![\"graph-for-40-bday-reflection-01-01-400x237\"](\"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/06\/graph-for-40-bday-reflection-01-01-400x237.jpg\")
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Is it possible to plot meaning alongside growth? This year I have questions with a goal of having answers for next year.<\/p>\n
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My fortieth year has been characterised with building and growth, only some of which is my own doing and none due to my efforts alone.\u00a0 Case in point, the rebuild after the Queensland floods of early 2011<\/a>\u00a0which consumed Theresa\u2019s world<\/a> for the past twelve months as she acted as owner\/builder for both the refurbishment<\/a>\u00a0as well as the 130 square metre flood-proof second-story expansion<\/a>.\u00a0 Thanks to her efforts, I now look around daily at the testament of my wife\u2019s resourcefulness, tenacity, dedication, and artistic talent.<\/p>\n As for other personal achievements, I became an Australian citizen<\/a> this past year\u00a0to be more of an active participant in the community I now call home.\u00a0 The My Pizza Personality project was published<\/a>, adding \u2018contributing author\u2019 as a bullet point for my bio.\u00a0 I also completed my second Flash animation for Dam by Alice in Chains<\/a>\u00a0as a testament to both the reason why I got into digital and why I do animation only as a side interest.<\/p>\n Growth is a consistent topic in my studio as well. We expanded to 27<\/a>\u00a0and then gradually again to 32<\/a> team members during the two years prior.\u00a0 As we continue the trend towards 55 staff, I am conscious of the \u201cbounce factor\u201d of organisational growth.<\/p>\n Only 11.5% of Australian businesses are over 19 employees<\/a>\u00a0and less than 1% over 200 employees.\u00a0 Once you get past 4 employees, your survival chances increase from 67% to 74% and increase marginally again to almost 76% if you have over 20 employees.\u00a0 While the majority of business (89.5%) remain at their current size, 5.6% of businesses are more likely to decrease in numbers while 4.9% of companies are likely to increase in size. You can infer from these statistics that larger organisations are more likely to succeed, but companies have a greater tendency towards retraction rather than expansion.<\/p>\n I can attest that systems, processes, structures and behaviour that were marginally suitable for 15 people become wholly inappropriate and unacceptable for a company twice the size. Sustainability and success of growth can be measured by the gap between when they increased in size and how long it takes to implement \u00a0internal systems to support the growth.\u00a0 If you rely too long on what helped get you to where you are, you may not get where you are going.<\/p>\n Case in point, some of the changes seen in the studio over the past 12 months include:<\/p>\n In the midst of the growth, I continue my search for meaning behind our commercial mandate and determining what “success” looks like.\u00a0 Initially mentioned last May in my search for a “so that”<\/a>, my questions have been expressed as I explored:<\/p>\n I shared how the Occupy Wall Street phenomenon<\/a>\u00a0could be seen as a similar albeit misdirected expression of similar questioning.\u00a0 My posts on burnout<\/a>\u00a0and energy management<\/a>\u00a0were both observations on the world I see around me as well as my challenges with maintaining balance. As I look to what kind of organisations we “should” be creating, I begin to compile attributes of what makes organisations a success, including accountability<\/a>, gratitude<\/a>, and generosity<\/a>.<\/p>\n My views on meaning and purpose on management principles carry through to my approach towards the digital expression of my day job. Over the past year I considered:<\/p>\n Just as we saw in physical and organisational science during the industrial revolution, a growth in the digital space needs to consider people not technology as the common denominator.\u00a0 Achieving “more” of digital is empty unless the solution has meaning for those who use it.<\/p>\n As I get older, I become increasingly aware of my own mortality and the time remaining to make a difference with what I have been given. I see that difference as being more than increasing staff numbers, revenue, profit, same store sales, Facebook like counts, or Twitter followers. I question whether we will achieve such goals only to turn around and \u00a0discover we are in the unsustainable position of being the same, only bigger.<\/p>\n I blog about the kind of world I wish to create.\u00a0 I search for the best means to effect the change I want to see in the organisations I am involved with as well as in the lives of those I interact with. \u00a0I also consider the premise that change rarely starts without pain of some form.<\/p>\n My focus for the past several years has been on searching and learning, facilitated in part with my Masters of Applied Social Science (Management) finishing this September.\u00a0 Once my studies are out of the way, my intent is to shift from preparing to doing, from theory to application. \u00a0I look forward to sharing with you the meaning behind the change we will see over the next twelve months.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Is it possible to plot meaning alongside growth? This year I have questions with a goal of having answers for next year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5399,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_s2mail":"","cybocfi_hide_featured_image":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[20],"ecosystem_role":[],"class_list":["post-1408","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-about-me","tag-birthday","bwp-masonry-item","bwp-col-3"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1408"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7659,"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1408\/revisions\/7659"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5399"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1408"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1408"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1408"},{"taxonomy":"ecosystem_role","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sidewaysthoughts.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/ecosystem_role?post=1408"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Business talk<\/h2>\n
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Searching for meaning in the growth<\/h2>\n
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The year ahead – change<\/h2>\n