A large part of the people who follow me are leaders, so I felt it was important to write about a topic few people talk about: the relationship between teamwork and sustainable growth.
In the business world, growth strategies are not optional if stability is the goal. To achieve stability, growth is mandatory.
Inflation is present in the life of all of us. Over time, things lose value, costs rise, and what was once enough stops being enough. In practice, if people, teams, businesses, organizations and even countries are not creating and delivering value, they are often falling behind by competition.
Growth is necessary simply to preserve position.
With that in mind, how do we design growth in business?
Newton’s first law, a physical law about objects and forces, tells us that motion continues unless something intervenes, and stillness persists unless something forces change.
Social theory reaches a similar conclusion through Kurt Lewin’s force field analysis: every human system is shaped by opposing forces. Some drive change, while others resist it. In practice, a person or people in teams tend to remain on their current path unless the forces pushing growth become stronger than the forces preserving comfort or power control.
For individuals, growth requires breaking old patterns, building vision, and creating new habits through counciouss effort. In organizations, growth requires vision, deliberate action, and the right incentives through leadership to overcome resistance and move people toward a better future state.
If you want to grow in a business, or grow a business, the people around you, your team, need to grow too. Sustainable growth does not come from being the only capable person in the room.
Leaders should be building capable people. You should want the people around you to become as successful, sharp, and powerful as you are. Strong people create strength. Weak people try to contain it.
This is not a local business preference. It is a global principle. The United Nations General Assembly recognized in SDG 8 that sustainability comes from promoting decent work and economic growth.
As a consultant, I have already seen situations in business that are deeply misaligned with any serious idea of growth. Some companies talk constantly about expansion, performance, and results, yet fail at the most basic level of organization: proper tools to work, a decent place to eat, a voice for their workers, or even a clean bathroom to meet their most basic human needs.
A business cannot expect commitment, energy, and excellence from people while denying them the minimum conditions to work with dignity. When leaders ignore that, what they are building is not sustainable growth, but a fragile structure resting on neglect. And this leads to strikes and, in the worst-case scenarios, as history has shown us, civil wars.
Everyone wants better conditions and a reliable path upward. A system that funnels gains to a few while leaving others trapped is not sustainable. It is fragile, resented, and destined to break.