The right seeds for a business to succeed
Business Report magazine.
Dec 23, 2023
I talk a lot about how building a business is like building an engine. I even wrote a book on it! But an engine is not the only useful metaphor for thinking about your company. There’s a lot to be said for thinking about organizational improvement like gardening.
For example, the garden metaphor reminds us that we can’t force people to do what we want. No matter how hard you work, you can’t make tomato plants produce peanuts. And like garden plants, people are not interchangeable cogs in your company machine. So, our goal is not to change them into a different type of plant, it’s to help them reach their full potential.
And you can’t put any plant in any garden. This past summer, my wife and I visited the lowest garden in the world, over 1,000 meters below sea level (next to the Dead Sea) and she fell in love with some of the flora there, only to discover none of them would survive in the temperate climate of our home. Some plants need cold temperatures to ripen (apples) and some plants are killed by cold (oranges). What it takes to thrive at Apple is very different from Chick-fil-A.
After you have the right plants in the right place, then the role of the leader is to cultivate the right environment. You don’t punish your plants to get better performance. If you want better performance, provide better nutrients. For plants, that’s things like soil, water, fertilizer and sunlight. For your team, that’s things like clarity, safety, community and visibility to how their work makes a difference.
Also, a good gardener will protect from pests and prune their plants. For a team leader, that might mean protecting your team from unrealistic deadlines, replacing clunky tools and even pruning a difficult customer.
Finally, gardening reminds us that different plants require different methods. What motivates one employee doesn’t work for another. And different seasons require different strategies. When your company’s survival is on the line, you probably should be faster to decide, leaving you less time to collaborate and consider alternative options. But when you are healthy and profitable, you should probably take more time to think through changes and include your team in the process. Good gardeners and good leaders know there isn’t a one-size-fits-all solution.
What does your organization garden look like? Are there weeds you need to pull? The longer you wait, the more resources they will rob from your productive plants. How could you upgrade the nutrients you are adding to your soil? And what is the true potential of your people?
