Growth is a common business term often used to imply something getting bigger. After months of research and talking to many people involved in all sorts of businesses, it has become clear to me that this is simply not true.
The first person I spoke to I made the mistake of assuming they were a business that wanted to grow. The owner snapped back at me ‘What do you mean by growth? Are you talking about revenues, # of employees, or growing in terms of quality? Maybe you mean growing the number of services we offer, or the number of clients we serve. Maybe you mean the number of employees we have, or the number of markets or products and services are available in. Just exactly what do you mean?!?!?!?’
I was quite unprepared for such a heated response. It wasn’t that I had made him mad, just that he thought the idea of me assuming he wanted to grow his business was a totally stupid assumption, particularly since I hadn’t even bothered to ask what growth meant to him. I stopped asking that question and started asking people what growth meant to them.
One of the more interesting ways to grow was in terms of quality. Quality of product, service, customer, vendor, facility, equipment, marketing material, and the list goes on and on. As Mark Twain so eloquently said, ‘The biggest problem with communication is the perception that it is actually occurring.’
I’ve identified a few different ideas about what growth means to me and those I have been talking to recently. What does growth mean to you? Please share your thoughts. I am working on a way to measure the ability (or capacity) of an organization to measure its ability to grow using leading, non-financial indicators. To create such an assessment tool, I need to have a much broader understanding of what growth means to you.
Share your thoughts, won’t you please? Thanks…
November 28, 2009 at 9:13 pm |
At first I had to laugh, then I realized if the person you asked is really a business owner they may need to re-visit their business plan and take a look at a recent P&L statement.
My experience with small to medium sized businesses is to focus on top and bottom line growth. Top line meaning market share and gross revenue and bottom line meaning net revenue.
I would use customer relationship management and marketing strategies, tools, and techniques to grow the top line. For bottom line revenue I would use strategies to increase quality, efficiency, productivity and profitability.
Considering the current state of our economy, every business owner should be focused on ways to increase top and bottom line growth.
November 28, 2009 at 10:45 pm |
Ray,
Glad I could bring a smile (assumed) and a laugh into your day. You hit one of the nails I was trying to tee up – the issue of growing quality. What exactly does that mean if you are delivering a commodity?
What about the old adage that says if you aren’t growing you are dying? There are a lot of small and medium sized businesses out there that feel justified in constraining traditional growth (revenues) and that feel they are managing their businesses wisely by keeping them at a size they are able to efficiently control.
What is your position? Do you believe a business must grow to survive, or is it enough to produce a relatively consistent revenue stream with a relatively consistent customer base and a reltivaly consistent product and/or service lineup?
December 17, 2009 at 4:11 am |
I was speaking with an associate (Allen) yesterday about the phenomenon of different opinions as to what growth (in business) means. I believe we were in agreement that while finding some common ground on which to have a discussion about business growth is important, it is unlikely to be found and agreed upon even for two, much less a larger group.
There are just to many wants and desires, likes and dislikes, and levels, or degrees of experience for any kind of group- consensus on the meaning of growth to emerge.
Bottom line, IMHO if the business is surviving, employees feel as if they are being fairly compensated, and are enjoying their work for the most part, you can’t ask for much more than that.
The current economic environment seems to offer rare opportunity to see such an organization in corporate America today. It is much easier to create and maintain in small businesses. Unfortunately, survivability seems to be inversely proportional to those ‘healthy attributes’ and THAT is a tragedy.
I am working on ways to fix that…stay tuned. 2010 is going to be a WELCOME change from this disaster of a decade and promises to be the start of better times for all. Recent events (the past few days) have been harbingers of better times ahead.
May we all have a wonderful holiday season and an absolutely outstanding beginning to 2010 and the decade to follow.