The truth is that growth is very difficult. Anyone that tells you growing a business from A to Z is easy and a step-by-step process is selling you a bill of goods. When you are embarking on building a business, you first need to set a vision and design a strategy. However, the devil is in the details and the best laid plans can fall apart for a myriad of reasons. The one I want to briefly discuss here is the “tree versus the forest”. This metaphor is near and dear to my heart because I sometimes find myself behind the proverbial tree all too often and I need to remind myself of the bigger picture.
When you have set your vision and strategy and are in “growth mode”, you are working very hard and smart to accomplish your set objectives. Then suddenly, things happen that don’t go exactly to plan, can easily become significant distractions and take you well off track. This, by the way, is also true of life. You cannot avoid this – growth is imperfect and full of significant challenges. What you need to do as a business leader is not only make the decision in the moment but also think how the singular decision at-hand affects your overall vision and objectives. This is very difficult to do, and I sometimes find myself so buried in the weeds that I make key business decisions later than I should. To truly grow your company or division, you need to be nimble, unafraid of and ready to embrace real change, and make decisions with the forest in mind as well as the trees.
