Breakthrough growth strategy: Do you have one? Here’s 4 phrases that signify you probably don’t
February 2025.
The sub-title of Survive Reset Thrive is ‘Leading breakthrough growth strategy through volatile times.’ I have always loved the concept of breakthrough growth, but in the past months of discussions, it’s clearer that while most leaders espouse the need for a breakthrough growth strategy, and many believe they have one, few do.
Why more don’t is the question that keeps me up right now, so I’ll be exploring this more in future blogs (and spoiler alert is the big theme of book two…), but let’s start with what breakthrough growth strategy means.
We use the term as the need to bust out of the linear growth trap. What’s that? The linear growth trap means each year you are growing incrementally, a little bit more each time. And this feels good, as you are growing, but you are not really adapting or changing. It lulls you into a sense of comfort, so you stop looking and learning. The world starts turning around you, new ways to win emerge, adjacent markets open, and you get left behind still doing the same things, just a little better.
Breakthrough growth (see the chart below) means breaking out of that and setting a new growth curve. This is hard as it means you must be willing to break things, including habits and processes that are mostly working now in your operational strategy.
There are more sophisticated ways of assessing it, but I have found four phrases mean you probably don’t – yet - have a breakthrough growth strategy.
This is our FINAL strategy
Nothing annoys me more than getting an email from a company with an attachment labeled Strategy_FINAL (and always all caps). At this point, I don’t even open it, just respond with an email that says ‘No it’s not, send me the current version.’
I’m not being silly: there is simply no such thing as a final strategy. The day we begin executing the strategy is the day we know the least about the situation over the next three years. As we execute and learn we must bring new information in, make micro adjustments and adaptations, and occasionally pause a strategic initiative once our beliefs are challenges to allow the time, treasure, and talent to be reallocated to greater growth opportunities. This is not calling for chaos or winging it: high-growth companies have ruthless prioritization on the few needle-moving priorities, but they also built a capability of adaptability. It is this dual approach that sets you apart: prioritization and the capability of adaptability.
Labeling the strategy as final creates a resistance to change, which shuts down our brains’ willingness to bring in new information.
Strategy should be current, never final.
I’m just in ‘heads down execution mode’
Another great way to get to get under my skin is when I ask how things are going, respond with ‘we’re just in heads down execution mode.’ My response is usually ‘what are you doing there?!?’
Execution requires discipline but more critically it requires learning. The ultimate differentiator in high-performing, Thrive companies is learning velocity. Organizations that learn faster as organizations grow faster. And learning velocity happens on the field.
As we execute, we are cycling through critical learning loops of execute – get an insight – embed it in the organization. We must be open to insights. As we gain these insights we understand their relevance to our strategy, make adjustments if needed, and then share and embed these learnings in the organization so the next time we execute we do so better and faster. Heads down ignores learning loops, and ignoring learning loops slows growth.
Your mode for breakthrough growth is ‘heads up’ learning mode.
We’re too busy to do strategy right now
The classic trap of being so ‘in’ the business you cannot work ‘on’ the business.
We have invented 100’s of phrase for this (we’re ‘swamped’ & ‘buried’, ‘‘max capacity’, ‘full plates’… you get the idea! ), but somehow we are not really getting better. How can we?
First is acknowledging where you are. If your organization is in Survive mode, be honest about that, and work through the Survive period before going into your next Reset strategy. Claiming to have a growth strategy when you are not ready for one does more harm than help: focus on getting out of Survive first. Second, learn to distinguish between true strategic priorities (your must-wins) and normal operational running a good business (the marching). While there are many activities you must perform to run a good company, these are not strategy. Over-optimizing for the basics drains resources and mindshare for growth.
Third, do better to distinguish between ‘tension’ and ‘friction.’ Many organizations have a clear strategy, but every weekly management meeting is full of the tensions that have been raised that week: RTO policies, reporting lines, meeting structure, travel policies, and the list continues. Yes, these aspects must be dealt with, but they are tension, i.e. noise. The issues that should rise to the leadership level are those challenges that are friction, defined as ‘not addressing this will hinder or prevent us from creating value.’ The next time a colleague wants time on the meeting, challenge each other. Is this tension or friction? Focus only on the friction.
Having must-wins also means having must-stops, de-prioritizing, scaling down, or stopping other initiatives. It is the number one pain point from leadership teams entering a new strategy cycle, but infrequently explicitly addressed toward the end of the reset process.
Strategy is too often associated with long hours of pontificating about the future. Yes, you don’t have much time for that but shift your team to actual strategy by clarifying your must-stops, prioritizing only friction (not tension) and stop over-optimizing for activities that are just table stakes.
We reward people who GSD
I get it. I love to just get stuff done, and I love working with entrepreneurial companies who do as well. But over-focusing on rewarding activity completion takes you away from growth, not towards it. In growth strategy, we commit to the outcomes, not the activities. We work back from impact to outcomes to outputs to activities. This is hard. It is much easier to ask each team member to provide a list of initiatives and goals and let them work towards that. But linear activity planning will at best lead to linear growth. Focus instead on the impact (change) we are trying to achieve and the outcomes (results) it will take to get there.
Then our job as leaders is to get out of the way and allow our team to execute towards the outcomes while being agnostic about the activities that perform to do so - as long as they stay within their strategic boundaries.
And then show you do this! How many of your last town halls or employee shout outs were focused on those that worked hard and put in the extra effort? Or did you recognize and reward employees who suggested we stop doing things, who adjusted an activity based on a learning, or who reached a critical outcome in a new way? Who we recognize is the biggest signal of our commitment to growth strategy – show you care about outcomes and learning and adjusting as we go is great if it gets to them better and faster.
Breakthrough growth is hard
There is nothing wrong with an operational strategy: there are times when that is what you need! But we must not confuse ourselves, or our team, by claiming to be aiming for breakthrough and running the business in a linear way.
Breakthrough growth is hard. Avoid framing the comfortable pathway you are on is something it is not.
And on the topic of hard, some early feedback I got from the book’s draft was that I said it was hard too often. Your readers don’t want to do things that are hard, the editor said, rephrase this and make it softer and more approachable. I appreciated the advice, but I did not take it. Why?
I want to be honest. Growth is hard. Leading breakthrough growth strategy through volatile times is incredibly hard.
But you know what the really great thing about hard stuff is?
Doing the hard stuff well is differentiation, and that’s what this growth strategy game is all about.
