Bigger VS Better

SurveyMonkey spent almost a billion dollars in three years, didn’t grow, and still posted losses. How come?

Bigger isn’t always better.

Bigger

We like ‘bigger’. Bigger gets you on the cover of Inc Magazine. Bigger makes you move to Silicon Valley and go on hiring sprees. Bigger is “successful”.

But bigger isn’t always profitable. Often the opposite is true, training a team to get good at spending money for a living, rather than earning it.

And bigger isn’t always impactful. Usually, cause-driven contributions are not only absent, but an immoral misrepresentation of investor funding.

So if ‘bigger’ doesn’t help you generate profit and make an impact, what’s the alternative?

Better

We don’t often look at ‘better’ very much. ‘Better’ doesn’t make headlines in quite the same way.

There may not be as many zeros in ‘better’s earnings report. And spending time away from their core competencies to create a sustainable, meaningful impact in the lives of their team and their communities doesn’t move them any close to making those zeros happen.

But it’s ‘better’ that tends to change the culture. ‘Better’ is what takes responsibility for real problems, with the freedom to tackle them without shareholder judgement.

Being both ‘bigger’ and ‘better’ is also an option. But your culture is determined in part by how you’d choose, if it were a choice.