There are two types of business growth
– incremental, where you tweak tactics and strategies to grow your business one step at a time; and
- scalable, where you make fundamental changes which deliver accelerated ‘hockey-stick’ growth, like the illustration at left.
Here’s an important fact about growth that many business leaders fail to grasp: If you don’t actively choose to build scalable growth, it won’t happen. I won’t lie to you – achieving scalable growth is hard work.
Sure, we’ve all read the feel-good stories about businesses that hit the jackpot overnight – but for every one of those overnight ‘lucky breaks’, there are literally tens of thousands of businesses that are plodding along, never realizing their full potential.
The reason for this is that many business leaders are unclear about how to achieve scalable growth – in terms of our graphic (above) they don’t know what has to happen in the blue ‘active choice zone’.
Many think that it means doing the same things that deliver ‘normal’, incremental growth – only doing them harder, faster, more often, with greater effort. That doesn’t work. The best you will achieve is to slightly increase the rate of your ‘normal’ growth – plus you’ll be burned out at the end.
Some business leaders try an ‘all of the above’ approach, experimenting with new sales or marketing tactics, trying out new products, new services, new markets, or bringing in new personnel. The result? Not only does this not bring scalable growth, often the business ends up going backwards – losing its momentum as a result of too-frequent changes in direction.
Plus, again, you’ll finish the year feeling frazzled and frustrated.
So – what is the answer to achieving scalable, sustainable growth?
I’ve spent my entire career uncovering, working with and understanding the key dynamics that deliver scalable growth. In my early career as a serial entrepreneur I launched and grew 42 businesses either myself, or in teams with others.
Using what I learned, I then co-founded an incubation business and over the next decade grew it to more than 100 employees in 13 locations world-wide, advising hundreds of businesses on how to grow successfully. Since I sold that business 15 years ago, I’ve worked solely on my own, advising a small number of organizations each year (for-profit and not-for-profit),on their growth strategies.
Some of those organizations are large and you will have heard of them – T-Mobile, American Express, The US Army, the NSA, Randstaad, for example. Many of them are small or medium-sized and you will only have heard of them if you are in their industry or geographical locale.
Most of them are organizations just like yours.
Put simply, I know what has to happen in the ‘blue zone’ to move your business from dogged step-by-step incremental growth to fast-track, sustainable, scalable growth.
How this can help you.
Next year (just 5 weeks away!) I will for the first time in 2 decades be working alongside someone else. As you may have already read, my son David joins me on January 7. After a sterling career with Accenture – and before that having interned with me for four years in a row – Dave is stepping in to the COO seat here at Predictable Success (you can listen to an extended interview with Dave here).
What does that mean for you? Well, if you’re happy with the growth of your business right now, the answer is probably ‘not a lot’ 🙂
But if you want scalable growth for your business next year – if you’re ready to swap the straight line for the hockey stick – then this may be a great opportunity to do so in a highly accelerated manner.
How so? Well, by working with with David and I together, you will not only get the same high-level strategic advice and guidance that I have always provided, but for the first time, we will be there to assist you with detailed, hands-on implementation – all the way through to the point at which you have achieved your growth goals.
Until now, my approach has been to work exclusively with the C-suite, coaching and advising founder/owners, C-level executives and executive teams as they push the Predictable Success model down through their organization.
Now we can help you make the changes you need to achieve sustained, scalable, profitable growth throughout your entire organization.
Here’s the detail:
David and I will obviously spend next year working together very closely indeed. With his deep knowledge of the Predictable Success model and his own superb consulting skills, we still need to ‘plunge all four of our hands into the bucket together’ by working jointly on a number of projects.
So during 2013, David and I will work jointly with just four companies.
With those businesses, we’ll go through precisely the same scalable growth development process that I’ve refined over the last 15 years working with the clients I’ve detailed above.
Together, Dave and I will work with you to radically accelerate the growth if your business, in a way that is both scalable and sustainable. We’ll take you through the ‘blue zone’ – the period of dynamic (and frankly, often painful) changes that need to happen to switch from painful step-by-step incremental growth to profitable, sustainable, scalable growth. And what’s more, for the first time, we’ll hold your hand the whole way through the process, both strategically and operationally.
Who’s this for?
If you’ve read this far, the answer is, probably you. The great thing about what we do here at Predictable Success is that it works for any organization, for-profit or not-for-profit, large, small, or anything in-between. We’ll work to design a program that fits your budget: The only deciding factor is your commitment to make 2013 the year in which you make a significant change to the growth of your organization.