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Concept

Growth as a question

Growth as a question is Jarvis's practice of treating every increase in size, a hire, a location, a product line, as a decision with hidden costs rather than a default: what would this cost that I cannot see yet, and does it make the business better or only bigger?

The visible costs of growth are on the spreadsheet: salaries, rent, equipment. The hidden ones are not: the hours spent managing rather than doing, the selling required to fill a new person's days, the loss of quiet months, the presence that a second location halves. Revenue that requires those things to be delivered is revenue that has bought obligations. Jarvis's founders wrote both columns before deciding, and mostly chose to improve instead: a price rise, a narrower and better set of customers, a system that returned a day a week. The question is not anti-growth; it is a demand that growth justify itself the way any other expense would.

A real-life example

A physiotherapist with a full clinic considers a second one across town. The visible column is rent and a second physiotherapist. The hidden column is that he would be in neither clinic fully, would have to sell to fill the second, and would lose the Friday hour that built the first. He raises his prices instead.

How to use it

  1. 1Before any growth step, write two columns: what it costs that you can see, and what it costs that you cannot.
  2. 2Ask whether it makes the business more resilient and more autonomous, or only larger.
  3. 3Look for the improvement that gives the same result without the second column.