Is Your Company Focused on Growth or Great?

Photo by Casey Horner on Unsplash

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…