Companies Are Like Gardens
I was speaking with a CEO recently who described the evolution of her company’s senior leadership and how several members of a key cohort were leaving for a variety of reasons, all of their own accord. Some were retiring. Some decided they’d been there long enough. For this leader, it was a natural pruning that would ultimately be healthy for the company, as she wanted to make some changes, and this natural ebb and flow was healthy and ultimately saving her a lot of time and angst. She was going with the experience rather than fighting it, recognizing that what was taking place was in harmony with where she wanted to take the company.
As she was describing what was going on, I shared my long-held philosophy that companies are like gardens. “I love that,” she said. “You didn’t put that one in your book!” We had a good chuckle, and I told her I’d write about it in my next blog post.
So here we are.
Gardens. Well, they are alive, they breathe, they have a natural flow when they are growing well, and they have a lifecycle of their own. Left to their own devices, untended, they are wild and wooly, filled with weeds, harboring whatever grows and crowding out what doesn’t.
Gardens, like our companies, need to be nurtured. We must provide the right elements for success. There are times when we plant, prune, and pluck. There are times when we weed and feed. There are times when we invest lots of energy or other resources to get them on course. There are times when we have to get into the soil and muck around, remove pests, and call in hummingbirds, butterflies, or other life forms that help us cultivate.
And sometimes we have to rip out plants, clear cut areas, or simply start over. Ever lay a new lawn? Ever rip out an entire corner and replant it? We do this in our companies every day, whether it’s grooming talent, launching or canceling products, or buying and selling divisions or entire companies.
Our culture is the environment in which our companies flourish or not. New capital is the fertilizer. Too much kills us all together, as we saw with the dot.com hubris moons ago. Too little, and we don’t have enough oomph to reach for the sky.
When all is said and done, gardens bring us the reward of their beauty or the bounty of their food. Like companies, gardens are either living and thriving or they are shriveling and surviving. They are neat and trim, or they are unkempt and messy. Gardens need to evolve with the climate and other external factors that may also shape them. Gardens and companies both have an energy that needs tending, and you can feel it when you walk through the gate or the company front door.
I used to say you can tell a lot about a company by the way its lobby looks and how the offices look when you get off the elevator. When you are in someone’s garden, it says a lot, too. Does it have enough water? Are plants well-fed? Is there a symmetry or natural unfolding that flows? Are there weeds everywhere and branches unshorn?
It all boils down to one thing: Tend the company, work with its nature, and let it unfold with a steady hand and the right ingredients to thrive.