Many years ago I was working for a publicly-held technology company that had entered a period of slower growth after several years of rapid expansion. The founder and CEO was giving an impassioned talk to an internal audience on the importance of growth. One of his main arguments was that growth was the way to attract and retain high-quality people. Essentially his argument was that growth is what makes life interesting. Growth creates opportunities for new roles, new opportunities, new challenges.
Now, admittedly, rapid growth is exciting. But it’s also unusual. It usually occurs when a new technology or way of doing things undergoes rapid adoption (enters the tornado of Geoffrey Moore). Or when a new product or service becomes fashionable and suddenly everyone wants it (a clothing fad, energy drinks, and other consumer items). But these are unusual conditions. And you can’t control when it will happen.
But is growth the only way to continuously provide opportunities and challenges for people?
In James Womack and Daniel Jones book Lean Thinking they suggest that companies forget about competitive advantage as their benchmark. Instead, they propose that companies focus on perfection as their goal. Working towards perfection through endless steps is one of the principles of lean thinking. Perfection of what, you might ask. Perfection in creating value for the customer.
Of course, a company that is successful in pursuing perfection in creating value to the customer is also likely to grow. It’s just that growth is a result, not the goal itself.
The pursuit of perfection rather than the pursuit of growth raises a lot of questions about the role of marketing in a company. What does it mean to pursue perfection when it comes to finding, winning and keeping customers?
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