Suppose you had the opportunity to invest in one of two companies, Company X and Company Y.
Both X and Y are in the same industry and have identical products within a similar financial footprint. You are also told that Company X will achieve 21% on average annual growth in net income over the next 20 years, whilst Company Y will achieve a 42% growth in net annual income across the same period.
Where would you place your hard-earned investment dollars? I’m sure based on the data provided you would invest in Company Y.
What if you were privy to the fact that over the next two decades Company X would have a variance in net annual income of 15% whilst Company Y’s variance would be plus or minus 112% per annum? Where would you invest now?
Company X in essence would have a more controlled and steady rise in income whilst Company Y would be all over the board.
By now, you’re probably thinking that Company X would be a better investment move, and you would be correct. Company X’s share price would indeed rise far higher than Company Y.
How far higher? 70 times!
Unwavering Focus
Like Company X, building a great business revolves around a simple philosophy. It’s about having concrete, clear, intelligent, and rigorously pursued performance mechanisms that keep you on track.
It’s about having your vision and mission-aligned throughout the organisation, ensuring you remain on track both from an empirical and spiritual perspective. It’s about remaining aligned to the highest value you can deliver to the world. It’s about staying on your chosen path in the face of countless incoming opinions, fads, bells, and whistles.
It’s about delivering progressive improvements that translate to solid consistent growth, year in, year out.
By consistent we don’t mean an aggressive, uncontrollable increase in your financials, but rather a gentler improvement that comes with minimum stress and strain.
Self Imposed Constraints
The most consistent and as a result best-performing organisations work around a set of self-imposed constraints. This creates an upper bound to growth when facing robust opportunity and exceptionally good conditions. Such constraints should also produce discomfort in the face of pressures and fears that you should be going faster and doing more. Hard to do, yet fundamentally important.
Businesses that succeed follow patterns as exemplified in the natural world for nothing in the natural world is early or late. It is simply in a state of effortless flow.
Similarly, know that it takes time to build a successful organisation. The time that must fit the nature and type of organisation you are running.
Just like nature, the growth of your organisation cannot be delayed nor can it be forced. The key is to find your sweet spot, and once found, it must be adhered to.
Consistency is the key. Consistency will set you free. No, not a sudden rush of blood and motivational cry for action. Consistency. The best organisations are led by people who quietly show up, completing what needs to be completed in a timely fashion. The best organisations know exactly what to focus on, when to focus on it, how to regulate it, doing it in a manner that results in upward, gentle growth.
Consistency is the quiet discipline. Just like Company X, over time consistency far outstrips all organisations within your competitive market space. Quietly and consistently.
