https://onlyonemike.com/category/growth-hacking/Business Growth is a critical success factor obviously. A stagnant business will find itself left behind within less than five years. A business must understand with clarity each of its goals for growth, with the ability to visualize the intended outcomes from that growth in order to build a solid foundation for that journey.
You Can’t Plan for Business Growth Without Factoring New COVID-19 Paradigms
In recent months, across platforms and industries, extraordinary corporate responses to COVID-19 have been shattering old paradigms about retooling and stabilizing general business operations and growth. These have implications for scaling and selling also.
CEOs are seeing ‘The Art of the Possible’
McKinsey & Company reports in August 2020 that a global telecom company has redeployed 1,000 store employees to inside sales after retraining them in just three weeks, an outdoor gear manufacturer took eight days to pivot and start making protective face shields for medical workers. And a U.S.-based retailer launched curbside delivery in just two days vs. a previously planned 18 months. Productivity has multiplied at a major industrials factory which is running at 90+% capacity with only approximately 40% of its previous workforce.
McKinsey relates reporting from American businesses on the acceleration in speed through new ways of working. Across industries, managers report having removed boundaries and silos in ways they never thought possible. Decision-making has accelerated, with key decisions being made in one meeting within groups of no more than nine members, with PowerPoint presentations banned. New technology has been adopted overnight rather than in the usual years. One executive said: “We’re putting teams of our best people on the hardest problems — if they can’t solve it, no one can.” Businesses across America are discovering a new path to what’s possible.
Take-aways from new paradigms suggest improved outcomes
McKinsey indicates growth will come from flatter organizations with much less hierarchy and streamlined decision rights. Companies looking to survive and grow will be open to faster information flows, cross-functional teams collaborating on common missions through a test-and-learn approach; flexible ways of working, including an affinity for hybrid remote/in-person teams, and agile, resilient talent able to move fast, adapt to change and continuously acquire new information.
Read more here on how to foster happier, more productive teams.
At this unique moment in time, organizations can act now to redesign their operating models for speed. McKinsey reports: “Uncertainty is the very next normal: what is working now – speed, information, collaboration, will continue to drive performance in the future.
“Growth is a speed game: as past recessions show, the winners are those who innovate fast, make bold moves and rapidly reallocate resources.”
The new paradigms involve streamlining, speed, brevity, and an understanding that tomorrow’s organizations may be quite different from those of today. Planning significant business growth in 2020 begins with strategies aligned to a number of factors, including industry type and all current and future determinants influencing the vitality of the industry; company size and current position in the marketplace — even regulations governing operations of the business. Growth methods will follow strategic paths, such as growth through market penetration, or market expansion and development, product expansion, diversification, or acquisition of other firms. Another growth path can center on innovation, where a company recognizes an unmet need in the industry.
What a new, unleashed speed for business growth can look like during and post-COVID
Companies that rewire their ways of working, re-imagine their structures and re-adapt talent can be positioned for rewards including a more formidable presence in their business space and greater longevity in a post-COVID world.
New normal working models, such as moving as much as 70% of a company’s workforce to remote or hybrid-remote workspaces, while emphasizing clarity-in-roles and personal ownership in work product can position a company for rapid growth and success.
Reimagining structure for future success and growth involves action around radically flattening the organization to simplify the structure, dramatically broadening spans and removing entire layers.
Injecting agile teams into the company structure can address customer needs in a way that a traditional organization could merely lumber into. Agile pod teams, consisting of four to eight members, designed for self-sufficiency, self-organizes their tasks and work with minimal supervision. Temporary “senior” cross-functional teams could work on the most complex issues and move from one flare-up to the next.
Allocating talent dynamically and strategically can position a company for success and future growth. Establishing an in-house talent marketplace from which to re-deploy employees swiftly as needs arise helps develop the ability of a workforce to work strategically as well as execute at a greater speed.
The new normal will not change everything, it only illustrates what is working now and maybe pointing us to the unfolding future. The more thoughtful, clear and deliberate our preparation for that future will determine how securely our stakes are planted in the ground.
