"We know what we are, but know not what we may be." William Shakespeare
As children we grew without noticing. Every so often we would realise that something had changed, that we were not quite who we had been, and then life carried on. Adults cannot rely on that kind of growth. Natural growth only takes us so far, and after a point, the growing we do is the growing we choose.
Two stages of growth
A baby grows because somebody else is paying attention. The parents feed it, protect it and make sure it sleeps, and the child is not aware of any of it. That is the first stage: growth that happens to you.
The second stage begins when a person sees their own potential and takes responsibility for it. Growth stops being something that happens and becomes something that is done on purpose. Most people never make that move. They stay unaware of what they could be, uninspired to work at it, and unwilling to own it.
The seed and the tree
A seed and the tree it becomes are the same thing, and yet you would never guess it by looking. Hold a seed in your hand and it is easy to think little of it. Look at the sapling a year later and it seems weak and easily broken. It is hard to believe that it will one day feed a family, shelter countless living things, and carry branches high enough to see the whole valley.
Everything the tree will become is already in the seed. The only thing missing is growth: a steady process of receiving, and of changing.
One of our favourite pictures of this is the first meeting between Jesus and Peter. Peter looked at himself and saw a fisherman who did not deserve the company he was in. Jesus looked at the same man and saw what he would become. Peter measured himself by the seed. He was being invited to measure himself by the tree.
The instrument is not the problem
Pick up a guitar for the first time and it sounds terrible. It would be easy to blame the guitar. But the sound an instrument makes depends almost entirely on the person playing it. The potential was always in the instrument. What was missing was the player's growth.
Life works the same way. Many of the things we think are broken are producing an unclear sound because we have not yet grown into using them well. As we grow, the sound improves, and not only for us. Everyone within earshot hears the difference.
What this means for a business
Every business we work with carries more potential than it is currently showing. The question is never whether the potential is there. The question is whether anyone is doing the deliberate, uncomfortable work of growing into it: the people, the systems and the strategy together.
Growth is uncomfortable. It is also the only way potential ever becomes something real. Do not measure your worth, or your company's, by its current form. Measure it by what it could grow into, and then do the work.