Why growth is important – a tool for improving the world
“Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely.” Karen Kaiser Clark uses these words to inspire people. They are applicable both for individuals and for companies.
A few stories
Some time ago I was working at a company that sold health insurance and health care plans, when a colleague offered me the tile pictured above for my birthday. He said it was to acknowledge my commitment to the growth of the company. That growth opened space for his promotion and for hiring several people.
Longer ago I was working at a consulting firm and a recently hired consultant asked me why I was obsessed with growth. I told her it was because of her. She seemed surprised and I explained that if the firm doesn’t grow, she won’t be promoted at the end of the year.
Recently I was discussing several initiatives to boost growth at one of my clients, but one partner said that growing would increase the risk to the firm because it would require hiring more people and they already struggled to win enough business to pay salaries. I told him to consider some of the benefits, such as more profitability due to the dilution of general costs, more ability to win more business due to the promotion of new partners and more clients that would become satisfied by their excellent service. He kept the skeptical look but didn’t contest me and later become engaged in the discussion.
Why growth is important
Several reasons exist for a company to grow:
- Provide work for more people: work is an essential part of a person’s dignity, the more people you employ the more you benefit the world because your people become empowered to develop their families and contribute to the community.
- Enable your people to be promoted: experience and training are natural ways for people to grow, but you can’t promote people and give them more responsibility unless your company grows and opens space for promotions.
- Enable your people to earn more: you can’t pay people more unless your company grows. There is a strong correlation between salary and happiness, and we all know that happy people generate satisfied customers, who in turn contribute to growth in a perpetual virtuous circle.
- Give happiness to your people: in addition to higher salaries, growth promotes a positive climate, which is essential for happiness and avoiding zombies in the company.
- Generate value for clients, partners and suppliers: the growth of a company tends to promote growth of all the organizations with which it interacts.
- Give return to shareholders: growth rewards shareholders for the risk they took when they invested in the company, enabling them to reinvest in the company or invest again in new ventures.
- Innovate: growth enables companies to invest in research and development, sometimes partnering with universities that can disseminate good practices in their teaching activities.
- Generate value for society: growth can only occur if a company consistently delivers value to all its stakeholders.
- Contribute to altruistic initiatives: corporate social responsibility initiatives are increasingly important for the reputation of a company and for its purpose, but it’s impossible to develop them without growth.
- Contribute to the common good: growth tends to generate more taxes collected by governments. Some examples are labor taxes, income taxes and value added taxes, but hundreds of other taxes exist and many more will be invented. These taxes tend to be used by governments for the common good.
Conclusion
The reasons mentioned above are mere examples of the importance to grow, but they are enough for anyone to understand that growth is a moral obligation.
Growth is a high calling to people in management positions and to marketing and sales teams who are directly responsible for bringing revenue, but also for all the other areas that contribute to the success of the company, be it research and development, client service, operations or support functions.
Life is change. Growth is optional. Choose wisely.
Filipe Simões de Almeida
Managing Partner, FI Sales Consulting
Posted on 26-Jul-2021