This is a guest post by Peter C. Atherton, P.E.
Growth is good, healthy, and essential for life. It is also essential for business.
Growth in a work context is needed to stay in business, create opportunities, and to realize more of our mission. However, how we define and achieve growth is important if we want to enjoy next-level success over the long-term.
Do we define it in a way that’s attractive to others and accretive to our teams and organization?
Do we achieve it in a way that’s actually healthy and considered good?
Growth Versus Size
There are lots of ways to get “bigger,” but only one way to truly grow.
You can get bigger as an organization by buying another firm, but that is not the same as growing.
The fact is, we cannot “buy” growth — we can only create it with the right type of resources, time, and attention. This is especially true in professional services and the engineering and architecture space.
Organizational growth, like profits and a thriving culture, are “outcomes,” not inputs, activities, or outputs.
