Bible MBASample

Beware of Growth for the Sake of Growth 

Little by little I will drive them out from before you, until you have increased and are numerous enough to take possession of the land. Exodus 23:30 AMPC

As environmental writer Edward Abbey notes, “Growth for the sake of growth is the ideology of the cancer cell.”  Yet this cancerous ideology is quite rife in business circles today. Somehow, the idea that you must strive to be either number 1 or 2 in size in any market that you operate in has almost become the Holy Grail in business thinking. This thinking fuels some of the aggressive scaling businesses pursue often creating a highly stressed out environment with people burning out frequently. 

Too often, the pursuit of growth completely ignores the maturity of corporate culture and invariably ends up undermining it. For the children of Israel, God put in place a program to manage the process of taking over the promised land; “little by little.” 

Of course, in today's culture, this will sound like a loser's strategy. Business culture today almost exclusively promotes the idea that you need to grow very rapidly and corner maximum market share to discourage and prevent other entrants from trying. This approach, of course, comes from a scarcity mentality aimed at keeping others out. It is the approach of a toddler who grabs all the toys and sits on them to prevent other kids from playing with any of the toys. 

The big question is, should the believer necessarily be aiming to keep others out? It arcs back to the believer's perspective on competition. If the ultimate mission of your business is to solve a problem, can you really describe other businesses that are trying to solve the same problem as competition? Do they not become competition only when you view it from the perspective that they are trying to capture a share of the revenue that accrues from solving that problem? Does that not suggest that the real problem is greed, i.e., wanting more for yourself to the exclusion of others?

In sharp contrast, God's growth strategy for the children of Israel was one that focused on ensuring that they occupied only a portion of the land that they had sufficient capacity to properly manage. Focus on growing your capacity and your performance and market share will increase commensurately.