Mastering the fine art of percolating

I’ve made hundreds of consulting decks over the course of my career, with all the fanciest words. In that time, the buzzwords have changed (from 2010’s gamification to 2014’s Internet of Things to 2017’s blockchain extravaganza) but one word has always been en vogue: Growth.

It’s infinitely interpretable in just the way you like: bigger company, more revenue, more impact, more learning. Sounds like dollar signs and smells like wellness. It’s almost a strawman of a term because, like, who wouldn’t want growth? You can’t roll up to your performance review and say, “I didn’t want to learn anything this year.”

And yet…

I used to write more about quirky alternative business structures and it was a lot of fun (see: Time Bonuses, The E Corp, A Spirited Defense of Tea Time, and Seasonal Living For Business). My goal was never to advocate for any one idea as the ultimate better way to do things (although I like these ideas), but rather to point out that every bit of what we call “business” is made up. By us. And therefore, we can make it up differently if the status quo isn’t working. Which brings me to my next wild idea:

What if a business designated one quarter a year for simply existing; for percolating.

(Yes, you can totally replace “quarter” with “month” or even “week” but let’s start big)

Sell the items, deliver the services. Work in the business. Just not on the business. No new marketing campaigns. No product launches. No reorgs. No performance calibration. Just keep the storefront open. For a quarter.

I once consulted for a several-hundred-person department of a global organization that was burning its people out. When interviewing employees and wondering how much of their exhaustion and urgency was strictly necessary I asked, “What would happen if your department just stoped working?” and across the board they responded, “Nothing, really. In about 9 months things would become more disorganized for the company.”

This isn’t to say this was a useless department or that they should be laid off. Investment in company infrastructure and organization matters. It is to say that if you’ve built a robust business with strong product-market fit, you’ve earned yourself some momentum. It would have been sacrilegious to suggest, but the department literally could have taken a three month vacation and all that work would have just happened… three months later.

People will say, “We have to keep moving fast to keep up with competitors! The speed of change in the world, in technology, is increasing all the time!” Yes, of course, to some degree this is true, especially for companies that have competing product launch timing (i.e., new phones). But I’m honestly so tired of the “Run! The world is moving faster than you!” rhetoric that is mostly perpetuated by consultants trying to freak you out, and the media, also trying to freak you out.

Sure, there is a cost to going slower. There will be less activity. But maybe not all that “business activity” was going to be impactful in the first place. I’ve seen re-orgs reversed within a year. New products launched that did nothing at all for the business. New tools and systems rolled out that actively made employees’ lives harder. I am all for experimenting and even failure! I just also want to debunk the notion that all activity drives value, and that easing up on activity is necessarily damaging to the business. As they say, you don’t want to spend your effort climbing a ladder only to get to the top and realize you leaned it against the wrong wall.

And think of what you’d gain! A quarter each year with actual slack in the system to rest, dream, and make it home for dinner. Employees with regulated nervous systems. A recruiting tool your talent team would drool over: “For a quarter each year, we take it a little easy. We percolate. No one needs to be sprinting a marathon.”

So how would this work? I don’t know! But I think it’s important to be ridiculous enough to imagine:

• The whole company keeps up with “existing” and maintenance activities. Products get sold. The website gets fixed. The clients get serviced. The money gets accounted. The roles get backfilled.

• You hit pause on anything with the faint perfume of “initiative”. Essentially, will the business keep running if we don’t do this? Yes? Ok, next quarter.

• Would some teams have an easier quarter than others? Yes, definitely. Equity is not this model’s strong suit. But also I don’t think the answer is everyone needs to burn out if some people are. Who knows, maybe the insights team can pause their work and go cover a few retail shifts. (Also, this would be an amazing L&D experience). Maybe the marketing team delays their new campaign and instead rides shotgun on sales calls and even takes a few leads. Maybe the chief of staff handling all “special projects” becomes the company barista for the quarter.

• Maybe there’s a “I need a hand!” marketplace where say a recruiter can say, “Hey, can someone take some screening interviews?” and a product manager can say, “I got you!”

Ironically, you know what would happen if you did this? People would come up with new ideas! And might actually feel bummed they have to wait to work on them. Creating slack in the system, breathing room for your brain, is exactly what a long shower does (the home of all great ideas): it allows you space to imagine.

After all, spring is lovely in its own right—blossoms and all that—but what makes it magnificent is that it follows a period of dormancy.

You can’t re-awaken if you haven’t slept.

(a personal reflection for paid subscriber friends)

I am 100% writing this for myself, because I am cocooning. Not the version where I’m cozy with a blanket and a Netflix binge. I’m the version where I’m molten bug juice and really hoping there’s a wing in here.