Simple metrics get too much focus in the endeavour for exponential growth. Maybe it’s time to stop for a second and ask yourselves: what do you want to contribute to this world?
What is your turnover target next year? How many employees are you going to have? And how do you maintain high growth?
This is often the go-to questions when people ask how our business is doing. Of course, it is interesting metrics when you’re building a company. But honestly; it’s not the most important metrics in order to run an interesting business.
Growth isn’t everything.
It’s not like we don’t want our business to keep growing. But the number of employees or turnover isn’t goals on their own.
It means much more to us that we keep doing what we love: bringing meaningful inventions into this world.
Our ambition has always been to do something for the working environment – especially for the hard-working people at building sites. And this is still our mission to this day.
One dimension isn’t enough
It makes perfect sense to use turnover or employees as metrics. After all, it’s straightforward to measure and it does say something about where the business is headed. But it’s only one dimension.
It’s way harder to measure how excited we are about a new project as and team and close to impossible to set a target for the accumulated excitement of the work we do next year. But both as a founder and employees it’s important to ask this question regularly: What motivates me and what do I want to bring into this world?
This is no less true in a time where the startup spirit and “growth at any costs” is the mantra.
Obviously, turnover is still important for us. But mainly because it allows us to keep working with the inventions we love. And if we can just grow slow and steady it’s more than enough to keep us motivated – as long as we do what we find most exciting along the way.