Growth vs. Greed Patrick Clements

A guy that is quickly becoming somewhat of a Internet icon for new businesses is Ricardo Semler, CEO of Semco.  In order to be brief, Semler has revolutionized not only the structure of the workforce, but has also pulled out what is truly the bottom line of his company.  Here is a quote from his book "Maverick: The Success Behind the World's Most Unusual Workplace"

A few years ago, I struggled with an opportunity to acquire a company with five plants and 2,000 employees. “Why do we want to grow more?” I asked myself. Are we going to be better for it?”...

It’s all about persistence, isn’t it? But where does persistence end and obsession begin? How high is too high? How big is too big? Of course, some growth is necessary for any business to keep up with competitors and provide new opportunities for its people. But so often it is power and greed and plain stubbornness that make bigger automatically seem better…

Semco has learned that to want to grow big just to be big is a catch…Much about growth is really about ego and greed, not business strategy.

This is a an ideology that resonates very closely with bigWebApps.  It is definitely our goal to provide our applications to as many interested customers and prospects in an effort to grow our revenue.  However, increasing the bottom line is not just to have more dollars in the bank.  It is to ensure we are;

• Constantly providing advancing cool technologies
• Maintaining reliable services for customers
• Hiring and retaining fun people to be around

If we take care of these core principles then the company will take care of itself.  Being aggressive in the marketplace is one thing (in fact it's a must if you want to keep the lights on), but to grow for greed will never win. [Insert Enron]