Forget GROWTH, focus on BETTER

Why do we celebrate the “Fastest growing company”?

Why are we excited by the “fastest growing economy”?

 

We talk about growth as if it were something that is always good. What a silly rule-of-thumb. 

Is there an award for the fastest growing cancer? 

 

Andre the Giant grew fast and large. And he was lost early. 

 

Why ‘grow’ when we can be ‘better’ instead?

 

What if you GROW your audience but at the cost of quality?

What if you GROW your business but distance yourself from the customer, and tank the culture? 

What if you GROW your economy but life, in trying to keep up with rising costs, becomes worse and more exclusive? 

 

Have you forgotten the lesson of the Audience-of-None? 

Have you neglected the MVL?

 

Why we’re obsessed with the G-Word. 

 

Capitalism as a system relies on growth. Think of this system as an experiment. The hypothesis of the experiment was that, if the owners of production do well and make money, they will reinvest that money in their businesses to make more profits. 

By doing this, they would be making more jobs in order to produce more. 

 

That was the experiment. What were the results? 

 

Well the goals and incentives weren’t accurate enough. Because the focus was on profits, capitalists elected to overwork the existing labour rather than create more jobs. 

They also cut costs and lowered overheads – and because of the incentives, they cut corners if it helped them cut costs. 

 

Now we have a technological revolution, which complicates things further. Automation creates more jobs – but only for those who are already skilled. 

So the results are in – capitalism that relies only on growth and financial incentives, is not enough. 

 

But the system still revolves around growth. 

 

As such, we are conditioned to focus on growth – the results are in but we still follow a narrow tactic and confuse it as our goal. 

For a contrasting viewpoint, consider the vision of the future Jeff Booth has in The Price of Tomorrow. Growth might have an expiration date. 

 

So the Growth Hackers might get a nasty shock soon. 

The inflation of prices, where the price of goods gets higher over time, incentivises us to buy now before things go up in price later. 

 

That’s why we so often want to grow faster than inflation. 

But inflation and growth, like everything else, are not a given – they are simply boxes.

 

Growth in our culture is a buzzword. 

 

If you read the story about Binod in the Minimum Viable Lifestyle you’ll see why so often, growth is not good, and why less is often more.  

Just because your company has big profits and thousands of employees does not mean it is good. 

 

Just because something grows does not mean it is getting better. Just because something can be grown, doesn’t mean it should. 

We should reward companies and societies that get BETTER. And, you should not GROW unless you are growing as a tactic to make things BETTER. 

 

Forget GROWTH… focus on BETTER. 

 

Who do you think of when you read this? Would this piece ‘open a door’ for someone you know? Why wouldn’t you share it with them?

 

Remember, the best way to open a thousand doors for you is to open a thousand doors for others.