Growth Isn’t What You Think It Is

I’ve been doing a lot of speak­ing this year on The 4 Forces of Growth, and while the rooms are full of peo­ple who want to grow, there’s a ques­tion that usu­al­ly kills the conversation:

Usu­al­ly, the room goes qui­et. Peo­ple point to their cal­en­dars or their ​“align­ment” meet­ings. But growth isn’t an aspi­ra­tion or a strat­e­gy deck — it’s a set of con­crete actions.

The Growth Quad­rant Trap

In the 4 Forces mod­el, we talk about allo­cat­ing resources — CEO & Exec­u­tive time, bud­get, projects — to the Growth Quad­rant. That’s nec­es­sary, but it’s not suf­fi­cient. You can’t just ​“spend time” on growth; it’s what you do with that time that counts.

In a recent work­shop, the lights went on for a lead­er­ship team when we pres­sure-test­ed their ​“growth” list. We real­ized they were actu­al­ly focused on improve­ment, not growth.

• An X is the core unit of your busi­ness: Guests for a restau­rant, users for a SAAS soft­ware com­pa­ny, wid­gets pro­duced for a manufacturer.
• Improve­ment is about effi­cien­cy. It’s widen­ing the mar­gin on a sale or tight­en­ing oper­a­tions to gen­er­ate more prof­it. It makes you more gross or net prof­it on each of your ​“Xs”.
• Growth is about get­ting more X’s year on year on year.

Expand­ing your mar­gins is smart, but it’s an improve­ment met­ric. Growth is about new cus­tomers, new prod­ucts, new tal­ent, and new mar­kets. If you aren’t active­ly hunt­ing for ​“more,” you aren’t grow­ing — you’re just improving.

Stop Play­ing Office

As com­pa­nies get big­ger, lead­ers get busier. Some start con­vinc­ing them­selves that they can ​“admin­is­ter” growth from behind a desk. I call this play­ing office.

You see it when a Head of Sales thinks they can spread­sheet their way to a quo­ta, or a CEO del­e­gates every new rela­tion­ship. But growth doesn’t hap­pen inside your build­ing. It hap­pens in the mar­ket. It’s the ​“un-fun” stuff for some: prospect­ing, set­ting meet­ings with new clients, and build­ing trust before you actu­al­ly need it.

Growth-dri­ving activ­i­ties for an exec­u­tive usu­al­ly clus­ter around rela­tion­ships that cre­ate future resources:

• New tal­ent that builds new relationships.
• New part­ner­ships that open new channels.
• New cap­i­tal or strate­gic acquisitions.
• New cus­tomers that you can help

The Real Lead­er­ship Challenge

Growth isn’t rock­et sci­ence, but it is easy to avoid. The hard­est part isn’t know­ing what to do; it’s hav­ing the hon­esty to stop doing the things that feel pro­duc­tive but don’t move the needle.

Chal­lenge: 

Take 30 min­utes and list the activ­i­ties in your week. Pres­sure-test them and ask:

• Does this direct­ly cre­ate a new X?
• Or is it just opti­mis­ing exist­ing ones? 

Growth is excit­ing and reward­ing in many ways. The more you grow and the more messy parts there are, the eas­i­er it is to lose focus on the real inputs to growth. 

Addi­tion­al Resources: 

• Arti­cle — Keep­ing Your Eye on the Growth Prize
• Arti­cle — Growth Through a ​“Yes We Can Do That” Philosophy
• Arti­cle — Get­ting Big­ger & Bet­ter With True Growth: More Xs and Profit/​x
• Pod­cast — Episode 68: Prof­it Per X
• Webi­nar — The 4 Forces of Growth 45-minute Overview
• Book — The 4 Forces of Growth