Growth tells you how far you’ve travelled. Reflection tells you if you still like the direction you’re headed in, and what you can do next.
As business managers, we spend a lot of time measuring growth: revenue, customers, projects, markets, people, margins or pipelines.
They’re important measures, but when you’re constantly focused on where your business needs to go next, it can be surprisingly difficult to find the time to look at the broader picture.
Recently a substantial application landed in front of me for a major business growth award. I looked through the questions and initially decided it was far too time-consuming. The questions were straightforward enough, and there were the usual suspects – numbers and evidence – but also questions about leadership, purpose, values, decisions and impact.
I decided the potential return (recognition from a third party) didn’t justify the time involved – but then I changed my mind. Perhaps it was the child in me who used to sit up straight when the teacher was handing out merit awards?
Whatever the reason, I started the application and something unexpected happened: it became one of the more useful business exercises I’d undertaken. To answer the questions properly, I had to stop, look at where we’d started, where we were now, and how we’d arrived there. Most importantly, I had to think about, and document, why any of it mattered.
We didn’t win the award, but by then, that wasn’t the point.
Looking back uncovers patterns
Australian Power Equipment commenced six years ago, and in those early days our business involved individual product sales of cable hangers, transformers and other electrical equipment required by customers for replacement, maintenance or new projects.
Today, the conversations are very different. We’re increasingly involved much earlier in a project, sometimes from the concept stage, helping customers to develop complete electrical solutions across transformers, cable, substations, switchgear and associated equipment.
Instead of simply supplying a piece of equipment when power is needed, we’re increasingly working through how that power will be delivered months or even years beforehand.
Our customer base has expanded, as have the industries in which we operate. Mining remains important, but our work now reaches across infrastructure, renewable energy, transport, defence, marine and other industrial sectors.
When you’re living growth day by day, each step feels incremental. Looking backwards though, the trajectory becomes clear. And there was another pattern that emerged: growth creating opportunities beyond our business.
As the scale and complexity of our work increases, so too does the work we provide to other Australian businesses. Complex power solutions rarely arrive as one finished item from one factory. Equipment and components may come from specialist manufacturers around the world, but increasingly we utilise the skills and capability of workshops in Australia to transform individual elements into completed solutions.
Australian workshops fabricate, modify, assemble, wire, test and prepare equipment to our engineered specifications before it is dispatched. So when our business grows, some of that growth flows outward. It supports skilled trades, engineers, fabricators and regional workshops. And that’s one of the more satisfying measures of progress.
Supporting causes that matter
The award application also led us to reflect on what the success of our business allows us to do, and over time we’ve deliberately chosen to support causes that reflect what matters to us personally and professionally.
One of those is the advancement and recognition of women working in traditionally male-dominated industries. We led by example within our own business and our broader industry relationships, and we’ve supported initiatives such as the Women in Industry Awards because we believe visibility matters. When women succeeding in mining, engineering, energy, manufacturing and infrastructure are recognised publicly, other women can see those industries, and leadership within them, as places where they belong too.
Another is wildlife conservation. Australian wildlife has always been particularly important to us, and business growth has enabled us to contribute increasingly meaningful support to conservation organisations. Through our partnership with Aussie Ark, we have had the privilege of participating in the release of endangered broad-headed snakes as part of a critical rewilding program.
Through our partnership with Taronga Conservation Society Australia, we’ve seen first-hand the extraordinary conservation work taking place across threatened species recovery, research and wildlife protection.
These aren’t activities separate from the business. They’re part of the reason we want the business to succeed, because somewhere along the way, growth stopped being solely about making the company bigger, and it became about increasing what the company could contribute.
We often talk about growth as though it is the objective, but growth isn’t the destination. It’s an enabler that allows a business to employ people, engage suppliers, develop better solutions, invest in capability, support communities and contribute to causes.
That doesn’t make financial performance less important. A profitable, sustainable business can choose where it spends its money, where it directs its influence and what kind of footprint it leaves behind.
Our application didn’t produce a trophy, but it did produce perspective. Entering awards reminds you that the numbers tell an important part of the story, growth tells you how far you’ve travelled, and reflection gives you the opportunity to ask whether you still like the direction you’re heading in, and what you want that growth to make possible.
So the next time an awards application lands on your desk and your instinct is to put it in the too-hard basket, perhaps reconsider.
You may or may not win the award, but the process of answering the questions will tell you a lot about the business you’ve been too busy building to stop and look at from another perspective. Too often we can’t see the forest for the trees.
Loving this story on the importance of reflection in business? Read about how APE is growing with purpose here.