There Is No Such Thing As Equilibrium In Business

* This article by MashTank’s founder, Michael White, originally appeared in Forbes.

In business, there is no such thing as equilibrium. Your company either has more sales than capacity to fulfill or more capacity than sales.

Even in moments where equilibrium feels present, it is fleeting. You’ll lose a client, or someone will go on vacation and lose some capacity for a week. Not only is it fleeting (possibly even a myth), but it’s also undesirable.

Equilibrium is not the goal. Growth is the goal. And growth and equilibrium are enemies.

Let’s imagine, for a moment, a see-saw. On one side is sales; on the other side is capacity or fulfillment. Let’s also pretend this see-saw is hooked to a water pump. Every time the see-saw changes position, water flows.

Your company is always on this see-saw. And that’s how you want it to be. Stillness, “balance,” is comfort. It’s stagnation. Movement, however, in either direction, means growth.

Now, you might be thinking about being on the “too much capacity, not enough sales” side—therefore possibly losing money to teams without taking in enough revenue. This is still desirable compared to the myth of balance. It’s nerve-wracking because growth requires change and discomfort, two things humans instinctually detest.

But being on this end (on either end, really) of the see-saw prompts progress. Expansion. Improvement. High achievers know that all growth goes through the door of change and discomfort. Acknowledging this, that fear is an essential and desirable part of the equation, can free us to focus on growing and addressing whichever side of the see-saw needs it most. All the way until we flip to the other side, and the cycle of productive adaptation continues.

In his book Tribes: We Need You To Lead Us, Seth Godin posits, “The status quo is persistent and resistant. It exists because everyone wants it to. Everyone believes that what they’ve got is probably better than the risk and fear that come with change.”

So now that we’ve established that growth (change, discomfort) is the goal, we get to the action items.

How do we keep the see-saw moving, keep things from breaking during the process and continue expanding?

The answer is simpler than most people make it out to be.

When your business is imbalanced, you must find a way to make the lesser side improve. And not a small improvement (that might bring us to balance/stagnation, which we don’t want). It needs to be big enough to make the next change imminent and unavoidable. Otherwise, your growth will be smaller than it could be. Incremental growth is prone to comfortable small-mindedness.

Let’s imagine you’ve invested in technology and your capacity doubles tomorrow. You go from being able to deliver 100 units a month to 200. Your sales team is providing 110 units a month in demand. They used to be a bit salty about losing that 10% before—when capacity couldn’t handle it, or they’d need to firefight clients about delivery expectations.

Now, with your doubled capacity and 110/200 units a month, your sales team is sitting idle about 45% of the time. You, as a leader, are staring at machines and teams getting quite good at playing solitaire and forwarding viral videos because they’re bored.

The answer is not to reduce the workforce, as tempting and simple as that seems. The answer is to increase sales. How much? Easy: more than double. Aim to exceed your capacity, not meet it, to keep the see-saw moving. That’s what makes the water flow, remember? And you’ll breeze by balance without the chance to be seduced by it.

Every time you switch who is on top of the see-saw, change becomes unavoidable, and water flows faster.

Do I need to say outright that the water has been a metaphor for revenue? Your business runs on this water, and therefore requires change. Enough change that the see-saw is always moving, always flowing faster.

I’m not some distant theorist who’s never successfully run a business—I understand this isn’t foolproof. Of course, creating too much of a chasm between sales and fulfillment causes breakage. For instance, if you triple sales and leave capacity alone, your fulfillment teams will quit because of burnout.

It’s not about shifting the balance to break things—it’s about shifting the balance at the risk of breakage and practicing adaptability. Change, after all, has been the goal. Change, and our ability to embrace it, is how we grow.

If you’re willing to be mindful and purposeful about this process, you can enroll your entire company in it and teach them to embrace the discomfort of imbalance.

When I see businesses who are willing to embrace the see-saw, I see beautiful results—and not just on the P+L. I see people moving into proactive postures, looking for ways to bring their side past the other side. I’ve seen a sales manager start talking to their team about the “blank check” their fulfillment team gave them by increasing capacity and watching the sales increase. I’ve seen a services firm adopt AI and concurrently open up entirely new lines of business to create the capacity for their outperforming sales team.

When it’s time for you to do this in your company (now), follow these steps.

1. Figure out what side of the see-saw needs help.

2. Map the basic process of (sales or fulfillment).

3. Identify the spot(s) where there is leakage or a bottleneck (friction).

4. Attack en masse (swarm)—throw whatever you can at the issues—reduce the friction to increase the flow.

5. Adapt. Repeat.

When we begin to accept that balance is a myth—that all growth goes through the doorway of discomfort—revenue comes from the movement of the see-saw, and it gets a whole lot easier to rally the team around your goals. More daring goals. Measurable goals.

In total, this process can give you a new measuring stick by which to measure success and help remove the fear that wants to keep you stagnant. When you release your grip on comfort, you can step through the threshold to greater success.

* This article by MashTank’s founder, Michael White, originally appeared in Forbes.