In our contemporary business culture, Growth is a God we are forced to worship whether we like it or not.
The notion of standing still is synonymous with stagnation and even death – ‘grow or perish’ is the guiding principle of the day.
But let me suggest to you that growth for growth’s sake is as empty as the Dot Com bubble was. It takes the soul out of whatever it is we do and turns us into automatons.
Growth for its own sake leads to distractive and anti-social behaviours – even when companies don’t mean to behave that way and think of themselves as good corporate citizens. As the saying goes, the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
To avoid this trap, we must not focus on growth. We want growth, but not at all costs. There is a way of having our cake and eating it too: focus on providing better service to your customers.
Instead of thinking ‘how can we take a larger share of the market’ think ‘how can we serve our customers better, so that more of them will want to do business with us’.
It might seem like there’s not much difference between the two statements, and you might end up doing all the same things anyway, but where you’re coming from will make a world of difference and your results will reflect it, particularly in the long run.