When is big enough, big enough?

I'm reading Eugene Peterson's Under the Unpredictable Plant at the moment and in it, he talks about organisational growth. I'd thought I'd share the basic idea here, it is quite profound.

Western culture is obsessed with size, we tend to blow up a balloon till it bursts. Our biggest goal is to build businesses that are infinitely scaleable, anything less is viewed as a failure. But, Peterson writes, things have an appointed size, a specific plant can only grow so big before it collapses, fruit can only grow so large before it becomes tasteless (anyone that has had those huge pieces of fruit in the US will tell you that they look beautiful, but taste like cardboard).

Growth can be measured in more than numbers, taste, for example, maturity, wisdom, health... but we are like teenagers, obsessed with how big our bodies are growing (especially certain parts).

What size should your organisation be? What is the optimal size? What are you measuring when you talk about growth?

Good questions these.

Get skin in the game, think more about 'growth.'