It’s around the end and start of the calendar year that you hear the most talk of growth. How much did you grow? What will it be next year?

It often strikes me that when people talk about growth, especially the much-fabled organic growth, they can imply that it’s easy. That it’s somehow accidental. As if you go to bed one evening and wake up to a slew of new customers all clambering for your goods and services the next day.

Isn’t that what we’re all chasing? More customers, clients, patrons? More subscribers, likes, followers, retweets and page views? More growth, more scale, more ROI?

I don’t know about your particular sector, but there’s rarely anything accidental in most. It’s far more likely thanks to your team working incredibly hard that any growth is possible. Growing firms constantly ask themselves how they can perform better. How do we make something that’s good become something great? Everything goes under the scrutiny glass: from IT to supply chain, to the all-important customer service.

Henry Mintzberg said, “Organisations are a complex phenomena. Managing them is a difficult, nuanced business, requiring all sorts of tacit understanding that can only be gained in context.”

It strikes me that there’s nothing accidental about that.