The next level

What does a business need, deep down inside? If you got a company to climb onto the sofa and lay bare its deepest fears, what would it say?

I’ll tell you why I’m asking. I met a boss the other day who said that he wanted to “take his business to the next level”. I asked him what he meant by it and he confessed, with a rueful grin, that he didn’t know.

“Taking it to the next level”. At first I thought, lots of people say that and they all mean different things. Then I thought, what if they really mean the same thing? What if there are only a few levels? And that’s when I thought about Maslow.

We all know about Maslow’s hierarchy of human needs… so what would a company’s hierarchy of needs look like?

Here’s my stab at a company’s psyche.

Five levels of need. The first couple are obvious.

At the most basic level, even to be born in the first place, a business needs opportunity – something to sell and someone to sell it to. So it needs some elementary entrepreneurship, negotiation skills and basic supply skills.

Then, to become accepted and to feel like it belongs, a business needs repeat customers. So it needs named products or services, a certain level of quality, a business model that promises profit and cashflow, and processes to manage the repetition.

Next the company seeks safety and security. It begins to regulate itself with plans and budgets and organisation charts. It runs the risk of turning inward and neglecting the customer and the changes in the marketplace. Companies which were previously successful can plateau at this level.

Once a company feels secure, it will yearn for the esteem of others. It will seek to define itself, and attract loyalty, through a brand. To do this well requires insight into customers and the ability to innovate.

Finally, at the very top level, a company longs to be all it can be – to actualise itself, to play out its destiny, to astonish the world.

But how? How does a company move to the very top level?

The conventional answer? It’s about having a vision or a mission or (better, in my view) a profound purpose.

It’s a great help – to know exactly why you’re in business, and to care about it passionately – but that by itself doesn’t seem to be enough.

My answer is that it’s about massively over-committing to a few big opportunities.

Amazon doesn’t produce the only e-reader. Google doesn’t have the only search engine. Apple doesn’t make the only music player, smart phone or tablet computer. Sky isn’t the only digital broadcaster. Pixar aren’t the only animation company.

But they have seen possibilities, seized opportunities, and set about doing things better and bolder than anyone else.

That is what it takes to become a company of destiny. Watching, waiting, then going in all guns blazing.

It demands all sorts of contradictory and irrational behaviour: flexibility and determination, a narrow focus and wide-open curiosity, muscle and style, ruthless sacrifice and boundless love.

How very human.

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