Your company’s worst nightmare may look like this: Your organization starts growing like crazy!
Most of us break out in hives, hyperventilate and start nibbling on our nails when the quarterly report goes south. But you could have a far worse problem. You could be growing.
Down deep we fear growth because we have raised the bar on ourselves and everyone knows it.
Brochures extol our burgeoning client list, the black ink is smudged all over our financials and words like “outstanding,” “unparalleled” and “stellar” come easily.
We all know this fact of corporate life, and that is why so many organizations say nothing about their growing fortunes. No news is good news in the executive suite. If no one knows the company is riding high, then no one has higher expectations. It really is pretty simple.
Let’s now add the sobering statistics of David Birch in “Job Creation in America,” “Of every 10 startup companies, one-half will disappear within their first five years, only four survive into their 10th year, and only three into their 15th year.”
So, playing growth close to the corporate vest is often the standard operating procedure for organizations.
But, beware! There are four sequential problems that will often spin off this need to hide growth.
First, if your staff only knows when the company’s
fortunes are slipping, why would they want to want to work harder if they never know when they “made it”?
It’s like climbing a mountain and seeing what are called “false summits.” You huff and puff your way over rock and through ravines, convinced that what you see ahead is the final destination.
When you get to that promontory, you cannot believe your eyes. This isn’t the summit! The outcropping was visual “eye candy,” enticing you upward only to find out you still had thousands of feet to go.
So, we reason, why start climbing again?
Second, if the passion for climbing higher has evaporated, get ready for some serious passive-aggressive behavior that will victimize the people who are paying your bills … your clients.
People Express Airlines is a great example.
You have to be my age (somewhere in your mature 50s) to remember this company that in 1980 was a start-up, low-cost, high-customer-service, East Coast air carrier that went in five years from an idea to the fifth-largest airline in the country.
But by September 1986, People Express was a fading memory on Wall Street.
They did everything right. They encouraged innovation, established a generous stock option program, selected only a few people to occupy the executive floor … and started to lose money like crazy (with the advent of American Airlines’ Sabre seat reservation system) and did not tell anyone.
When employees’ sixth sense started blaring that all was not well in Cash Camelot, the employees expressed their fear and frustration by taking it out on their customers.
There were no longer positive greetings at the door of the plane, no second cups of coffee, and “bad attitudes” became rampant. These employees would get their “pound of flesh” from People Express … but the flesh belonged to their customers.
Just when People Express needed the loyalty of its customer base, it began to evaporate like a spring fog.
Third, when customers stop showing up, watch the internal blame meter go off the end of the scale.
The staff will become preoccupied with finding someplace to anchor their resentments about what happened to their company. Those inlets of invective will include “money-grabbing senior managers,” “stupid decisions,” “bad coffee” and “they never tell us what is going on.”
My No. 4 sequential result of never telling your staff and customers you are growing is a no-brainer.
The end game of cloistered success is distrust. If your customers and staff never know when you are doing well, they do not trust you with any information. And who wants to do business with people you cannot trust?
No, your worst nightmare is not decline. It is silent success.
Cal LeMon of Executive Enrichment Inc. solves organizational problems with customized training and consulting.
