Growth on your terms
I’m writing this after leaving an incredible meeting with my team where we chose to do something you aren’t “supposed” to do in business: We lowered our financial goals for this quarter.
That’s right: We lowered them.
Let me back up a bit.
Several blogs ago, I told you about our five-tier goal structure that we implemented last quarter: Each of the five levels is associated with a profit goal. Hitting a goal unlocks an amount that goes to bonuses, to debt, to emergency savings, etc. The levels get increasingly harder—with Level 5 being the most difficult to obtain—and last quarter, we accomplished what we’d thought was the unthinkable: We hit Level 5. We had an unprecedented quarter that not only allowed us to make a huge debt payment and stay on track for our goal of becoming debt-free this year, but it also allowed us to give our team members an immediate $2/hour raise.
After experiencing such incredible success, it felt like we had a whole new world of possibilities in front of us. If we could do all of that in just one quarter, what could we do if we set our sights even higher? I decided to increase our goals as we went into the new quarter to keep the momentum going. That’s what you’re supposed to do in business, right? Keep pushing and strive for more.
My perspective changed when I read a book called It Doesn’t Have To Be Crazy At Work a couple weeks ago. The book, which was written by the founders of Basecamp, is about building a “calm” company: an organization that respects boundaries, that requires people to unplug and recharge, and where growth is sustainable and can simply look like being more profitable this year than last. I loved it so much that I asked our leadership team to read it so that we could discuss how to apply the principles to our own organization.
As I read, though, I couldn’t help but feel a pit in my stomach. Our new goals were 43% higher than last quarter’s goals. We were on track to hit Level 5 again this quarter—even with the bar set higher—but how could I recommend to our team that we build a calm company while also asking us to step so hard on the gas?
I started to think about the human cost of that 43% growth and the pace at which we’d have to work to continue to stay on track. How much stress would it cause? Would it make us feel like we needed to work late and on the weekends? Would it force us to think about work over the holidays instead of being present with our families to make sure we hit the level we wanted to by the end of the year? And even if we managed to hit 43% growth, what would happen next? Did that mean we would have to go even higher next quarter?
The truth is that if we ended up exactly where we had ended in Q3, I would be so proud. If we ended up slightly better than we ended in Q3, I would be so proud. Accomplishing either would allow us to give significant bonuses and reach our goal of being debt-free, despite a pandemic and a turbulent year. Isn’t that enough?! I didn’t need 43% growth to feel like we had an amazing quarter, and I had to imagine that the team would agree.
So at today’s meeting, that’s what I brought up: I wanted to lower the goals. I felt so strongly about it that I had actually sent the revised goals to everyone ahead of time so that we could discuss them together. I told them that I wanted our goals to be aligned with that of a calm company, and that as a leader, it is my job to make sure our goals match the culture we want to have and the example we hope to set for others. The lowered goals would still give us the chance to pay off our debt this year and their bonus amounts would not change. Ultimately, the only difference would be a reduction in what the company would take as reserves, which meant that it would take us a little longer to get to where we wanted to go—but we would still get there. The growth did not have to happen overnight.
The team felt relieved going into our meeting, and the conversation that followed confirmed that I had made the right choice. It turns out that I wasn’t the only one who noticed the discrepancy between reading a book about how to be a calm company and setting goals that required us to be anything but calm. As we talked about the book, Amanda, Student Maid’s Chief of Culture, shared that thinking about our new goals while reading It Doesn’t Have To Be Crazy At Work made her feel angry. And I understood a big reason why: It went against our pledge to help each other grow personally. For example, when we did an exercise on overcoming our limiting beliefs, Amanda learned that one of her limiting beliefs is, “I have to work hard.” In helping her unlearn this belief, we tell her all the time that she doesn’t need to risk burnout or feel like she needs to prove how hard she works in order to be a valuable member of our team. But wasn’t setting a goal 43% higher sending the exact opposite message? To hit it, Amanda—and the rest of our team, of course—absolutely would have to work hard.
If we kept the goals as they were and we hit them, we would stay miles ahead. We would give ourselves the kind of financial boost we had once only dreamed of. We would end the quarter more successful than we’d ever been. But was all that extra stress and pressure worth it?
Not to us.
Here’s the thing: There are most definitely going to be people out there who believe that downgrading the goals we were on track to hit is really dumb. And here’s the other thing: I respectfully disagree. The business world tells us that exponential growth year after year should be the goal. But if that growth comes at the cost of our people’s health and sanity? No, thank you.
It will never be easy to define growth on your own terms and go against the grain. It will never be easy to say no to goals that you know you can actually hit. It will never be easy to slow down and go at a pace that the world tells you isn’t fast enough.
But if you seriously question your goals and get to the heart of what really matters to you, it gets a lot easier. It’s easy for me when I look into the eyes of our team and see amazing humans with families and lives. It’s easy for me when I think about how I want them to live those lives with their families. I do not want work to be something that they resent or that takes them away from that; I do not want work to be something that adds pressure; and I do not want work to negatively impact how they show up at home. I want work to bring joy and happiness, and I want it to feel calm. And if that’s the kind of place I wish to have, then doing the hard thing is easy.
Today was awesome.
Hugs through the screen,
Kristen
PS: Did you hear about the new class I’m teaching in Simon Sinek’s classroom that is all about helping you overcome the beliefs that hold you back? You can learn more about it here.
PPS: Have you heard of my LIVE show every Wednesday at 11 a.m. ET? Think of it as real talk. I share the challenges I’m navigating as a leader and I also take questions from you! You can register here: https://bit.ly/3kWe2kT. It’s the same link each week. Hope to see you there!
