Growth isn’t something we do. It is a side effect of our systems.

This is part 1 of Foundations of growth. Subscribe for free and get the next one.

“You do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems.” -James Clear

We cannot “hack” growth. Growth is a side effect of our systems and methods.

“A goal without a method is nonsense.” -Dr. Edward Deming

Science works the same way. Despite being misinterpreted as a set of facts, the growth that comes from science is a side effect of its method.

“The method of science, as stodgy and grumpy as it may seem, is far more important than the findings of science.” -Carl Sagan

There is one prerequisite for achieving growth and it’s to have an aim.

“If you aim at nothing, you’ll hit it every time.” -Zig Ziglar

A personal aim I have is, “I want to play with my grandchildren.” The key word here is play. Instead of just living long, I want to live well into old age.

To achieve this growth, despite being lucky and not dying unexpectedly, I will need good daily habits of self-care and delayed gratification.

How will I know which daily habits will help me reach my goal?

This is one of the greatest parts of modern society — we have access to people who have already achieved our goals. We have mentors all around us.

As a matter of fact, there are ~97,000 100 year old’s living in the US today and they got there by following good daily lifestyle habits.

Some of you may be inclined to say, “they probably had great genes”, but this is a deflection of responsibility because we now know, from identical twin studies, that 85 percent of chronic disease is driven by non-genetic factors.

This shift in mindset, to view the world through a lens of opportunity instead a lens of cynicism, negativity, and blame, is the first foundation of growth — a growth mindset.

And this mindset could help us live seven years longer.

Professional growth is no different

In the tech industry, “growth” has boomed. On LinkedIn, search for “growth manager” and you get more search results (183,995) than “product manager” (43,239).

This is because “growth” is located in every job description. Growth is a skill set demanded by most companies, especially venture-funded ones.

Therefore, it is important to understand how to “do growth.”

Just like my personal goal of playing with my grandchildren, companies have long-term goals. For example, I work for Matillion which has a vision to “Make the world’s data useful.”

To accomplish this, we will need a great product. We will also need some luck. But, most importantly, we will need daily habits compounding over time.

Our goals are difficult to achieve as individuals, so imagine getting hundreds of thousands of employees to achieve them at the same time.

Company values, when done right, can be great unifiers. If leadership takes them seriously, instead of a platitude on a poster, they can become embodied in every employee’s daily habits.

This gives us our second foundation for growth — alter your habits toward your aim.

To give an example, Matillion has a value of, “We innovate and demand quality: We believe no product, process or individual is finished.”

The result of this value has been a strong environment of learning and humility. And, the side effect of this environment has brought innovation.

Here comes the third foundation of growth — create an environment that enables growth.

This is the story of Pixar. After the chaotic success of the original Toy Story, co-founder Ed Catmull devoted the rest of his career to figuring out how to enable creativity, without the chaos. Creativity, Inc., is the story of how they achieved it.

If you are far enough along in your career, you’ve experienced environments where growth has stagnated. You put up your best effort but the environment doesn’t seem to be suitable for growth.

In these environments, achieving growth is rare. It’s like walking into a Catholic church and trying to convince everyone to add 15 minutes of meditation to Sunday Mass. Or, walking into a Buddhist temple and convincing them to introduce a Holy Communion.

Environments like these are not intentionally stunting growth, of course. They all have the best intentions in mind, but as the saying goes, “the road to hell is paved with good intentions.”

If you find yourself in one of these environments, there is still room for personal growth. Viktor E. Frankl showed us this even in the most extreme circumstances.

Now that we’ve considered our environment, this leads us to our fourth foundation of growth — systems thinking.

Why a system?

A popular image for a system is a bunch of interdependent gears. This shows us that the whole and the parts are interdependent. Dr. Edward Deming, a popular systems thinker, explains,

“A system is a network of interdependent components that work together to try to accomplish the aim of the system. A system must have an aim. Without an aim, there is no system. The aim of the system must be clear to everyone in the system. (We are of course talking about a man-made system)”

When we are trying to improve our life or our company, we have to consider the entire system.

By focusing on just the parts of a system, good intentions can have unintended consequences. And, unintended consequences can “pave the road to hell.”

This is why economist Thomas Sowell says,

“There are no solutions. There are only trade-offs.”

This is a systems thinking mindset.

This can be applied to all aspects of life. For example, seemingly harmless virtues like compassion and curiosity can run us astray if they are not balanced by other virtues.

Compassion, not balanced, can become a burden on the person receiving it. It’s the ancient story of the archetypal overprotective parent who protects their child so much that they unintentionally stunt their growth. (think of the 40-year-old living in the basement)

Or, we can look to nature for endless examples. In the US, we once removed the grey wolf from Yellowstone National Park which created the destruction of the environment so widespread that eventually, we reintroduced them in 1995. This reintroduction subsequently revived the ecosystem, even the structure of its rivers.

A systems thinking mindset is a growth mindset

A systems thinking mindset is a highly coveted one. It is why engineers are so high in demand, even for non-engineering roles.

When I worked for Accenture, we would go to the best engineering schools in the Midwest — Purdue, Illinois, Michigan — and pay students top dollar to be business consultants, not engineers.

Using the previous gear image as a metaphor, values and habits are the innermost gears. The next gears are our methods and strategies. Outside of that, any system will have hundreds more.

If we were to remove or damage an inner gear, imagine how much this would stunt our growth.

The reverse is also true. If we were to improve an inner gear, imagine how this would systematically improve our growth.

Improving our systems

Improvement comes from the continuous examination of our systems.

As Socrates famously uttered,

“The unexamined life is not worth living.”

This means we have to continually make sure our gears are optimal and are still aiming in the right direction.

It requires a shift in thinking, we have to examine the whole and the parts at the same time.

“Systems-level thinking is understanding that nothing is stationary and everything is linked. The relationships among the modules of a system give rise to a whole that cannot be understood by analyzing its constituent parts.”

This is the end of part 1 of Foundations of growth. In the next one, we’ll move outward from our metaphorical gears and talk about methods and strategies.

(This post originated on productology.substack.com)