Take 4 Steps to Grow

Life is about growth, whether you’re running a company, yourself or your family. If you’re not growing you’re either stagnating or falling behind. While it’s possible for growth to happen organically, it’s not something you can or should depend on. Positive growth—growth that leads to value—takes conscious effort.

So how do you do it? To get our arms around such an expansive topic with many contexts, we need some practical, universal steps that can apply to virtually any situation. From my conversations with successful business leaders, I’ve found that it boils down to these four: Equip, Engage, Execute, Extend.

Here’s a good example. Olson is an integrated marketing agency that has posted more than 15% compound average growth over the past five years. I talked with Mike Bireley, who directs the company’s financial planning and analysis, about their experience, and here’s what I learned:

1. Equip: Their “equipment” is more than just processes and tools. Across the company, they’ve hired really smart people, including “brand anthropologists” who study communities and customers. All of these smart people provide feedback into every customer plan.
2. Engage: “If people feel like they’re being critiqued, they will second-guess themselves,” Mike says, so they put a lot of trust in both senior and junior people. Doorless offices, healthy internal competition and celebrating small wins are just a few of the ways they make it clear open communication is essential. They also regularly engage customers in unique ways, bringing them to the office to challenge them and provoke new thinking.
3. Execute: Because they’re relentless about execution, they’ve been able to move faster than their competitors to embrace the trend towards comprehensive branding strategies (e.g., social media, website, advertising, PR). When big opportunities surface, everyone comes together to win.
4. Extend: They reach through their customers by studying their customer’s customer to create communities of followers in the marketplace. They’re also willing to go out on a limb and reach for opportunities they’ve never tried before. Failure isn’t a bad word; it means they’re pushing it, and it leads them to increasingly bigger wins.

Ready to take a page from Olson’s book and get growing? Here are a few questions to get you started:

1. Are you equipped with smart, willing people in every area? Just as importantly, are you listening to what they have to say?
2. Do you have the highest level of mutual trust and engagement so everyone feels good about giving and receiving feedback, challenging the status quo and celebrating every win? What can you do to make the discomfort of provocative thinking something people not only put up with but welcome as a natural growing pain?
3. Ideas and dreams are great, but without execution, they won’t take you anywhere. Are you relentless about execution? If not, what needs to change to make that possible?
4. What opportunities are you missing by staying within your comfort zone, or within self-imposed and self-limiting boundaries? Are you constantly pushing yourself and others to extend your field of view, look beyond the obvious and recognize failure is often a necessary detour on the path to bigger wins and greater growth?

Knowing these steps, what obstacles might continue to hold back growth? Share your thoughts in the comments, and I’ll tackle those in a future post.

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