In my past article “When Growth Kills the Company” I told you about the law of entropy and how everything is in decay. I mentioned how we have to work to keep everything from disappearing. In that article I showed how too much growth could kill your business and we know that no growth is also bad. So what about the status-quo?
I have come across many small business owners that are very content with their business as it is. They do not want any additional responsibilities and they are happy with the time it takes and the money they make. They don’t want to launch any new products, hire new employees, take on a new market, move to a new location, or add any new marketing to their business. They are completely happy. After all, the business they created is exactly what they intended to build.
The problem is, the universe is against you with its law of entropy. A business owner may be happy with the status-quo but their clients eventually will not. It is an absolute guarantee their competitors will not be happy with the status-quo. I would say to you that there really is no thing as the status-quo. If you are not growing you are in decline. Nothing that is alive and vibrant is static, motionless, without energy or life. If you expect to keep the status-quo without significant work you will actually already be in decline, even if it is just minimal to start.
The Company Status-Quo Ate – Bite by Bite
I once worked for a small business software company that held a very large portion of the global telephony market. In their ‘hay days’ they didn’t even have to advertise. If telephony companies wanted a network communications board there were only a few businesses in the world that did what they did and they did it well for 20 years.
We were 25 employees, including a partnership combination of a sales and marketing Guru and the tech-savvy Developer. When the Guru wanted to break into a new market the Developer said ‘no, let’s make our products better’. When the Guru said, ‘the industry is changing’, the Developer said, ‘we still hold a big piece of the pie and we will for a very long time’. When the Guru said ‘good-bye’, the Developer said, ‘thank goodness, now we can do what we love’. When the Guru said ‘I told you so’, the Developer was laying people off.
We dwindled slowly at first and by the time the management was aware of the mistake we had made to get in front of the industry change it was too late. The perfect business, with great clients, great profits, and an amazingly talented team went from #1 to out-of-business in less than 4 years.
If you really don’t want to be much bigger but you also don’t want to go out of business make sure you are watching they key indicators in your industry to ensure you are putting your resources where needed.
- Stay in front of your market changes.
- Watch your competition.
- Be aware of social, cultural, and market trends.
Continue to invest and grow, even if large growth is not in your future. Stop saying things like, “I don’t want to be any bigger” and know that you must have a growth mindset just to stay competitive where you are. Don’t let the status-quo kill your business.
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