Ask Your Local Corporate Behemoth: Is Mo Betta Mo Betta?

This is a question that was inspired, in no small part, by Tom Peter's new book, Re-Imagine, the one I got all sweaty about the other day--and I hadn't even cracked Chapter One--and by my latest NetFlick, Supersize Me!

In this documentary, filmmaker Morgan Spurlock eats McDonald's products at every meal break. Whenever the option to "supersize" his meal is offered he accepts. (For those of you who haven't been in a McDonald's in a LONG time, "to Supersize" means to opt for gargantuan portions of what you ordered, for pennies more.)

Spurlock, being a healthy man of average weight, barfed up his meal the first time he supersized; he could hardly get the portions down. But after a while he grew--literally--to tolerate such oversized portions, at the expense of his health. By the end of his month-long experiment he gained 25 pounds, pickled his liver and was severely depressed.

This movie condemns McDonald's, and more generally the fast-food industry. But even more generally it condemns the American--and increasingly global--ethic of bigger being better. We like our space, we like our houses to look like palaces, we want to buy things at Costco simply because we can get more for our money--even if we will never finish a mile of Fruit Leather.

I once wrote a travel piece on the Dutch Antilles and toured a number of hotels. Touring the restaurants and more "contemporary" facilities, hotel staff boasted at how large the bathrooms were to accommodate American guests. The rooms were big, but ugly, like the lounge of my grandparents' favorite early-bird-special spot in central Florida. Who really cares if one can hear an echo while on the john?

My dear friend the organizational consultant Gloria Schaaf pointed it out to me in sartorial terms,

"The general desire of Americans is to get the most for their money. Mind you, I didn't say the best for their money, I said the most. They want purses in ten different colors and to cart crappily-made pleather shoes home because they were on sale. They mistake possessions for valuables. Give me a good $400 pair of shoes that I can wear everywhere and that last for years. Give me good quality, and I'll just take one home."

How unpatriotic of her.

So how does this relate to business? Tom Peters points out that no superhuge company has ever had true lasting power (OK, there was one out of more than 100, but those odds aren't exactly good). Big companies lose what made them great in the first place--their vision and nimblemindedness. In the end, growth becomes not a measure of value but a means of survival via gorging on empty calories, via purchasing cheap knockoffs merely for the sake of acquiring.

From a psychosocial standpoint it seems our natural tendency to continually get bigger is more a subconscious deathwish than a growth strategy. Think of the other side to the bipolar American ethic: Root for the underdog.

If anything--a company, a celebrity, a trend--gets too big, knock 'em down a peg; that's our motto. The only way back up is by hitting the bottom and then having some sort of Come to Jesus--a cooler, completely uncharacteristic new product, a Behind the Music episode where you tell your story of heroin abuse and Scientology, or you mock your original premise and ride the wave of your own backlash. But even if you succeed you better keep it real this time--go Independent or nonprofit. Stay small.

I wonder why we even have to bother to get big at all. It seems like such a circuitous path to finding the real deal. But then, it's in our national/generational/egotistical DNA to get bigger, somehow.

If we must grow I propose a new way. We don't grow bigger or taller or richer, and we certainly don't grow up. We have nowhere to grow but inward.