Five Key Components of Healthy Growth
An excerpt from the book Impact with Love: Building Better Business for a Better World, by Greg Harmeyer.
An excerpt from the book Impact with Love: Building Better Business for a Better World, by Greg Harmeyer.
The following article is an excerpt from the book Impact with Love: Building Better Business for a Better World by Greg Harmeyer.
Growth has tremendous positive impact on people and organizations. It is in growth that we realize our potential. It is one of the most fulfilling things we do as individuals as we learn to bring out talents and skills and strengths into more impactful spaces; and it is one of the most fulfilling things we do as organizations as we extend our reach to create greater service to others.
But growth is challenging. It needs to be managed well. Healthy growth is very achievable. It requires design and intentionality and leaders who want to make a positive impact on the world to embrace that reality. While there isn’t a specific formula for healthy growth, there are several commitments that leaders might consider.
Growth needs to start with aligning expectations. I always hesitated for TiER1 as an organization to set far off numerical targets of growth. When you start chasing numbers you encourage very unhealthy behaviors. However, several years ago we were doing some strategic planning and we opted to share that we were seeking to become a $100M company (at the time we were about $20M in revenue). The reason we opted to do it was to orient mindsets. If people thought we were working to be a $25M company they would have a different orientation as to what we were doing than if we shared the reality—a vision towards $100M, positively impacting 500+ full-time employees.
People who join a growth-oriented company need to be clear about that fact. And they need to know what it might imply for them in their work. What is a normal work week? What type of support do you or don’t you provide? What is the expectation of performance? The tolerance for risk?
Growth usually implies a comfort with ambiguity and change. There tends to be less consistency; what exists in a year may be very different than what exists today. Roles and leaders and managers tend to change with more frequency. For many people this is exciting; it represents new possibilities and opportunities. For others it is stressful and creates substantive tension; for some it varies with their stage of life. All people should be clear about what to expect in the environment.
Transparency is always important but particularly important in a growing company because things are changing frequently. People don’t need to have every answer; they do need to know what is being considered, what conversations are happening, and what might lie down the road. And when there are unknowns, they need to know that leadership sees these and other topics of concern.
People don’t need to have every answer; they do need to know what is being considered, what conversations are happening, and what might lie down the road.
Transparency from leaders creates trust. But it also helps mitigate impact and stresses. When things are going well, people generally feel it. But in times of turbulence—or even in extreme stretches of growth—people can get disoriented. Is this good? Is it concerning? How long will it last? What next? Transparency helps people re-orient.
If there are major events that will affect the future, share them. Share the strategies for various conditions and paths. Share the concerns that might hinder the organization. Share the strengths that will propel it. The more everyone understands, the easier it is for them to align their personal roles (and lives) with that of the organization.
Systems of support might be the most important component of an organization committed to healthy growth. There are all kinds of things that this can include. No organization will have all of them, but it’s pretty important to consider some of them.
Some support structures for high-growth organizations can include ample paid time off; sabbaticals (paid or unpaid—both can be valuable); internal or external coaches to help individuals process and manage the stresses of growth; cycles of assignments to provide people with recovery time if/after challenging assignments; ample training to learn new skills; feedback mechanisms that allow people to raise issues and surface stress points; internal mentors, advisors, and designated roles to help people acclimate; special roles to support individuals when they are promoted or step into new responsibilities; clear tools for reflection and expectation conversations; ample training and mentoring for new assignments; space to learn new skills when needed; feedback systems to help people calibrate and learn and adjust when taking on new roles; recognition systems to call people out when they are doing new things well, etc.
The point is to design into the environment those systems and processes that address the challenges of growth and provide personal support at the points where people are most likely stretched and stressed. In our organization, we have a program called “Choose Growth” where we teach people to think about how to lean into growth, providing them with frameworks, tools, and language to help them in the process.
Another critical component of healthy growth is tolerance. This includes having space in the business for mistakes and learning. It includes having tolerance for inefficiencies that might be necessary to get things done given other constraints. It includes having patience for leaders to develop and grow, as leaders often struggle most to keep up with the demands placed upon them by the growing organization. It includes having regular growth-oriented conversations that keeps the people at all levels thinking about how each person needs to grow to keep up with the vision of the organization.
And to have tolerance, there has to be ample margin. This could be thought of as financial margin—the financial wherewithal to create growth and to invest in the support systems necessary for growth—or it can be thought more generically as time and space for people to develop, learn, share, rest, recover, expand, etc. Either way, having margin for growth allows organizations to be intentionally conscious about the cost and energy that growth requires and to have space for it built in.
If you’ve had a teenager or have a teenager (or ever were a teenager), you know that growth is messy. Much like teenagers growing towards adulthood, we make mistakes, we fail, we fall down, we do really stupid things. When we’re growing, our self-confidence, our emotions, and our trust in others all fluctuate widely. Our energy levels vary widely. Whenever my kids were having a crisis or a meltdown, my wife would either say “you need to eat” or “you need sleep.” We need energy and we need rest when we’re growing. Growth sucks our energy, messes with our emotions, and increases our stress.
And what gets us through it? Resilience. Persistence. Commitment. The one thing that helps with all of that is love. The love of parents reduces the stress, calms the emotions, builds self-confidence, and encourages persistence. If you want to have a healthy, growing organization, you have to have a loving organization.
If you want to have a healthy, growing organization, you have to have a loving organization.
Just like loving parents, this doesn’t mean we don’t challenge. It doesn’t mean we don’t set high expectations; it doesn’t mean we don’t push; it doesn’t mean we don’t get frustrated; it doesn’t mean we don’t make mistakes. It doesn’t even mean that we don’t say when it really is time to move on to something else. Loving parents do all those things. It simply means that we care about the person through the growth no matter the outcome. It means we help them get through it and to the other side. It means even if they fail or quit on us, we have the capacity to rise above that, continuing to care about them and their well-being.
Healthy growth is nurtured with love. Love extends our care beyond the transaction of the work. Love recognizes—embraces—the hardships of growth and says to both employees and to the organization at large, “We’re in this together.”