Your organization’s worst nightmare may look like this:  your workplace starts growing like crazy!
          Most of us break out in hives, hyperventilate and start nibbling on our nails when the quarterly report goes south.  You could have a far worse problem.  You could be growing.
          Down deep we fear growth because we have raised the bar on ourselves and…everyone knows it.
          Brochures extol our burgeoning client list, the black ink is smudged all over our financials and words like “outstanding,” “unparalleled” and “stellar” come easily.
          We all know this fact of corporate life and that is why so many organizations say nothing about their growing fortunes.  No news is good news in the executive suite.  If no one knows the company is riding high then no one has higher expectations.  It really is pretty simple.
          Let’s now add the sobering statistics of David Birch in Job Creation in America, “Of every ten startup companies, one half will disappear within their first five years, only four survive into their tenth year, and only three into their fifteenth year.”
          So, playing growth closely to the corporate vest is often the standard operating procedure for organizations.
          But, beware!  There are four sequential problems that will often spin-off this need to hide growth.
          First, if your staff only knows when the company’s fortunes are slipping, why would they want to want to work harder if they never know when they “made it.” 
          It is like climbing a mountain and seeing what are called “false summits.”  You huff and puff your way over rock and through ravines convinced that what you see ahead is the final destination.  When you get to that promontory, you cannot believe your eyes.  This wasn’t the summit! This outcropping was visual “eye candy” enticing you upward only to find out you still had thousands of feet to go.
          So, we reason, why start climbing again?
          Second, if the passion for climbing higher has evaporated, get ready for some serious passive-aggressive behavior that will victimize the people who are paying your bills…your clients.
          People Express Airlines is a great example. 

          You have to be my age (somewhere close to maturity) to remember this company that in 1980 was a start-up, low-cost, high customer service, East Coast air carrier that went, in five years, from an idea to the fifth largest airline in the country.
In September 1986 People Express was a fading memory on Wall Street.
They did everything right.  They encouraged innovation, established a generous stock option program, selected only a few people to occupy the executive floor…and started to hemorrhage profits (with the advent of American Airlines’ Sabre seat reservation system) and did not tell anyone.
When employees’ sixth sense started blaring all was not well in Cash Camelot, they expressed their fear and frustration by taking it out on their customers.
There were no longer positive greetings at the door of the plane, no second cups of coffee and “bad attitudes” became rampant.  These employees would get their “pound of flesh” from People Express… and the flesh would belong to their customers.
Just when People Express needed the loyalty of their customer base, it began to evaporate like a spring fog.
Third, when customers stop showing up, watch the internal “blaming meter” go off the end of the scale.
The staff will become preoccupied with finding some place to anchor their resentments about what happened to their company.  Those inlets of invectiveness will include “money-grabbing senior managers,” “stupid decisions,” “bad coffee” and…”they never tell us what is going on.”
My number four sequential result of never telling your staff and customers you are growing is a no-brainer.
The end game of cloistered success is distrust.  If your customers and staff never know when you are doing well, they do not trust you with any information.
And, who wants to do business with people you cannot trust.
No, your worst nightmare is not decline, it can be silent success.