How to create your growth manifesto
Why the world needs your weird ideas grown your way + a copy of my growth manifesto template <3
As Kevin Kelly, founder of Wired magazine, described in his Type 2 growth essay last year, growth has two meanings in English.
“The most immediate meaning is to increase in size, or increase in girth, to gain in weight, to add numbers, to get bigger. In short, growth means “more.” More dollars, more people, more land, more stuff…But there is another equally valid and common use of the word “growth” to mean develop, as in to mature, to ripen, to evolve. We talk about growing up, or our own personal growth. This kind of growth is not about added pounds, but about betterment.”
It’s easy to rail against the first type of growth as bad while hailing the second as beautiful, but the reality is more nuanced and gritty.
Within our capitalist system, building a business of any size is an obvious vehicle to make money, increase personal freedom, and create change. A certain level of financial growth (type one) is non-negotiable for survival.
But the businesses that will thrive over the longer term are working on evolutionary, cyclical, less tangible type two growth. For early stage brands and solopreneurs that could look like:
Co-creation with your customers
Volunteering time/ resources
Knowledge sharing
Collaborating with competitors
Creating open source resources
Setting alternative KPIs
So how do you combine the two and grow differently in practice? It starts with your growth manifesto.
The world needs your weird ideas grown your way
Let’s rewind a sec and consider The Mondragon Corporation which has been growing differently for over 60 years. The association of ninety-five autonomous cooperatives in northern Spain is the world’s largest group of worker cooperatives. Owned by its worker-members, everyone votes equally on vital decisions regarding strategy, salaries and policy. It is incredibly cool and I urge you to check them out if you’re interested in this topic.
Coops have typically been seen as cute but sleepy by serious business people™ but in 2021, the Mondragon network of 80,000 workers brought in more than eleven billion (billi!) euros in revenue. Not bad.
Frederick Freundlich, a researcher at Mondragon, spoke to the need for people to create more businesses in new ways in a recent interview with Elle Griffin for her newsletter The Elysian. Frederick referenced an inspiring speech he’d heard delivered by a Mondragon manager to a room of graduates wondering what to do next with their lives.
“If what we want is an economy based on democracy, human rights, and sustainability, then we're going to have to create businesses based on democracy, human rights, and sustainability. All of the things you want to do are very important to democracy and sustainability—of course they are—but if a good number of you don’t go into business to pursue these values, then we won’t have an economy based on these values. Period. No matter how much we legislate, no matter how much we educate, and so on.”
To change the game you have to be playing the game.
Your growth manifesto
This is not a business plan. It’s a simple story of how you grow your business. I like to imagine you’re telling this story to an alien who’s just landed on earth and is asking what our obsession with growth is all about 👽. Here’s mine as an example (click to access the Google Doc):
As a reader of Broken Growth I already know that the world needs your weird ideas to be brought to life and grown your way with considerations for success beyond the financial!
Copy the template, make it yours, and share it with me - I’d loooove to see it! It’s not a one and done, it’s a living doc that will evolve as you do.
Chat soon
Matilda
Thanks for reading! If we haven’t met yet I’m Matilda Lucy, a Digital Strategist working with brands who are making the real world a better place to be. You can find out more about my work on my website or book a free intro call here to discuss working together :).
Related posts:
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Never has the aspiration of growth at all costs grossed me out more than watching the broligarchs sat in prime position at Trump’s inauguration last week.
The delusion of growth-at-all-costs
In 1970, economist Milton Friedman came up with “shareholder theory”, the idea that a company's only responsibility is to its shareholders, who "own the business". If social responsibility and profit conflict, profit should take precedence. Maximise shareholder value at all costs. Gotcha.
Opening my journal and doing my own growth manifesto as we speak!!! 🏹🏹🏹🏹
Aaand now I just have Fleetwood Mac’s “You can GROW your own way” on repeat in my head 🎵 (I ain’t mad about it.) Coincidentally I’ve been stuck writing a piece about why big shouldn’t necessarily = more and this has just inspired me to return to it. Can’t wait to tuck into this template, thank you for sharing so generously!