The 4 Enemies of Growth

When it comes to grow­ing com­pa­nies, we see four main chal­lenges that crop up again and again. Over time, I have named these 4 ene­mies in order to tame them. I call them: 

1. The bat­tle of the bicycles
2. The prob­lem of pond hockey
3. The impulse to improvise
4. The neu­ro­sis of numbers

The Bat­tle of the Bicycles

Let’s start off with the bat­tle of the bicy­cles, since in my opin­ion, it’s the biggest one. Now, let me ask you, have you ever tried to ride two bicy­cles? I tried when I was a teenag­er, and it’s incred­i­bly hard. The truth is that if you’re in a hur­ry with a lot to do, odds are you’re going to drop one. 

In many orga­ni­za­tions, a CEO has two jobs: Pres­i­dent and CEO. And they are forced to choose a bicy­cle. The prob­lem? They drop the growth-focused CEO bike and set­tle on the improve­ment-focused Pres­i­dent bike. Now, don’t get me wrong, improve­ment is a won­der­ful thing. But it’s noth­ing with­out growth. You get mired in it. 

Why do they drop the bike? There’s only so much in one per­son. They just don’t have the time and the ener­gy at the end of the day. But we have to remem­ber that being a strate­gic CEO is very dif­fer­ent than being an oper­a­tional President. 

I would set­tle on a CEO spend­ing 50 – 60% of their time on the strat­e­gy bike, though my ide­al is that they spend 60 – 80% of their time deep in strat­e­gy. The real­i­ty? If you ask a room of CEOs, you’re going to find out that they fight to get 25%. This needs to change—

The Prob­lem of Pond Hockey

Which brings me to item num­ber 2, the prob­lem of pond hockey. 

Pond Hock­ey is big in Cana­da. Hock­ey, after all, is our nation­al sport. If you haven’t seen a game of pond hock­ey, allow me to describe it to you. A whole bunch of peo­ple go out onto an iced over pond. It’s dis­or­ga­nized but it’s fun. The idea is that who­ev­er is there, you pull them togeth­er, you divide up teams and you play. But it’s a whole dif­fer­ent game from what you’re see­ing on the tele­vi­sion dur­ing an NHL game. And why? You aren’t deal­ing with pro­fes­sion­al players. 

We all start off with pond hock­ey, even the big shots. But we real­ize that at high­er lev­els of per­for­mance, we need pro­fes­sion­al play­ers. Because if you don’t have the right peo­ple, it’s going to pull you out of growth. So, we call these folks A‑Players.

An A‑Player is some­one who lives the val­ues of the orga­ni­za­tion and con­sis­tent­ly deliv­ers excel­lent results. They’re real­ly good at what they do and make great team mem­bers. And then we get B & C play­ers who miss the mark, or tox­ic A’s who per­form well but cre­ate dra­ma and frustration.

What we see up close is that most com­pa­nies have too much pond hock­ey going on. CEOs burn out because they’re car­ry­ing too much bur­den. So, the name of the game is to build a team with an NHL men­tal­i­ty. We need 90% A’s in those key roles. 

The Impulse to Improvise

Let’s move on to #3, the impulse to improvise. 

Did you know that the largest sym­pho­ny in the world is 8,000 peo­ple in South Amer­i­ca? Imag­ine the beau­ty of all those musi­cians play­ing togeth­er in har­mo­ny. Now imag­ine each of them play­ing their own tune. Indi­vid­u­al­ly, it may sound fine, but togeth­er it becomes chaot­ic and scat­tered noise.

And this is what hap­pens to our com­pa­nies as they scale. You see, it’s real­ly hard to keep peo­ple focused and aligned, which is why you need to know your three big moves. What are the three most impor­tant moves you must make in the next three years to mean­ing­ful­ly grow your rev­enues, prof­its, cap­i­tal, and capa­bil­i­ties as an orga­ni­za­tion? When this is clear, each mem­ber of your orga­ni­za­tion can align around and exe­cute on the big moves need­ed to grow the company. 

The Neu­ro­sis of Numbers

Last but cer­tain­ly not least, we have the neu­ro­sis of numbers. 

When it comes to mid-mar­ket firms, we tend to see two things: peo­ple either have insane­ly sim­plis­tic num­bers that don’t tell you any­thing or com­plex mon­strosi­ties that also don’t tell you any­thing. Real­ly tight and clear report­ing is rare. 

When you think of your num­bers, this is the thing that should guide you: your num­bers should be so clear that each KPI on the spread­sheet or chart on the dash­board can pro­vide action­able insights in 60 sec­onds or less.

So, that’s it. Those are the four ene­mies of growth and if you wran­gle them, both you and your orga­ni­za­tion will be on track for amaz­ing success. 

The Chal­lenge

Pick one of the ene­mies of growth — the bat­tle of two bicy­cles, the prob­lem of pond hock­ey, the impulse to impro­vise, or the neu­ro­sis of num­bers. What action can you com­mit to this week to stop being pulled out of growth?

Write it on a post-it note and stick it above your desk.

Oth­er Blogs

• The Two Con­flict­ing Roles of a CEO
• Big­ger vs. Bet­ter: What is Real Growth in a Business?

Old­er Podcasts

• The Four Forces of Growth
• How to Iden­ti­fy A‑Players Dur­ing an Interview