I often tell people that business growth is not a steady upward slope, nor a giant leap to the top. It’s a staircase. (This isn’t a new idea, see this 1996 McKinsey article, for example.) The business gets to a particular level (or step) and stays there for a while, operating smoothly and successfully. Everything is going swimmingly. And yet, gradually, continuing growth leads to an imbalance between incoming customers and the capacity to handle them. This is when, metaphorically, your toe is hitting the stair riser and you start thinking about stepping up to the next level.
It’s also the point where the owner has to embrace the discomfort of doing things differently, whether or not you decide to grow or stay at your current size. Either decision involves adopting new ways of doing things, which is the source of the discomfort. If the owner decides to grow, it’s not just a matter of hiring more people to do things the same old way; eventually you have to change the way your company operates to get to that next level of growth. And if the owner would rather stay the same size, that’s okay too. You’ll still need to manage the flow of leads and new customers, to avoid overwhelming your capacity to serve them, which might involve a change like narrowing the niche that you serve.
So let’s talk about embracing discomfort. I saw an interesting study recently that showed that people who embrace discomfort as a sign that they’re learning and growing are much more motivated by the discomfort. They get discouraged less easily, and they feel a greater sense of achievement as well. To quote the study authors, “Perceiving negative experiences as a sign of progress is particularly motivating when positive experiences are delayed and discomfort is immediate.” Doesn’t that sound like a situation that business owners deal with regularly?
My own experience with owners who are resistant to making uncomfortable changes in their businesses is that they want the end result – successful growth – but the discomfort stops them from making the necessary changes to get there. It’s like repeatedly stubbing your toe on that riser – you keep repeating a cycle of improving your marketing, getting lots of new customers, becoming overwhelmed, and shrinking again as customers drop off or marketing is paused to “catch up”. It’s a frustrating cycle that many of us have been caught up in at some point in our business lives. And as the study above indicates, the key to breaking out of that cycle is to see the discomfort as a sign of progress, not a sign that things are going wrong.
So, if the discomfort of making changes is locking you into a frustrating cycle of grow/shrink/grow, consider talking to a mindset coach to shift how you perceive discomfort and change. If you’ve become expert at embracing discomfort on the path to growth, then congratulations – it’s a skill that will serve you well, every step of the way!
