth is the growth itself. When one initiative can be named as a growth initiative? Many companies grow while the market itself grows but real growth is on top of market growth. Growth what is on par with market growth is just good basic management but the managers cannot take credit of being leaders with growth experience. Of course the situation is tempting...

For "real" growth managers last year was tough. If you worked in a small company growth opportunities nearly vanished because the whole business market shared the negative attitude towards "nearly everything" especially investing money into something new or for the future. If you worked in a larger company managing a growth unit you were under pressure to cut costs even if your own business was growing "everyone needs to feel the misery equally". In general growth was a bad word to discuss no matter where you worked.

Maybe 2010 is better but the concept of growth is still difficult to many. What is the year or financial climate does not change that growth requires risk taking, thinking and acting differently, stepping out from your comfort zones, identifying people to your team who have growth genes and lot of hard consistent work. Most of us are more comfortable just managing operational business - to keep the engine running, managing main street business, main stream business, large revenue streams - it has many names. It is not only more comfortable for many but also wiser decision because in many cases heroes are named from that side.

Growth is anyway my cup of tea with all the down sides it has. Especially it is so much more fun.