Natural Systems

Systems -

I'm on a systems kick so just run with me a little. A tree can be any number of different sizes, different trees can differ in any number of ways, but almost all trees have something in common and that is that they mirror business perfectly. Lets take a common look at a tree. It starts out small and grows, it takes in water and CO2, performs photosynthesis and grows. It gains branches supported by a widening truck and grows. It gets hit by a storm and may loose a branch or two but, if it can stand through, it will continue to grow after the storm. Every leaf is almost identical, with almost identical process's happening inside of them, and yet some trees get to be very old and very large. The intriguing part is that even on these very old, very large trees the leaves are still the same size and still performing the same function at about the same level as all of the other leaves and all of the leaves from the past (no matter what size the tree is or was).

Sometimes we build business' that are only leaves, they act like grass and when winter comes they die, each and every year they go completely dormant. Sometimes we build business' that are like cacti, almost all trunk with no leaves, they plod on no matter what the conditions are like but they very rarely produce fruit. Then there is a good healthy oak tree. It weathers winter with a large base and expansive root system even when the leaves are doing nothing for it. It produces copious amounts of acorns year in and year out and is extremely scalable having the ability to grow to massive sizes.

I'm not trying to be all philosophical here, I really want to consider what type of business I am growing. If I need to eat then I need to plant a tree that actually produces fruit. If I have no time to tend to a tree I can just drop in a cactus and whenever it produces something it is a nice bonus. If I'm already sustainable I can plant a crop of grass realizing that I will get a fantastic, quick, return but it will all die as soon as winter comes. It is worthless to curse at a cactus and tell it to produce fruit, it is worthless to curse an oak for not giving out a crop in the first year it was planted, it is worthless to curse grass for dying every year.

What are you growing, do you know the structure, do you know the crop cycle, do you know the strengths and weakness's? It is worthless to try and get a leaf to grow into a tree or get a single leaf to supply for the entire system. What are your leaves? What are your roots? Make sure you know so you can inspect what you expect.