Growing Smart

Terri Lonier

President
Working Solo Inc.
New Paltz, New York

The most important question you can ask yourself about growth is, "How much is enough?" How much money? How much power? How much information? For me, the big decision about growth was whether to hire employees. The workplace changes when there's no longer a one-to-one relationship between people. I wanted to remain a key contributor to the business -- not to become just a manager of it.

I had to create a comfort range that matched my vision. It's easy to get swept up in the thrill of growth. But then you neglect to establish your own ground rules -- and by default, you play by someone else's. Remember to ask yourself: Am I controlling my growth, or is it controlling me?

Here's an exercise I like to use: Visualize walking into a room three years from now and shaking hands with yourself. Who are you? What is your life like? What is your business like? Don't let yourself wake up in three years and say, "I'm three years older, and I just happened to get here." Clarify your vision, so that you can grow into it.

Terri Lonier terri@workingsolo.com is an expert on entrepreneurialism. Working Solo Inc. advises such clients as Hewlett-Packard, Intuit, and Seagram on how to work with the rapidly growing free-agent market. In 1997, Working Solo tripled in size -- from one to three employees.

William Tragos

Cofounder and Chairman
TBWA Worldwide
New York, New York

Don't let growth grow your head. Don't let it change your personality. Too often, you see people start to smoke big cigars and to drive fancy cars -- and they fail to see that they haven't really arrived. No matter how fast they're growing, people inside an entrepreneurial startup need to keep their street-fighting attitude.

How often have you seen a company become consumed by its own growth? It cruises at a 40% growth rate per year, adds hundreds of people in a matter of months, creates mission statements, brings in gurus and consultants, starts acting like the big boys -- and grows away from everything that made its success possible.

Two things in particular have helped us to steer clear of that fate. First, it was our good fortune not to have a lot of money when we started. Our first 16 offices were built, not bought. We started from scratch -- and that forced us to cooperate with each other. We weren't owned by some big entity in London or New York, with a headquarters that had all the answers.

Second, we've been able to strike a balance between growing internally, on the one hand, and expanding through healthy mergers and acquisitions, on the other. If your growth comes just through buying other companies, you're not growing -- you're acquiring. This might seem like semantic gymnastics, but it's an important distinction. We measure our success by how well we do at growing on our own.

William Tragos bill_tragos@tbwachiat.com worked at Young & Rubicam before he cofounded TBWA. In 1993, TBWA joined Omnicom Group Inc., one of the world's largest advertising groups, and in 1995, the firm merged with Chiat/Day. TBWA Worldwide, which operates in 60 countries, has projected 1998 revenues of $900 million. In 1997, the firm was named "Agency of the Year" by Advertising Age.

Jeffrey Miller

President and CEO
Documentum Inc.
Pleasanton, California

To me, growth is about pace. In a high-growth environment, there is always too much work to do and not enough time to do it. So I tell people who work for me that in order to prevent insanity, frustration, and burnout, they need to find their own pace and then to develop a laserlike focus on their priorities.

I learned this from one of my mentors at Intel. Each year, as I moved up through the organization, I noticed I was working one hour longer. I realized that if I ever became a vice president, I'd never get home! I also noticed that my mentor (a vice president at the time) worked fewer hours than I did. I asked him what his secret was. He suggested figuring out a pace that I could keep up over the long term. I might have to sprint occasionally, but if I found the right overall pace, I'd be golden.

After finding your own pace, your job as a leader is to establish a pace for the company. In 1996, I gave a presentation to the entire company. I called it the Millennium Mission. The purpose was to give people a sense of where we were going, what we would look like when we got there, and what changes they should anticipate along the way. The vision allows people to establish their own pace for achieving a larger goal. It let people know that somebody is thinking about growth -- that there is a plan and some sense of control. I always tell everyone in the company, "It might not be the right plan, but at least we're not confused."

Jeffrey Miller jeff.miller@documentum.com has helped make Documentum Inc. one of the fastest-growing software companies in the San Francisco Bay area. Revenues in 1997 were $75.6 million. Since 1993, the company has had a compounded annual growth rate of 8,800%.