Reclaiming Growth

In the context of careers and business, the word "growth" has become...dirty. And not in a literal, wholesome, dirt-under-the-fingernails way. So let's reclaim it.

If you've read my other post(s) about a career or business being a garden rather than a path, you may see where I'm going with this. If not...I may have just given it away anyway.

Plants. I'm talking about plants. As a metaphor.

The tech bros and business gurus are all about "growth." To them, it means making that profit line go up to keep shareholders happy. And often, to do that, they focus on cutting costs for quick gains, to make a particular quarter seem successful. To do that, they lay people off, cut corners, reduce quality.

Is that growth? Really? To me it sounds like the opposite.

Not to mention, there's often no view to the long-term stability or even survivability of a business. As long as the CEO has time to move to a new gig before a company crumbles. Am I generalizing? Sure. But then, this has all been discussed in much more depth by many, many people. Look up "enshittification" for one of my favorite angles on the phenomenon.

Then there's growth on a personal/career level. All about making more money, having a higher-status title. This implies that progress is linear, that we're all pushing forward in our lives, and anything that doesn't seem like an "improvement" over a previous step is a failure. A "lateral move" is a failure these days. A pause--or excuse me, a "gap in the resume"--is a failure. Growth is about constant, linear increases in wealth and status.

Now, let's take a look at what the word means in nature, and maybe we can start moving back to that. If your career or business is a plant, or a garden, or any kind of biological organism, there are some pretty key distinctions from the above ideas of growth.

Distinction number one: It. Takes. Time.

Instant growth isn't growth. I don't even know what to call it--it's most likely a magic trick, a con, a swindle. An illusion, Michael.

Sometimes something will go through a growth spurt, growing a relatively large amount in a short period of time. These are exceptional and temporary, unlike the "30% year over year" bullshit, but also, they're only relatively rapid. You can't visibly spot your toddler getting taller.

And if something does grow fast and continuously? That usually means something is wrong, and it is unsustainable. Cancer grows a lot and doesn't stop...until it kills its host and dies with it. Kudzu grows a foot a day and roots deep...and kills everything around it, an invasive species that can demolish an ecosystem.

Ok, sure, maybe kudzu itself survives the death of everything around it. But do you really want to be kudzu? Don't be kudzu. Eventually it will piss off the locals enough for them to break out the herd of goats or the flamethrower.

Growth takes time. You may not even notice it day to day, but one day you'll look up and realize you or your business has come a long way.

And that's okay.

Another distinction: it's never about increasing a single metric.

More money. More power. More status. Always the same, boring goals.

Nature? Sure, it's likely about size. But not simply. Let's start simple. Which direction will a tree branch? Who knows. Not the tree!

More complex: leaves and branches? Beefing up the trunk? Flowers? Fruit? Roots?

Let's leave the plant kingdom, just for fun. Tadpoles into frogs. Caterpillars into butterflies. Maggots into flies. Oh the joy of life stages.

Metamorphosis isn't pretty, as a general rule. And it can look like death. Failure. Reduction. Turning into goo in a big cocoon. Then...wings!

Is the butterfly taller than the caterpillar? Who the fuck cares.

Growth doesn't always look the same. Your business may not find the customers you expected or wanted, your own career may not land you in the role you anticipated. But you'll learn something every time, you'll gain experience, you'll develop skills and knowledge that you take with you into the future.

Final distinction for today: you cannot force or control it.

If you're trying to grow something other than yourself, you can try to provide the right conditions, the right resources. Water the plant, turn it toward the sun. Repot if needed.

If you're trying to grow yourself, you can eat and drink and exercise in all the right ways to encourage the kind of growth you want.

But whether you're the growing thing or it's under your care, you can't just pull branches out of a tree or height out of your legs. It will happen or it won't.

You can't make your business or your career take off. That's why so many companies manufacture growth by cutting costs, to create the illusion that profits are increasing even as revenue plateaus or declines. Ultimately, you can work on your marketing, your product, your customer service, but you can't just put money in and expect money out. There are too many factors you simply can't control.

Your career? It's not going to improve by pounding the pavement, by just applying to jobs harder. You can't force it.

This is the hardest lesson from this comparison. Sometimes, you do everything you can, and a houseplant dies. A tree gets knocked over in a storm. Or it just...stays about the same. An animal that's reached adulthood will generally stop growing, and that's ok, that's normal. Maybe it's a little small for its species, and never gets bigger.

That's ok.