The 4 Forces of Growth

We’re about a third of the way through this year, and it feels as if we’ve already burned a year’s worth of ener­gy. Many peo­ple have slipped into trou­bleshoot­ing, prob­lem solv­ing and piv­ot­ing with­in their busi­ness­es and I’ve seen some amaz­ing ways that teams have ral­lied to change, improve and come out stronger and more uni­fied. It’s incred­i­bly impressive.

So, now that we’ve made it through this ini­tial storm, the key is to make sure that we become mas­ters of pri­or­i­tiz­ing and focus­ing on what mat­ters most. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, when things become more chaot­ic — as they like­ly will be for a while – and there are many dif­fer­ent per­spec­tives and opin­ions, peo­ple often put their ener­gy where their log­ic tells them. And they won’t find out, until a few months down the road, that it might not have been the best choice. That’s when the dif­fer­ence between strate­gic thinkers and amaz­ing exe­cuters start to show up.

Some peo­ple, for what­ev­er rea­son, are bet­ter at fig­ur­ing out the high­er impact places to put their ener­gy, and what to leave alone. Whether this is you, or not, the key is to have the right tools to help you and your team pick what mat­ters the most — and to ensure you don’t get dis­tract­ed and delud­ed by log­i­cal thought in an illog­i­cal time.

Defy­ing Logic

From the begin­ning of record­ed his­to­ry, there have been peo­ple who pur­sued ideas and actions that defied log­ic. Like Leonar­do Da Vin­ci who con­ceived a fly­ing machine well before the Wright broth­ers took to the sky, or sci­en­tists in the 1700s who began to think that dis­ease was caused by micro-organ­isms rather than bad blood or bad air.

These unique peo­ple were drawn to hard, risky pur­suits that con­tained very lit­tle instant grat­i­fi­ca­tion and, in many cas­es, sus­tained strug­gle and sac­ri­fice. They were moti­vat­ed and inspired by the impact of their pur­suits and had the courage to push ahead — even when the log­ic of the day told them otherwise.

Last August, I start­ed work on a new book about this top­ic and, lit­tle did I real­ize that it would become incred­i­bly impor­tant six months lat­er. The premise of the book is to find a sim­ple way to help peo­ple to eval­u­ate their deci­sions – to tru­ly under­stand if their pri­or­i­ties real­ly help or hin­der their growth.

I’m fas­ci­nat­ed by peo­ple who do the unthink­able and con­tin­ue to defy log­ic, to per­se­vere and suc­ceed. After much research, I chose the anal­o­gy of flight and the pilots who defy grav­i­ty for extend­ed peri­ods of time. CEOs and pilots are very sim­i­lar, both from a lead­er­ship per­spec­tive and they ways they make amaz­ing things happen.

The 4 Forces of Growth

In an air­plane, pilots have to pay atten­tion to the prin­ci­ples of flight – Lift, Thrust, Weight and Drag:

• Lift is cre­at­ed by the wings and con­trast­ed by the weight of the plane and grav­i­ty. When you get lift and thrust you get altitude
• The thrust of the engines push­ing the plane for­ward is fought by drag, the resis­tance of air.

Pilots — just like a CEO – must pay atten­tion to these prin­ci­ples or they’ll quick­ly suc­cumb to the forces of gravity.

Here’s how this relates to the world of a CEO and leader:

• Lift hap­pens when lead­ers lift their heads to look at oppor­tu­ni­ties – the future pos­si­bil­i­ties that help the busi­ness to get to a high­er alti­tude of more rev­enue, more cus­tomers, more profit
• Weight are the prob­lems we get sucked into
• Thrust is the courage to push ahead, make deci­sions and get into action
• Drag is fear and doubt as we spend too much time con­tem­plat­ing, delay deci­sions and are less like­ly to act boldly.

Oppor­tu­ni­ties and Prob­lems, Fear and Courage are the 4 Forces of Growth that shape and define four states we can find our­selves in, at any giv­en time: Agony, Analy­sis, Growth and Improvement.

• Growth is the result of courage and oppor­tu­ni­ty: increased rev­enue, new cus­tomers, new prod­ucts, new ser­vices, new mar­kets. It’s solv­ing a prob­lem for some­body new or solv­ing a new prob­lem for some­one you already work with. It’s not about doing what you already do today – it’s about expand­ing in some way.

Growth is the account­abil­i­ty of CEOs who should be spend­ing most of their think­ing and action time in that box. And if the CEO is not, it’s very dif­fi­cult for the com­pa­ny to grow.

• Improve­ment is when you have the courage to move ahead but your ener­gy is focused on solv­ing prob­lems. While improve­ment is good, it won’t grow a busi­ness on its own. It can make cus­tomers hap­pi­er, improve mar­gins and costs, and stream­line oper­a­tions. It’s won­der­ful and equal­ly dangerous.

This box is nor­mal­ly owned by the COO who needs to be focused on mak­ing things bet­ter. The chal­lenge here is under­stand­ing the prob­lems that need to be solved and the prob­lems that need to be ignored. Know­ing how to make the deci­sion on which prob­lem to focus, or not, is the val­ue of an amaz­ing CEO or COO. (We’ll talk more about this, in future.)

You could stay in this box all day long and that’s the risk because prob­lems nev­er go away. In many com­pa­nies we work with, that are real­ly focused on growth, we leave a cou­ple of per­cent in the expense struc­ture of the busi­ness for prob­lems that we con­tin­ue to pay for, so that we can real­lo­cate more ener­gy into growth. These are strate­gic deci­sions that gen­er­al­ly only a good CEO can make — to not solve prob­lems and to not opti­mize all their costs so that they can grow health­ily and quickly.

• Analy­sis is on the oth­er side of courage. This is where you look at oppor­tu­ni­ties but you’re fear­ful or hes­i­tant to make a deci­sion. This box is gen­er­al­ly mas­tered by the CFO – the yin to the CEOs yang — who chal­lenges and throws real­i­ty and prac­ti­cal­i­ty at some of the CEOs strat­e­gy think­ing. That’s why the CEO or CFO pair­ing is so critical.

A cer­tain amount of analy­sis is very good. We need it but, at a cer­tain point, we also need to make a deci­sion, a test or a move, so only being an analy­sis obvi­ous­ly isn’t good. The ques­tion is how much do we need?

Depend­ing on the CEO, this can vary. If you have a very growth-ori­ent­ed, vision­ary CEO more analy­sis is often need­ed for bal­ance. And a fair­ly ana­lyt­i­cal CEO might not lead as much on the CFO for addi­tion­al analysis.

• Agony hap­pens when you’re a fear­ful vic­tim, stuck in prob­lems, and inde­ci­sive. This is analy­sis paral­y­sis – a very painful place where prob­lems become over­whelm­ing and you can’t find your way out. This is pos­si­bly the most dan­ger­ous state of all because it can degrade the men­tal health of indi­vid­u­als, of teams and, in a worst-case sce­nario, the entire company.

To move across the line into improve­ment, you need to find – or bor­row or rent — the courage to do something.

Gen­er­al­ly, audit/​legal/​compliance own this box, and they need to look at prob­lems, in order to keep us from get­ting into trou­ble. While we need to be com­pli­ant, and aware of the prob­lems that can real­ly hurt us, we also need to make deci­sions and move ahead. You don’t grow a busi­ness here.

A Mat­ter of Time

As you look at this mod­el, where is your time spent?

Some CEOs would say they want to be 80% growth, 9% analy­sis, 9% improve­ment and 2% agony. And oth­ers — depend­ing on the state of their busi­ness and the strength of their team — might be 40% growth, 10% analy­sis, 40% improve­ment and 10% agony.

While there’s no right answer here, the key is being con­scious of where you and your team actu­al­ly spend your time, and to make sure your focus is in the right place.

The real­i­ty is that you just can’t expect to have a com­pa­ny that grows 30% per year, year on year, if the CEO spends 10% of their time in the growth box.

Red Flags

When we do strate­gic plan­ning ses­sions with com­pa­nies, we always try to make sure there’s enough ener­gy allo­cat­ed to the Growth box for the com­pa­ny to reach its goals. And, obvi­ous­ly, we’re always ana­lyz­ing and improv­ing things, in the busi­ness, so that it gets stronger as it gets bigger.

A red flag is when the CEO of a grow­ing com­pa­ny spends too much time admin­is­ter­ing or ana­lyz­ing their busi­ness, ver­sus doing the things that cre­ate growth.

Some­times these are easy dis­trac­tions that may cre­ate a lot of noise and seem impor­tant, but they aren’t the best use of your time.

In our next blog post, we’ll dig fur­ther into the right-hand side of mod­el: how to know in which of your growth oppor­tu­ni­ties and your improve­ment oppor­tu­ni­ties you should invest – and which to ignore.

The Chal­lenge

• Think about how much time you spend in the growth box. What would be ideal?
• How much time do you spend in the improve­ment, analy­sis and agony boxes?
• Now think about your team. How much of your time do they spend in these areas and what would be ideal?