I’m always harping on the idea that businesses don’t have to grow. The U.S. economy doesn’t have to be growing by leaps and bounds to be healthy. Sometimes things shrink. It might be painful, but it’s not the end of the world. I think they call it pruning. That constant growth everyone seems to expect isn’t sustainable. Some people even call it greed.

That’s what Semco CEO Ricardo Semler says in his book Maverick: The Success Story Behind the World’s Most Unusual Workplace:

A few years ago, I struggled with an opportunity to acquire a company with five plants and 2,000 employees. “Why do we want to grow more?” I asked myself. Are we going to be better for it?”…

It’s all about persistence, isn’t it? But where does persistence end and obsession begin? How high is too high? How big is too big? Of course, some growth is necessary for any business to keep up with competitors and provide new opportunities for its people. But so often it is power and greed and plain stubbornness that make bigger automatically seem better…

Semco has learned that to want to grow big just to be big is a catch … Much about growth is really about ego and greed, not business strategy. (excerpted by 37signals)

If Semler sounds familiar, I quoted him saying something similar a while back (also found via 37signals). That’s two references to the guy—maybe it’s time to read his book.