Should you grow your company bigger?

One of the fundamental values of western businesses today is growth. Small businesses like bakery, cosy small restaurant, laundry, etc are not even considered business. You should be growing, preferably faster than the market. 

Every time I meet a CEO or general manager of a company we soon start talking about how much his company has been growing since last year. And when I ask why do we need to grow I often meet a puzzled look. It looks like growth has its own value. 

I sometimes ask why don’t we stop growing and concentrate our efforts on quality or adoption of a new technology and even if I get someone to consider this approach the next thing they gonna say is: sure, lets do this so that we can make a new jump next year and grow even more. Its like if there is no growth, there could be no other purposes.

Trying to find a rational explanation about why you should be growing your company I often hear the idea that as soon as you stop growing you die. One of the competitors will take you down. This thesis is also hard to defend. If we look at the statistics the chances of bankruptcy for large companies are not smaller that those of medium businesses. 

So with this post I want to challenge this common belief that you should always grow your company bigger. In order to stay in the game you don’t necessarily need to go for bigger, you can go for better too. Think about it. You have a choice.