Perhaps, by seeking endless youth, we’re missing the benefits of maturity

In the natural world, growth is never endless. Things begin, grow, mature, fade, and die. Why should we imagine that our human constructions like corporations and careers should be exempt from this universal law?

Many people are attracted to the benefits of a more “natural” way of life: organic foods, free from so many artificial (and often harmful) ingredients; clothing made from natural materials; a lifestyle that includes periods spent in purely natural environments. Why not “organic” careers and businesses? Why not accept that everything in this universe has a natural cycle of growth, maturity, and decay?

That’s certainly not what happens currently. Rather than allow products, systems, or career paths to run their course and be replaced by others, there’s a frantic straining after eternal youth. Even network TV shows — especially the most repetitive and long-drawn-out series — continually advertise additional episodes as “all new,” right to the point where the series dies from lack of interest.

In the natural cycle, youth is typically brief

In most creatures and living systems, the period of rapid growth from birth to maturity is rather short. The majority of the most creatures’ lifespan is spent in the period of low or nil physical growth we call maturity, ending in another brief period of decline into eventual death. Only certain insects spend long periods immature, ending in a frantic adulthood of non-stop sex, sometimes lasting only a few hours or days.

Even human beings, who have a far longer period childhood and youthful immaturity that nearly all other creatures, face at least half of their lives (maybe as much as three quarters, given today’s extended lifespan) as physically mature adults.

Trying to prolong youth artificially is not just difficult and expensive (and, in the human case, often somewhat ridiculous); it robs us of time to enjoy the benefits of maturity. It’s as if we either yearn always to be young (an impossibility), or jump directly from youth to death, without anything in between.

Our obsession with youth and growth is becoming neurotic. Unending individual “growth” has become a shibboleth — a sacred cow. There is surely a time to grow, but that time — like all other stages of life — will pass. Trying to keep it in place is trying to make time stand still.

Our obsession with growth may be based on a simple misunderstanding

Physical growth is not the only kind. When we focus on youth, we focus primarily on the physical. Mental growth, the growth of wisdom and understanding, is the “growth” task of maturity. Even in physical terms, we know that the human brain does not become fully formed until the late teens or early twenties — just about the time when physical growth stops.

It’s pretty much the same with a career. At the start, there is a rapid addition of basic skills. Only after this is complete can the longer — and often more important — process begin: adding experience and know-how to turn a newly qualified person into an acknowledged expert. If we really believe in the primacy of youth, we should all ask to have a just-qualified surgeon with no experience conduct any operation we must undergo.

Maturity has the more vital tasks

The period of maturity is there to allow us enjoy and utilize what life has to offer — and nurture the next generation.

Instead of trying to be young for ever, we ought to be focused on how best we can nurture a coming generation to take over and extend our own accomplishments. It’s a common piece of management folk-wisdom that the main job of any leader is to produce his or her successors. But, while this is honored in words, it’s rather rarely translated into deeds.

Rather than encouraging potential successors, many leaders try to keep them down for as long as possible, just to maintain their dominance — just as they squelch new ideas in favor of whatever they can put their own name to. Even those who most benefited from a mentor on their own way to the top don’t always extend the same help to those below them.

But isn’t growth essential to any business?

The assumption that next quarter’s/year’s/decade’s results must always exceed the last is just that — an assumption. Aside from sufficient monetary growth to offset inflation, anything else is simply the wish of investors to see their piles of money increase constantly. Even to accomplish that, growth isn’t always the best way.

I recall a British TV program, aired quite a few years ago, in which a supposed leadership guru was paid to offer on-screen advice to the top teams of other companies.

The guru visited a specialist maker of sports cars that relied on retro styling and a reputation for old-fashioned excellence and exclusivity. The guru ranted on and on about how to produce more vehicles — until he was brought up short by a flat refusal by the corporate team to listen any further. Growth in production, they explained, would destroy the very exclusivity they were selling. Sure, customers typically had to wait two years to get a new vehicle, but that was part of the car’s mystique. Take it away and you had little left other than a nice, slightly old-fashioned car.

The guru couldn’t grasp the concept and left, muttering about obstructive management and people who resisted change.

Selling more may not be worth it, if the result will be to reduce your product or service from something that carries a premium price to a mere commodity. Look at Apple computers. I’m sure they could find ways to make more and price them lower, but would it actually be a benefit?

Trying to produce extra growth artificially can be a disaster

Plants offer a good example. It’s possible to stimulate excessive growth by piling on the fertilizer. The plants appear to be lush and healthy, but it’s an illusion. All that extra growth is soft and weak. At the first touch of frost or bad weather, it collapses, leaving the plant an exhausted mess, unable to grow back.

That is almost a perfect analogy for what has been happening in the world of business recently. There has been a period of hyperactive, excessive growth, fueled by the artificial stimulus of easy credit. Now rough times have arrived and those seemingly lush and healthy organizations are collapsing into blackened misery, like dahlias caught by an early frost.

Let’s hear it for maturity: the stage of life that is our true goal.

Much of peoples’ frantic activity is about trying to turn the clock back — or at least stop it advancing. We know that young people are active and engaged in growing, so we try to copy them in the attempt to make ourselves young again. We also fear death. To preserve our existence, we crave constant growth — the opposite, as we imagine, of death and decay.

Maturity means you have at last reached your correct state. It is the goal of youth, not a sign of coming decay, to be delayed as long as possible. It should be a time to be enjoyed; the culmination of everything you have done up to then. If you try to put it off, you risk jumping directly from grow to decline, with no period in between to enjoy all that you built.

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