Real growth compounds on all the efforts of previous years but is elusive for many businesses. It’s not that these businesses are not trying hard; it’s just that they don’t have the right roadmap for success.

 

Active Knowledge Question:

What are the fundamental principles that underpin the growth strategy of your business?

 

There is a lot of wastage by many businesses in pursuing growth. Some businesses chase every opportunity that crosses their path on the premise that any growth is good growth, any sale is a good sale, and any customer is a good customer.

We all, in the cold light of day, see the fallacy in these statements. But when you are under the pump to produce more revenue and profit, well, then any opportunity can look good. At least in the short-term.

Real growth is the activity:

• That builds upon your strengths.
• Is consistent with your competitive posture.
• Tracks along the growth path that you have set.
• Compounds on both previous successes and failures.

Real growth seeks to waste nothing.

Businesses that have real growth become stronger each and every day, to the point that they become unstoppable. To achieve this level of real growth, they have set their path and established the principles that will guide all of their activity – this is their roadmap for success.

 

Establishing Your Growth Path

Growth is a journey and is best seen as a winding path where you are continually weaving your way through in fulfilment of your purpose as a business. Visions are key milestones where, when achieved, you pause and reset before striking out again. Your business strategy is your intended path but, as we know, strategy is often emergent and not deliberate.

The element that is often missed and forgone is that growth is a single continuous journey that lifts the benefits of compounding to the surface.

You start creating your pathway by answering the question of ‘what are you building?’

It can be defined by the purpose for which your business was formed. But most businesses do not have a well-drafted purpose statement. So, I would recommend that you answer the following questions to get started:

1. What does your business do? Explain to someone who knows nothing about your business, what it is you do in your business.
2. What is your business really good at? In fact, better than anyone else. The one thing that you excel at.
3. Why do your customers keep coming back? At the core of it, why do you customers continue to use your product/service?
4. What value do you deliver to your customers? And by value, I mean the need that you really fulfil for your customers. For example, you may be a coffee shop, but people actually come to your shop because it’s where they meet up with their friends.

If you put the answers to those questions together, it will tell the story of the value you deliver to your customers, based upon what you do better than anyone else, and upon which you are able to outcompete others in your chosen market. These are the makings of your business strategy and the start of the pathway upon which you must build.

In compounding your growth, nothing is wasted or thrown away. Your view should be to build upon every action and lesson. It’s the age-old adage of ‘Yes, I became an overnight success, it just took me 10 years’.  Indeed, 10 years of trying different things and not giving up and building upon what has gone before.

You can only compound your growth if you have a strategic view of where you are going, how you intend to get there, and if your growth plans are built upon and deliver these intentions. ‘Just getting bigger’ does not support, nor allow, for strategic growth to build an enduring value that creates great businesses.

 

Principles For Real Growth That Compounds

You need not only create your pathway, but you must also establish the principles that will propel you along that pathway.

Real growth is about improving your strength so that your business can compete with greater impact. And the principles that you establish will provide the benchmark for the categories of activity that you must undertake.

The following broad categories will provide a context and starting point to develop growth plans that align with your strategy:

1. Build your leadership. A continual focus on building the traits of exceptional leaders in your business provides a cornerstone for growth. This impacts recruitment, promotion, training, and culture to start with, and are all areas of investment for growth.
2. Think and act strategically. Actions should not be random and should only opportunistic when consistent with your strategy. Your entire business must learn to think and act strategically. Communication across the entire business is essential. Tools, such as simple guiding principles, support strategic actions from the coal face and upwards.
3. Understand intimately your customers’ needs. Only through an intimate understanding of needs can you anticipate and create a future. Introducing new products/services must be led by a recognition of existing or future needs.
4. Make your products easy to buy. There are many channels to market and many more barriers to customers finding the experience of buying your products/services compelling and easy. This is a continual area for growth opportunities.
5. Drive your organisation’s performance. While competing is about effectiveness in the marketplace, efficiency is about the delivery. Both areas of performance require the mantra of ‘better every day’.
6. Continually grow your business. Renewal, stepping out and reinventing are attributes of growth. Creativity and innovation must be seeded and nurtured to support a culture of continual growth.
7. Expand globally. The construct of thinking globally is an energy you must instil in growth, whereby ideas and knowledge are drawn from around the world to lift the value you deliver.
8. Understand your numbers. Data is a window to understanding where you are and what opportunities and needs may exist. Investing time in knowing your numbers is a feature of intimately understanding your customers and your performance.

 

In bringing about real growth in your business, clearly establish the pathway that you are carving out of your competitive landscape and keep coming back to and delivering on the eight principles that underpin real growth.

What you can then achieve in your business will amaze you.

 

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All the best in the success of your business,

Richard Shrapnel