The Most Dangerous Place for a Company to Get Stuck

There’s a quad­rant I explain in my new book, The 4 Forces of Growth, that feels pro­duc­tive, respon­si­ble, even admirable. Peo­ple get praised for work­ing in it. Lead­ers build dash­boards around it. Boards reward it. Cus­tomers love it.

And yet — it’s the most dan­ger­ous place for a grow­ing com­pa­ny to get stuck.

It’s the Improve­ment Quad­rant.

Improve­ment is seduc­tive because it’s safe, pre­dictable, and con­trol­lable. You fix some­thing, you get a pat on the back, and the orga­ni­za­tion runs a lit­tle smoother. It’s the busi­ness equiv­a­lent of clean­ing out your inbox: it feels great, but it doesn’t move the com­pa­ny forward.

In fact, too much improve­ment actu­al­ly pulls the orga­ni­za­tion away from growth.

Why Improve­ment Feels So Good — And Why It Holds You Back

As com­pa­nies scale, the cen­ter of grav­i­ty shifts down­ward toward improve­ment. Every­thing in the sys­tem push­es you there:

• Annu­al prof­it targets
• Effi­cien­cy metrics
• Bonus struc­tures
• Cus­tomer sat­is­fac­tion scores
• “Quick wins” that make every­one feel smart and capable

Improve­ment becomes intox­i­cat­ing. Lead­ers feel pro­duc­tive, teams feel suc­cess­ful, and every­one can point to mea­sur­able progress.

The prob­lem?
You can­not improve your way to real growth.

You can fix prob­lems all day long and still nev­er cre­ate any­thing new. Improve­ment is about mak­ing what already exists bet­ter. Growth is about step­ping into what doesn’t yet exist.

They require entire­ly dif­fer­ent muscles.

Growth Lives Out­side Your Com­fort Zone

Growth, by def­i­n­i­tion, asks more of you:

• More courage
• More risk
• More unknowns
• More vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty

It forces you to leave the world you can con­trol and enter the world you absolute­ly can’t.

That’s why so many orga­ni­za­tions uncon­scious­ly retreat back into improve­ment. It’s safe. It’s pre­dictable. It’s com­fort­able. Nobody gets fired for mak­ing some­thing 5% better.

But nobody builds the future that way, either.

A Sto­ry of Choos­ing Growth Over Comfort

One of my favorite exam­ples from The 4 Forces of Growth is the Lit­tle Pota­to Com­pa­ny. Angela San­ti­a­go and her team didn’t grow because they per­fect­ed their exist­ing process­es. They grew because they took bold swings—bets that weren’t guar­an­teed, weren’t com­fort­able, and def­i­nite­ly weren’t with­in their control.

Their suc­cess came from lean­ing into growth behav­iors: explor­ing new mar­kets, tak­ing cal­cu­lat­ed risks, and mak­ing coura­geous deci­sions that improve­ment-focused orga­ni­za­tions typ­i­cal­ly avoid.

They didn’t choose the safe path.
They chose the growth path.

And that’s the lesson.

Beware the Pull of the Improve­ment Quadrant

If you want sus­tained growth, you have to keep your orga­ni­za­tion out of the grav­i­ta­tion­al pull of improve­ment. Yes — fix what’s bro­ken, tune what needs tun­ing. But don’t con­fuse that with build­ing the future.

Growth hap­pens when lead­ers inten­tion­al­ly step into uncer­tain­ty, sur­round them­selves with peo­ple who thrive in it, and cre­ate space for bold, uncom­fort­able action.

Improve­ment main­tains.
Growth trans­forms.

And every leader must choose which path they want their com­pa­ny to travel.

If you want to go deep­er into the 4 Forces and learn how to apply them in real time with your team, join me for a free 60-minute live webi­nar this Thurs­day, Novem­ber 20^th at 10:30am PST / 1:30pm EST. I’ll walk through the mod­el, share prac­ti­cal tools, and answer your ques­tions live. Reg­is­ter to attend here.

Addi­tion­al Resources:

• Video: 4‑minute Overview of the 4 Forces of Growth
• The 4 Forces of Growth: Why I Wrote This Book
• The 4 Forces of Growth: Learn­ing to Pre­dictably Scale Your Business
• Keep­ing Your Eye on the Growth Prize: How Not to Get Dis­tract­ed in the Chaos of Growth