Now let's imagine you succeed.
Before we continue, it's important to identify what success means. Because defining and understanding that idea of success is what leads us here today.
I mentioned last time that, to some people, the journey is the destination. You love widgets. Your whole life is dedicated to building a better widget. You're a pretty good widget maker. You consistently make a modest, growing profit in the widget building business.
When you started Widgets, Inc, you were a single person in your mid/late 20s. You wake up one morning 10 or 15 years later. There's a bit of gray in the hair. You have a spouse and a kid or two. You have an upper middle/lower upper class lifestyle. You manage the relationships with your customers, resellers and suppliers well. You understand the market, and your place in it. Sounds great, right?
Well, here's the problem. The widget industry never sits still. Your competition isn't focused just on building a cheaper widget, they're focused on building bigger widgets that do more things. Other competitors that once built widgets have been acquired, either by MegaWidget Inc or by a company that wants to make cogs and widgets and sell them in a package.
What do you do?
That's the vexing question for hundreds or thousands of what are called "lifestyle businesses" every day. Some people don't want to be huge, they just want to carve out their niche, earn a nice living and either cash out or kick the can down the road to their kids, and there's nothing inherently wrong with that.
There are problems with that. No industry ever stands still. Competitors spring up that build better mousetraps, sales models change, entire industries are rendered obsolete by technological advancements. It's part of the bullshit phrase "creative destruction" (which isn't very creative when you're town is the one being destroyed).
Certainly, you can challenge yourself to build a model that allows you to "stay medium". It's not an easy path, but a lot of companies manage it for awhile. If they make it, they tend to sell out.
Now, let's assume you want to be a player. Let's say you want to risk everything you have in an effort to go for the brass ring. Let's say you too want to make both widgets and cogs. How do you do it? And, more importantly, why do so many companies fail trying to be something they aren't?
There are a lot of reasons for this, but most of them boil down to the fact that people who own what are ostensibly "lifestyle businesses" lack the capacity to fully understand and execute what it takes to transform themselves into something they aren't. Owners look at the management team that got them to where they are and assume that these are the people that can take them to where they want to be.
Alternately, they may seek to augment the existing management team with talent from external companies. This fails more often than it succeeds. Cultures clash, language barriers aren't overcome, new guard vs. old guard fissures develop, everyone becomes territorial, new personnel exposes the shortcomings of existing personnel, no one manages egos effectively and, to some degree, the entire apparatus crashes and burns. Expansion projects collapse, often taking the entire company with them.
One of the takeaways I've learned is this. Before you take a position from an organization that claims it wants to transform itself, ask the interviewer how many senior managers have been let go as a part of the transition. If the answer is "none, we're looking to augment that talent with an infusion from the outside", my suggestion to you is to pass on the position, because 8.5 times out of 10, that transition will fail.
Small companies get medium by adding the right talent. But medium companies get large by turning over the right positions, installing people with proper experience in their place, and doing so without hesitation. And if you, Mr. or Ms. Lifestyle Business Owner, don't have the stomach to do that, do your best to stay medium and carve out your niche. There's no shame in it.
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