Your Business Isn’t Dying, It’s Growing - A Parable

When I was a kid, I liked the solo career of Sting.

Alright, that sure is a weird way to start a missive about professionalism in the workplace, but I’m going to stick with it.

Musician, songwriter, and vocalist Sting had a string of successful solo records in the ‘80s and ‘90s after leaving chart-topping trio The Police. On his third solo album, The Soul Cages, the artist drops this observation in run-on, Paul Simon style verse:

Men go crazy in congregations

They only get better one by one

Business is a lot like a church as I have analogized in the past. It’s a collection of people brought together ostensibly for a single goal although people often quibble over chicken v. egg. For example, a very noble VP I know and I once disagreed on the ethics of two approaches. She said that the object of our company was to serve people so well that we made money. I argued the inverse - that the purpose of our business was to make money by serving people.

Eventually, many businesses lose focus on customers and embrace maxims like the 80/20 rule in toxic ways. For example, I had an executive tell me that it’s okay to abandon those “20%” or underserve them to the point that they take their business elsewhere because “we’re big enough now.” Horse feathers. My interpretation of the 80/20 rule is different. I serve 100% of my customers as best as I possibly can understanding that I will only really succeed with “80%” of them, often for reasons which are none of my doing. For my mental health and professional satisfaction, I allow myself to know that no amount of work I am able to put in while doing my best will be enough for certain customers under certain circumstances. I would rate my performance closer to 94% in reality, based on how I’m able to solve problems for customers and satisfy more concrete demands.

This is where the Sting quote comes in. If I focused on the groupthink of any organization I’ve been a part of, or internalized any particular person’s perception of me that was unfair or hypercritical because I failed to meet their expectations, I’d lose my professionalism, my objectivity, and, yes, maybe my mind.

Certain practices or processes of business are great for a time but are eventually outgrown. When this happens, some team members will hold onto outmoded ideas with panicked desperation. Sometimes they band together and crush a growing enterprise with ideas that were great up to a point but no longer scale. For example, cost savings and “making good work for humans” go hand in hand when we automate certain processes. A former CEO of mine said that we automate everything we can and let the work that only people can do remain. A report can’t reassure a customer and tell them you’re sorry you’ve dropped the ball on their order. We are organizations of humans and sometimes our processes fail our best intentions. If we blame each other, engage in infighting, and refuse to see our mutual humanity, we should join Oscar the Grouch in the garbage can. But even that guy got redemption.

In one company where I worked, the infighting, tribalism, whatever you want to call it, got so bad that my natural, first-blush reaction along with everyone’s else’s became defensiveness. If someone at the company made a simple, productive observation, the knee jerk reaction in the office bordered on oppositional defiance. An executive once told me that I thought an idea I had was so unique that I was the “only person in America to ever have it.” I replied that, no, the same idea had been used successfully the prior year by our very company, just under different circumstances and really more challenging circumstances. “Well it’s impossible,” I was told, in spite of the fact that it was really, observably a tested success.

In order to be successful as an executive one has to appreciate the culture of a business while maintaining objectivity and being able to understand how changes in the business climate and demand births opportunity holistically, not just for that executive. For example, I worked in an environment where the philosophy was “we all do the same job: customer service.” That’s great until you have to make decisions about how to handle an employee who is having a personal crisis not of their own doing and can’t do their best work for a time. Giving the best customer service dictates that you fire that person and hire somebody who didn’t just have brain surgery. But maybe instead you transition them into a less demanding position for a time, put them under a more empathetic manager, or give them the option to work part time while they recover. On the other hand, maybe what they need is to dive back into work, so you do the opposite. It depends on the team member.

“[People] only get better one by one” is true but it doesn’t mean we don’t meet them where they are, utilize their strengths, and help them sharpen their skills. You don’t switch people out like light bulbs. That’s what you are supposed to be doing with processes you outgrow. You don’t throw the kid out because they’re outgrowing the bike. You trade in the old one and buy them a bigger bike.

Your business isn’t dying, it’s growing. The question is, are you big enough to grow with it?

In an example from just yesterday, the most British customer ever came to me very confused. He wasn’t sure what he needed, and he was understandably defensive when I started asking him a few troubleshooting questions. Thoughtfully, he got his American business partner on the phone and, after a brief pause to let the partner finish something at his desk, the three of us walked through the issue’s progress to date. We clarified points the Brit was unsure of and moved on to a solution tailored for maximum efficiency and effectiveness. If the Brit stayed defensive, or if the American didn’t make the needed time, or if I didn’t ask the questions, it would have been a different story altogether.

Your business needs water and sunlight to grow. It needs a good foundation and the right materials. It needs a plan and good folks to execute. Add time and course corrections and you have a thriving enterprise. Maybe the next big brand.

Try to make a grown business ride a kid’s bike with the training wheels on and you’ll get predictable results.

Can you tell I’m the son of a preacher yet?