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Matt Perez

"Do You Want to Grow Your Company?"

Posted by Matt Perez on 02/02/2013 in workplace democracy , workplace culture , growth

It was a strange but valid question.  In my neck of the woods, we pretend it is a non-question.  But it is valid, and non-trivial.  Particularly if you also ask why?

How would you answer it?  The answer I gave surprised me :)

The MBA student doing research for his thesis honestly wanted to know if we wanted to grow the company or keep the status quo.  We are forced to grow, I said, the company's noble cause requires that we do so.

In order to promote technology entrepreneurship to all corners of Mexico/Latin America/the World, we need to grow our footprint.  It may not result in traditional company growth but somehow we do have to grow the number of people who embrace failure and see it as an opportunity to learn, not something to forget as quickly as possible.  We have to get schools to assign "Build an app to help people in Chiapas become more prosperous" as the class project and not "Build a payroll application."  We have to spin off more technology businesses around us that aim to solve big, hairy, audacious problems, not just another flashlight app.

The yearning to try things out is there, hiding in plain sight.  Playfulness is abundant, and latent.  The culture of entrepreneurship is all around us, and mostly contained.  Our job is to start to take down the barriers that have been built up over a long period of success through conformity.

"Not sure if we want to grow, but we have to."

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MBA student
0
Thank you for your answer and sharing your goals with me, I would like to contribute in some part of it
Manuel Agraz , 02/06/2013 10:51:01
Re: MBA student
Matt Perez
The interview was very fruitful. I welcome and thank you for your contribution.
Matt Perez , 02/06/2013 10:55:20

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