Good work doesn't have to be big work

image. winterson.co.uk

Somewhere along the way in the last couple of decades "scale" has become seen as essential for anyone in business. some sort of accolade. We have "scale up" coaches, books and countless examples of people who have scaled their business and sold it for a fortune.

There are however, very few of them in reality. If we measured businesses that achieve scale as a percentage of those who aspired to it, it would be a very small number. By definition, only so many businesses can scale - there's not room for many in finite markets, and everything we know about market share dominance tells us it's great for number one, break even for number two, and increasingly horrible for number three and below.

What if we aspired to good work instead? Something that makes a big difference to a few people, rather than a marginal difference to many. One whose whose ingredients for success - relationships, soul, community - will not scale directly, but whose influence will as those impacted…