I recently found myself in conversation with a CEO who didn’t know why his amazing company has stopped growing.
After reviewing high-level financials, over the last 10 years, and their annual strategic plan, I could see that although their business was healthy and their profit margins excellent, they had made one of the big and fatal mistakes of growth.
Looking In vs Looking Out
Now, this company takes excellent care of their existing customers, who, judging by their customer satisfaction scores, love them.
And no wonder. They put a lot of effort into solving operational challenges and improving systems and tools to take amazing care of them. But, over time, that obsession has evolved into an internal focus on short-term performance.
As they succumbed to the internal pressures of running a big and busy business that performs well, they stopped looking out to pursue the new customers that would ensure their long-term growth.
The Dilemma of the Day to Day
Again and again, we see that, when we’re inside all the chaos of running a high-performing company, calendars get filled with taking care of the day to day. When there’s always so much to do, everything looks like a priority, and we don’t realize that we’re turning off the resources we need to run a growth engine.
Their drive to become masterful at being a better and a higher-performing organization was clear.
And so was the way out of this day-to-day dilemma.
The Path Forward is in Right Strategic Plan
In my conversation with the CEO – who agreed with my assessment – the company had lost sight of becoming bigger.
They needed to fill the gap in their strategic plan and put at least one third of their focus on actually growing the business: adding new customers, product lines, locations or partnerships to drive them to be a bigger organization.
It was time to get these smart, capable people in a room, for a couple of days, to zoom out – to look at the big picture and the growth possibilities and then reset their strategic plan for the next three to five years.
With a focus on achieving long-term, sustainable growth – while keeping their customers happy – choosing the two or three things that can make the biggest difference to their sustainable health of the firm becomes a new and better priority.
The Challenge
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- When you look at your strategic plan and targets for the next three to five years, is there enough focus and allocation of resources to growth (becoming a bigger organization and not just getting better?
Other Blogs
- How to Get the Most from Your Strategic Planning Process
- Strategic Planning: 15 minutes, 15 months, 15 years
- Does Your Strategic Plan Really Drive Growth – or Just Improvement?
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