Can't force individual growth
But we need to all the time
People are an integral part of systems. When you want to improve systems, it's natural to think you need to improve the people that are involved too.
However as you may know from experience, it's not how it works.
The more you try and push people, the more the chance of it not working. There are typically 2 types of “force” applied to individual growth. The first and more common kind is by using some kind of pressure tactics like creating competition, pushing towards targets, etc. the second kind is a “pull” approach, where situations and exposure to experiences are created for their growth. Encouragement and experiential learning is the way here.
However, both take time. Just as you cannot force a plant out of a seed, you cannot pull someone's genius out just like that.
This takes time. There are a few things you can do to speed it up a bit, but it still takes time. Different people also grow slower or faster.
The key it seems is to find the right mix for each person and relentlessly apply it on them. Traditionally, that's the role of a live Guru. To be able to deliver the right concoction at the right time, so it becomes easy for you.
In conducting business, these look like fancy ideas. We would like to replace people with better people if required. However, this limits to the available talent pool. Also, for completely new ventures, it's best to have raw hands that you take along with you on your voyage to profit and scale.
Which way do you prefer for your business?
We boil at different degrees.
— Ralph Waldo Emerson