Patterns of growth: Learning from Nature

Patterns of Growth

We all want to grow, grow, grow. But is there only one way to grow? How does an oak tree grow? A honeycomb? Are they all the same? Clearly, Nature has found many different ways, different patterns, of growth.. But we think companies can grow only one way.

Let us look at some (for it is impossible to exhaust them all!) in turn.

The Oak Tree

The oak tree grows by accretion – every year, it adds a ring to its trunk and becomes thicker and thicker, until it becomes a giant.

This is actually the most common way a company grows.. become bigger but essentially along the same lines, always. We add markets, add products, the way an oak tree adds rings, over time, without changing anything in the basic architecture of the organism.

What are the special issues of managing such a growth pattern? What makes an oak tree strong?

• A strong trunk: i.e., a strong sense of ‘core’, great clarity on what is our business and what isn’t
• An equally strong sense of values
• And operating processes

As more and more businesses are added, the older businesses should not require attention.. their environment should be stable and unshakeable.

The Banyan Tree

The Banyan’s pattern of growth is totally different from that of the mighty oak. It creates replicas of itself, increasing its span, until, in the end, you cannot even tell the daughter from the mother tree. Each tree is self-sustaining, yet bound to its mother and its siblings, and ever ready to spread out again.

To follow this model, a company would keep creating self-sustaining businesses over time, and yet retain a strong sense of connectedness. Perhaps a company like Matsushita would answer to this description, with its penchant for spinning off new divisions, each held together only by finance, and a shared value system.

How does one manage such a growth?

• Creation of an infinite pool of entrepreneurs, each of whom can run a business independently
• Who are yet held together by shared values
• A commitment to support each spin-off with nourishment from the center until it stabilizes

When would such a model make sense? Clearly, where the environment creates new opportunities, each of whom are unrelated to each other, yet need to be part of a common ‘umbrella’ brand. Perhaps GE is another example of such a model.

The Beehive

More accurately, the Swarm of Bees. The beehive is created by hundreds of independent workers – no one of them has the knowledge and capability or even intelligence to build a hive, yet, together, they do it effortlessly. Where, in business, do we see this model in action? Perhaps the now-famous dabba wallas of Mumbai. Some religious organizations have this capability, perhaps Al Qaeda does, for all I know!

In a company, the closest I have seen to this model, is Polaris Software’s Lakshya process – a visioning exercise involving every last employee in the firm (all several thousand of them!), which tries to tap the collective consciousness of all of them. The result is not a business plan or even a written document, it is simply a collective consciousness.

Consulting companies like McKinsey may be another example – the collective knowledge and capability of ‘the firm’ is several orders of magnitude greater than that of any one set of consultant.

A ‘knowledge economy’ enterprise should probably look like this. Knowledge management is a very key management process in such companies. Like the Queen Bee of the beehive, whose role is really largely symbolic, the CEO or head of such a company should learn to be a good figurehead, symbol and role model, rather than attempt to direct and govern.

The Tornado (or Cyclone)

A tornado grows by gathering everything in its path, and somehow generating more and more energy as it roars along. A company that grows by furious acquisitions may be patterning itself after a tornado. It must be very uncomfortable to be swept up in a tornado, but it did transport Dorothy to the Land of Oz, remember! A tornado succeeds by its very fury, if it stops, it is lost. A company that grows like this cannot afford to pause and consolidate, it needs to keep moving, and roaring along.

A Virus

Perhaps the most successful creatures on earth are viruses. They grow by multiplying at a dizzying speed – once a single virus gets a host to grow in, it soon takes over the entire organism by producing millions of copies of itself – an illustration of the power of compounding if ever there was one.

What are the secrets to its success? Simplicity of structure is surely one – the simpler the structure, the easier it is to produce a full-blown copy, and faster. Can a business organization ever be simple enough to replicate like this? Perhaps communities of Indians who have settled down in far off shores like Kenya or Latin America have shown the ability to grow like this.