So where are you taking your business in 2018 and beyond?
In striking out in 2018, you will require an identified path of growth, the pursuit of possibilities (not just certainties), and a path with clear stepping stones that create a domino effect.
Active Knowledge Question:
Have you identified the stepping stones that will lead your business to greater success this year and thereafter?
Growth
The only action that guarantees the future success of your business is change. Past success does not guarantee a future of success, and to rely on what worked last year, or for the many years before that, is to risk the future of your business.
Growth means change and continuing growth means constant change. But change has to track, and preferably lead, the course of customer need and increasing value.
If we are unsure of this reality, then look to the example of Xerox. Once a leading technology company, Xerox is now set to merge with Fuji as both struggle to find a secure footing for their future success. This is what happens when businesses, no matter how large or successful, do not continually grow and evolve.
But growth is not simply about getting bigger. There is an unspoken belief that when we talk of growth in business, we mean ‘getting bigger’ and making more sales and profit. But this paradigm drives all the wrong outcomes. If you are uncertain about what growth really is, my earlier article The Many Facets of Business Growth will unpack this for you.
Growth is about getting stronger – in vitality, durability and impact – but also means being more competitively fit each and every year. Competitively fit is the capability to continually out-compete all others in your chosen marketplace through creating ways to provide greater customer value than anyone else.
Is your business is competitively fit?
Take my benchmark test ‘Are You Wasting Your Money On Growth?’ to find out.
The Possible and Impossible
When you consider all the opportunities for growth before you, you must ensure they include not just the possible but the impossible.
Growth based upon a percentage increase in last year’s sales is the road to nowhere. Yes, it will keep you going in the short-term but tends to only produce more of the same. And that path will lead you further away from meeting customer needs and finding opportunities.
Think of it this way, more of the same is looking backwards. It’s only building from what has been done before. Being competitively fit requires you to out-perform everyone else and that means discovering new ways of delivering greater customer value to existing and new markets. And that is the realm of new thinking.
So, as you look to growth options, how are you ensuring your business is capable of, and is, discovering news ways of taking customer value to an entirely new level?
If you are struggling to find ‘the impossible’, this article will start you down the right path, Allowing Your Imagination To Find Opportunities For Growth.
Cutting edge creativity requires a process of pulling apart everything that presently exists into its constituent parts (destructive deduction) and then the reassembling of a new offering to create a new level of customer value (creative induction). But critically this process must be viewed through the lens of your core customer persona to yield a rich field of growth opportunities.
And, of course, opportunities that represent no real change or challenge only attract, at most, an equivalent amount of energy and enthusiasm. Growth requires an unabated enthusiasm, which only comes through exciting challenges.
Stepping Stones
Action requires movement. And movement is best commenced slowly building a momentum until it becomes unstoppable. But this requires a sequential progression with each step naturally and logically leading to the next step.
But many business’s growth plans consist of chasing a whole range of possibilities at the same time with resources and energy divided across all of these. The question you must ask yourself is – are you really giving your business a fair chance of delivering on growth? Is your approach to growth going to deliver the best outcome?
The analogy of the falling dominos is a great one to aspire to. A single domino is capable of toppling another domino 50% larger in what is referred to as a ‘geometric domino progression’. It is a compounding effect but one where the compounding rate is 150%.
Imagine the effect of compounding at a rate of 150% and then apply that to each step of your growth plan.
If you set your plans for growth premised upon a single big outcome, map each step in achieving that outcome, and then focus on completing each step leading to the next, you will find a momentum building that can deliver outcomes you never thought possible.
The future success of your business requires that you:
- Adopt change as the cornerstone of growth.
- Explore the possible and impossible in developing your growth plans.
- Settle on a plan that will excite and engage your entire business.
- Lay out the stepping stones to achieve the growth outcomes sought.
- Deliver them with a single-minded focus.
Summer Reading
Here in Australia, we’ve just come out of our summer break. Over the months of December and January, Compete Weekly provided a selection of thought pieces to support leaders in developing their growth strategies. Here is the first of these articles, How Are You Keeping Your Business Fit And Alive?
Are your business’s growth plans in the shape they need to be?
We’re here to Compete.
Does your business know how to Compete?
Join the Entrepreneurs+ Community to learn how.
All the best in the success of your business,
Richard Shrapnel
