Healthy Things Grow
It's an interesting fact when you stop and think about it. Gardeners don't 'create' or 'produce' tomatoes. They can only create an environment where tomato plants will thrive. When the environment is healthy, natural growth happens. There are a lot of factors to consider - the quality of the soil, the weather, pests, weeds... the list goes on. What's fulfilling as a gardener is that when you get it right natural development accelerates.
“A garden requires patient labor and attention. Plants do not grow merely to satisfy ambitions or to fulfill good intentions. They thrive because someone expended effort on them.”
— Liberty Hyde Bailey
Similarly to gardeners, as leaders we don't directly "create" products or "produce" sales, our role is create healthy growth in our organizations, and the way we do that is by creating an environment where our people can thrive. To do so requires complimentary factors that are similar to soil, water, and sunlight.
What makes a company grow naturally, just like soil, water and sunlight?
1. A Product or Service People Love
The foundation of any great company is a product or service that customers love so much they’re happy to pay for it. No matter how great your culture is or how efficiently you run your operations, your company won’t survive if people don’t want what you’re selling.
Grood products and services require a corporate strategy that makes clear tradeoffs as to what is truly important, and provides adequate resources to accomplish. It also must adapt to the changing conditions in the world around it. This is always the foundation of a great company.
2. Great Culture and People
Companies with strong natural growth focus on finding the best talent, setting a vision those people feel connected to and motivated by, and creating an environment that empowers those people to do their best work and grow with the business. Great organizations have cultures where top people are excited to come to work and feel valued for their contributions. To be fulfilled, people need to feel like their work contributes to a successful organization, and they need the growth opportunities that can only be found in an upwardly mobile (growth) company.
Culture can be measured and can be influenced by focusing on the inputs to a good culture, rather than simply measuring the outputs of your culture. Culture is also massively influenced by the the "tone at the top". Does an organization allow too much corporate bullsh*t??
3. Operational Excellence
The third pillar of a growth organization is what I call “operational excellence,” or the business of the business. This encompasses the often-overlooked processes that happen behind the scenes—payroll, customer service, invoicing, supply chain management, and the hundreds of other tasks that keep customers, partners and employees satisfied.
Even a company with a strong culture and a product that people love will struggle long term without operational excellence. Companies that excel operationally also have a far better chance of thriving, even in challenging markets. You can definitely feel when a company has lost it's operational edge.
Summary
So what does a healthy environment look like for your organizations? Is it measurable? What are the essential areas for your business that must be healthy for growth to occur naturally? What's missing that you have the power to influence? Gardening takes constant attention but can be highly rewarding.
“I grow plants for many reasons: to please my eye or to please my soul, to challenge the elements or to challenge my patience, for novelty or for nostalgia, but mostly for the joy in seeing them grow.”
— David Hobson