Chopping Trees vs. Sowing Seeds | Part 2 – Sowing Seeds

Investing in a Downturn...

In doing so they are only looking at ways they can increase profits right now, and the easiest way to do this is to reduce costs through cutting heads and stopping investments. This is akin to selling your ability to compete tomorrow simply to survive today – what I called ‘chopping trees’.

I would now like to look at the alternative – ‘sowing seeds’.

Jobs – Sowing Seeds of Growth at Apple

In a recent article in Time Magazine on Steve Jobs, it was stated that the biggest lesson that Western business leaders should gleam from what he achieved at Apple following his return in 1997 was his constant focus on the long term vision, and his relentless execution of it. Jobs knew that innovation was where he should focus, not just short term profit, and to make this point he put the engineers at Apple above the accountants in the hierarchy. In Walter Isaacson’s book on Steve Jobs he recounts a conversation where Jobs told him that; “my passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products. Everything else was secondary. Sure, it was great to make a profit, because that was what allowed you to make great products. But the products, not the profit, were the motivation. It’s a subtle difference, but it ends up meaning everything.”

Profit – an outcome, not a strategy

The lesson here is that in order to win you need to keep a long term view and focus on innovation and real growth, rather than simply aiming for hyper-efficiency. During the last recession back in 2000 when the dotcom bubble burst, most of Silicon Valley stopped spending. Apple meanwhile, ramped up its investment in research and development – resulting in the iPod, iTunes, Apple Stores, Genius bars, and the OS X. Isaacson explains; “Steve spent a lot of time stressing to me how seeds planted in that downturn, despite the scepticism and resistance of his board, grew into the products that turned Apple in the world’s most valuable company. He didn’t worry about explaining to Wall Street why building a bunch of glass shrine shrines with only 12 products in them was a good return on investment.”

This supports my previous posts on why investing during a downturn, when everyone else is cutting costs and keeping their heads down, is almost always a good idea. Unilever’s decision to stop cutting costs in 2009 and instead focus on the customer comes to mind – which has resulted in unprecedented growth and a lower cost model than when they focused on cutting costs!

Leadership Courage and Personal Responsibility

Cutting costs and laying people off is an easy decision to make – blaming external events and the recession. Taking personal responsibility and making the decision to invest in order to be better is much tougher. Courage is the key – there is no lack of money sat in corporate balance sheets but there is a lack of courage at the top in terms of spending that money in order to improve. It isn’t easy to buck the trend and do what others daren’t – but extraordinary results come from doing extraordinary things – not the same as everyone else.

As George Wood Bacon famously said; 

“Fortunes are NOT made in the boom times... that is merely the collection period. Fortunes are made in depressions or lean times when the wise man overhauls his mind, his methods, his resources, and gets in TRAINING for the race to come.”

Choose your future – choose to be great

So I’m calling out the CEOs of business, specifically in the UK – do you have the courage to examine what your company truly stands for and take the time to engage your people’s hearts and minds behind a vision of building a better company – not just a smaller, lower cost one?

As Jobs said:

“we are here to put a dent in the universe. Otherwise, why else even be here?”

So, would your company’s current business strategy pass the ‘dent’ test?