Growth isn't a goal, it's a measure

There are goals, and there are measures. Growth is a measure. It’s not a goal. The goal is to make a difference, to help and serve and to make the work or lives of others better.

When we make growth the GOAL instead of the measure, we end up building faulty systems because we’re optimizing for the wrong thing. This is what creates a destructive form of capitalism, a race to the bottom.

When growth is the measure, we can say things like this:

“Our growth was flat, or down.”

“Okay, how do we grow again?”

“We need to be more helpful. We need to make a greater difference. We need to serve our audience better. If we do that, we might see growth go up.”

“Okay, great, invest in doing that then.”

Often, we just assume we’re doing something helpful, something that makes a difference, but why isn’t it growing? It must be the marketing. It must be sales. It must be our resources.

In reality, the issue is that we aren’t willing to eat some humble pie and admit: we aren’t having the impact we think we are. (We’ve all had those outlier moments when we do, when the thing we ship receives more visceral reactions and love from others than most other things. Then we celebrate it and move onto the next thing. We should look harder at our wins and figure out what’s going well and how to replicate it. This is a form of appreciative inquiry, applied not to management philosophy but content and product development.)

The goal isn't to grow the thing.

The goal is to make a difference to those you serve.

If you do that — if you really, truly do that — then the byproduct is the thing grows.