Lauren Bennett, our brilliant Ops and HR Director who works at TCC Group, went to a networking breakfast this morning with one of the law firms in the city for some specific reasons.
She saw a presentation by a gentleman who worked for a business which was recently sold for a billion (not sure if he got a billion, but he probably got a lot). He was talking about his business philosophy for an hour and a half, which centred around the principle of ruthlessly caring (or something similar).
By all accounts, his message was basically that growth is everything, and in order to grow as much as you can, you have to be ruthless, and in being ruthless to provide growth, you're caring for everyone because everyone gets a little bit more.
His philosophy for business is that growth is everything, and everybody wants more.
There is another name for this in my world, of principles such as this or a philosophy that mirrors this, and I think the word is… greed.
So, there must be a situation where enough is enough, because if you don't get to enough, you will never be satisfied, because you never have enough.
This is at odds with what we now understand as ultra-capitalism, where growth is everything and continued growth is ultimately rewarded, and lack of growth is not.
But this is not the case for a huge amount of businesses that continue to exist in our society (and the business is fundamental to our society), just because you don't grow this year doesn't mean you can't grow next year and just because you haven't grown for a few years doesn't mean you won't decide to pivot, change and alter, learn something new or develop another product and grow again.
Sure, businesses go out of business, other businesses come into being, and ultimately, running a business is like running a football team.
Sometimes you're ahead, sometimes you're behind.
Sometimes you're a championship team, sometimes you're a Premier League team.
Sometimes your players are kicking the ass out of it.
Sometimes your players are not kicking the ass out of it.
You need superstars and development players, youngsters and experienced.
But ultimately, you need a team that works together.
To push people as hard as possible ruthlessly (The Wolf of Wall Street) doesn't seem to me to be the answer.
Not for longevity, not for prosperity, not for stability.
It's fine if you are (perhaps like the gentleman who spoke this morning), trying to flip your business for a billion and move on to the next one, but that's because you have no intention of hanging around.
Your intention is to make a bit of money for people down below you and make a massive amount of money for you, and then to go into another business that has the opportunity to do that and to grow it and leave it behind, too.
It's all good if that's what floats your boat, but it doesn't float mine.
Blog Post Number - 4311