Business Insight Zone

I forget the exact wording of the old saw that says your problems should get bigger and better over time — IF you’re really growing.

STAGNATION

Think of what a heartbreak it is to see someone struggle with the exact same problems year in and year out — always one paycheck from disaster, always “meaning to” turn over a new leaf, always facing the same petty imps that have bedeviled them for so long.

Too many people in business stop learning regularly when they finish school, such that they’re always being left behind by the latest developments in their fields. Too many companies never seem to grow out of their problems, such that they’re always having to restructure — and always failing to restructure adequately. (Why does Alcatel-Lucent come to mind?)

GROWTH

Contrast that to the development of healthy, well-adjusted children. As they grow, they can take on bigger and better problems, so that as kindergartners they are challenged by tying their shoes and solving 2+2, but as teenagers they are challenged by rebuilding the engine of an old Mustang or solving differential equations.

The best companies — Toyota, Google, General Electric — grow by remaking themselves better every day. It’s a sort of pre-emptive, positive restructuring that forestalls the need for the brutal kind of restructuring. And these companies are willing to take on ever-bigger challenges as part of their cost of doing business in this better, more fulfilling, more profitable way.

YOU?

Which category have you been in lately? If you filter out the truly unavoidable effects of this year’s economic downturn, were your 2008 problems of about the same caliber as your 2007 problems? Were they grander, more like Google’s? Or pettier, more like Alcatel’s?

Commit yourself now for the new year that starts tomorrow. Put yourself, your team, and your company into the growth category. Abandon your pettiest problems; replace them with the steady pursuit of the best opportunities. You’ll stretch yourself, but that’s a good thing.

Tying your shoes shouldn’t be a problem by now. Time for some rocket science.

~

Photo by .A.A.

Category: Management,The working life