Radical Growth

In a section of her book “Radical Candor”, Kim Scott, former CEO coach at Dropbox and Twitter and executive at Google and Apple, reflected on her views about growth. She acknowledged that we all have different seasons and that both “slowing down” and “steep growth” are good. She thoughtfully described this realization as a contrast to her younger self’s belief that aligned more with Catherine the Great’s quote “That which does not grow, rots.” – implying that this quote is not right.

Yes, it is true that we all have different seasons, and stability should be as valued as much as we do for steep growth. But I think this line of thinking is anchored on one easy assumption which is not true: that all growth is visible.

What is essential is invisible to the eye

Here’s the clincher: I still think Catherine the Great is correct: “That which does not grow, rots.”

Growth will always be the proof of life.

However, not all growth is the same… or looks the same.

Consider how trees both grow upwards (leaves seeking light) and downwards (roots seeking nutrients). This is how we should properly view growth.

If all you seek is glorious upwards growth without stable foundational growth… this is not sustainable. Trees without the support of a strong network of roots are not resilient against the test of storms and time.

The two motivations: significance & security

Years ago, I was invited to give a talk to an audience of near-graduating Computer Science students. According to the organizers, the invite was to talk about my experience because of my “uncommon” choice to go into the public sector. But, of course, being me, I took that chance to be all philosophical and attempted to inspire people. 😅

I told the story of how I started in a low-paying job in our state university (University of the Philippines) which eventually got me into a high-significance project for the country’s flagship Disaster Risk Reduction & Mitigation initiative… which was still low-paying. Haha. But it was a steep growth: I was playing both technical and leadership roles in a high-impact project where the most important benchmark we measured was “how many lives were lost after a Typhoon”. We were on the news every week. Different governments visited our offices. I was speaking at conferences.

Eventually though, when the personal needs changed, I took on more “side” hustles to patch for the lack of pay. At a high pace, this became noticeably unhealthy. I became grumpy all the time due to stress, and I ended up not being effective in my roles. The projects were successful, I was not.

At the same time, I realized what I was doing is far from what I want to do: I did more management than tech… talking with stakeholders (dev rel stuff, project management, meeting with investors/money folks)

I decided to let go of that life and be employed in a higher-paying job with an NY-based ERP cloud software provider, writing unit tests and Angular components.

All that to say that any choice you make in your career will be a trade off between two motivations: significance & security… both ideally increasing over time depending on your “season”.

The time when I seemed to be on a steep growth did not offer the stability that would be sustainable for my life.

Assess which “growth” to focus on

I think I made good decisions then. When I interviewed for the job going from management and “back” to engineering, I was asked: “Are you sure?”.

Yes, I was. And in retrospect, I still am. This enabled me to have more focused technical experience and capability to support the eventual leadership roles I got involved in.

I won’t change anything in my experience.

But I learned an important lesson though: every now and then, ask yourself where you are in your life and assess whether you are spending energies and resources in the correct flavor of “growth”.

Radical growth

I believe radical growth is having a good rhythm between glorious and foundational. Both visible and invisible. Steep and stable.

Spending time to quietly focus on fundamentals is not “slowing down”. This is a necessary step to achieve the “steep growth” we all love to see… and make that sustainable and resilient.

The question begs to be answered: what season are you in now?