This is Part I in a blog series called “How to Prepare Your Company for a Major Growth Spurt.”
I recently met with the CEO of a very successful company who told me that he wants his company to be even more successful. And that he is unsatisfied to just keep pace with the growth of his company’s industry. Hearing him talk was exciting. Until he told me that someone in his C-suite questioned why it’s necessary to prepare your company for growth when it’s already doing well. I found this shocking, and wondered if it is possible to grow the company when someone in a key position is not willing to go along.
Would you like your company to grow at more than an inflationary adjustment rate? Or are you okay holding water with where you are right now? If you want to keep up with inflation, this article may challenge you to rethink your approach.
If you have tried aggressive growth before and it did not work as you expected, then this blog series will help you prepare your company for growth by giving you a new way to think about growth – and strategies for implementing it.
The First Step
The most important thing to do in order to prepare your company for a major growth spurt is to develop a growth mindset (which I also refer to as a 3X attitude) throughout your organization. Below, I have outlined some advantages of this mindset to show you why you should consider it for your next big strategic plan.
The Advantages of a Growth Mindset
- A 3X approach forces everyone to re-think their normal. It stretches both individual and collective team’s comfort zones. It removes the glass ceiling. No more building budgets that have inflationary adjustments only.
- By shifting the thinking paradigm completely, you force people to get out of their ruts. Let’s be honest: we spend so much of our life looking for certainty, safety, and predictability. You need to be intentional about breaking these habit molds.
- The new energy and focus you develop will help blow through old ways of thinking, feeling and doing. Doing what you have done before, even with marginal changes, will not be sufficient. Habits and routines are only good if they are relevant for where you want to go.
- A 3X approach will help you achieve more, even if you end up only 2X’ing your company. If you begin with a 1.05X approach (just 5% growth) and don’t make it, you probably aren’t growing at all. With or without factoring inflation in. The business world is evolving so fast that just trying to maintain your position can put you at risk of a major fall.
- 3X thinking will help you get on a new track and stay on it. Without a 3X mindset, you are likely working harder to be successful where you are right now. And you’re probably achieving this by doing more of what you have always been doing. Don’t get me wrong, you may be doing good work now. But if your whole company isn’t committed to exponential growth, then it will likely grow at the pace of the slowest parts.
