Businesses grow most at the border of support and challenge, part 2

Dr. John Demartini

How does axiology and human values relate to business growth? Let’s explore the correlation a little bit further.

Because human beings desire to fulfill their highest values, they seek anything that they perceive to be ‘pleasureful’ and that will help them support their highest values and often avoid anything that that they perceive to be painful and that will challenge their highest values. But now there arises a paradox within this attractive and repulsive scenario.

Growth Requires a Balance of Support and Challenge

If human beings were always supported in their environments they would become more juvenile and dependent upon their supporters and remain solely security seeking intrepreneurs, just like a child that becomes spoiled, juvenile and dependent from too much pampering or mollycoddling. But, children also need challenges, accountabilities and problems to solve in order to make them more precocious, independent and risk taking entrepreneurs with greater time and space horizons. This same scenario holds for businesses. What actually makes children and businesses grow most viable and stable is a perfect balance of support and challenge, the key intrepreneur and entrepreneur builders. That is often why in nature when one parent is overly protective and nurturing the other is more assertive and tough to keep setting their offspring free from their dependencies. If both parents are overly supportive then the outer and extended family predators can grab their offspring as simple prey. So, maximum growth and development occurs at the border of support and challenge. When human beings live congruently and in alignment with their highest values they become most willing to endure equally this necessary balance of both support and challenge, both pleasure and pain, both ease and difficulty and both cooperation and competition in the pursuit of their highest values, which reflects their teleological purpose or mission, which is ultimately their service to the world market.

When a child or a new childlike business is growing it requires both supportive cooperation and challenging competition. The more the child seeks addictive support, the more challenges it will attract to break its juvenile dependency or addiction. This is also why support groups without challenge groups are incomplete. The easier and more over protected the child’s life is, the more challenges and responsibilities the child will need to attract to make it grow. Nature provides such a wise balance to make all living things grow. This is the nature of the predator-prey food chain within all living ecosystems. Human beings would become bored by if they experienced too much ease and support and would become burned out if they experienced too much difficulty and challenge. Like for all supply and demand food chains within ecosystems, every species has and requires a predator that challenges them and prey that feed them. So too for all businesses, they require both predator to keep them on their toes and prey acquisitions and customers to feed them. Maximum growth and development of business occurs at the border of support and challenge, or cooperation and competition.

Businesses Must Value Both Customers and Competitors

It is wise for businesses to become grateful for their key competitors for they make them sharper and keener for novelty and birth innovation. It is also equally wise for businesses to be grateful for their cooperating acquisitions and customers for they make them fulfilled and satisfied and allow them to acquire economic resources. According to a basic principle of business development, if a business doesn’t seek those targeted challenges in the world that inspire its leaders, it will keep attracting those challenges that won’t. Wisdom is embracing both challenging competition and supportive cooperation with both open hearts and arms, knowing full well that both equally will assist in fulfilling business missions and services.

Reprinted with the permission of Dr. John Demartini, one of the world’s leading authorities on human behaviour and personal development. He is the founder of the Demartini Institute, a private research and education organization with a curriculum of over 72 different courses covering multiple aspects of human development. Listen to regularly updated podcasts delivered by Dr. Demartini and the Demartini Institute that highlight different aspects of leadership. Contact info@drdemartini.co.za for further information. www.drdemartini.com