Want to REALLY grow? Challenge your orthodoxies.

Stuck in low- or no-growth mode? To paraphrase a quote often attributed to Albert Einstein, are you doing the same thing and expecting different results? If so, challenge your orthodoxies:

• What business are you really in? Are you selling products or offerings? Or are you reducing customers' costs or helping increase their revenues?
• How do you measure success? Is it purely financial? Or is it in the number of customers who recommend you to others?
• Who are your “customers”? Are they those who have traditionally bought your offerings? Or are there new groups of customers whose unmet needs could be resolved by what you offer?
• What do your “customers” want? Is it price? Or is it value? And if the latter, how do THEY really define value (the answer may surprise you)?
• How do you go to market? How do your competitors go to market? What can you learn about GTM strategies from other industries?
• What are your real competencies? And how do these compare to your competition, in the eyes of customers?
• How are you compensated for value delivered? Are there other issues that customers would find valuable to resolve, that your competencies could address?

Answer these questions and you WILL find some real growth opportunities.

Where are you looking for growth opportunities?

Answer these questions:

• How and why customer purchasing preferences are changing?
• How and why specific channels are responding to offerings of various rivals?
• Which suppliers are leaders in providing lowest cost and/or highest quality services, supplies and components?
• What is the entry sequence of new offerings into the market?
• Which technologies are being displaced by new emerging technologies?
• What competitor initiatives are changing the basis of competition?
• How is the industry evolving and what is the impact?

The bad news is that you will find holes in your current growth strategy. 

The good news is that you'll find some great opportunities. 

What would they NEVER say about you?

What passes for innovation in your organization? A new feature? A product line extension? Bundling offerings to create a new 'solution'?

Do these drive real growth? Or do they just maintain sales at minimally acceptable levels?

Real growth requires real innovation. In the customer experience. In business models. In products or offerings that solve a customer problem. And it's hard. As Seth Godin writes

"Ten or fifteen years ago, I'd sit with publishing chiefs and say, 'lets imagine how the world looks when there are no mass market books published on paper...' Before we could get any further, they'd stop the exercise. 'It's impossible to imagine that. Paper is magical. Are you saying you don't believe in books?'"

Real innovation requires a fresh look at the world. You need to challenge orthodoxies. Ask:

• What would customers never say about us?
• What would partners never say about us?
• What would suppliers never say about us?
• What would competitors never say about us?

And, most importantly,

• What would we never say about us?

Then ask, why?

How're you going to hit your growth targets?

It's February and you may be starting to wonder how you'll hit your growth targets.

Forbes just wrote  that the 134 S&P 500 companies reporting 4Q12 results grew revenues at 2.2%. And, for 2013, the Institute of Supply Management reports US companies will grow between 4% to 4.5%, on average.

Is average good enough for you?

If not, how are you going to grow? Exhort the sales force to close more business? Push R&D to add new features? Launch new advertising?

Successful companies don't do more of the same. They develop deep market insights, challenge orthodoxies, drive real innovation and redesign their businesses (more on each of these in upcoming posts).

What are you doing?

Re-igniting growth

Are your growth investments based on last quarter’s results? Or on next year’s objectives?

After years of cost-cutting, companies struggle to re-ignite growth. But old habits die hard. To protect margins, most simply do more of the same, with less. And get the same results, or worse.

Real sustainable growth requires a new strategy. It begins by assessing and then selecting the most promising opportunities. These opportunities, be they entry into new markets or the launch of new offerings, will require redesigning elements of the business, designing new tasks, building new skills and removing organizational barriers.