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MFGSD

There is No Silver Bullet for Growth

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“There are no quick wins in business – it takes years to become an overnight success.” – Richard Branson

It is human nature to want a quick fix for every problem.

The proverbial “silver bullet” that will slay fearsome creatures with one shot.

The prospect tempts us every day:

  • Take this diet pill, and lose 5 pounds in a week…
  • Buy this stock, it is certain to double in the next quarter…
  • Execute this marketing tactic, and you will double your sales pipeline by the end of the year…

You get the idea. We all seek the easy solution. Oh, and, we want it to be painless too.

So, here is a news flash: It doesn’t exist.

Sorry.

There is no silver bullet.

The Conversation That Inspired This Article

I had a conversation with a good friend of mine last week. He was curious about my fractional Chief Marketing Officer services, and the focus on helping organizations grow. He wanted to know what the answer was…as if I had discovered “the” secret to growth and packaged it up for sale!

I explained to him the process I go through to help organizations unlock their growth potential.

It is a discovery and development process. It requires introspection. Honesty. Creativity. And, hard work.

It often involves asking difficult, sometimes uncomfortable, questions.

The “answer” to the growth question is not canned, but is as unique as each organization is.

Therein lies the rub.

Many leaders naively look for that secret marketing formula, or magical sales elixir that will fuel exponential growth for their business.

The reality is, in 99% of the cases, the big growth you see in an organization today is the result of a lot of hard work (the proverbial blood, sweat, and tears!) that took place over the course of many months or years.

What we are seeing is the compounding effect of multiple aligned actions, which taken together, over time, result in growth.

There is no silver bullet for growth.

Growth is Not Easy

Business innovation and growth are not easy.

It is easy to look at companies like Apple or Google and jealously think how easy they must have it. With their $Billions of market capitalization and a huge army of employees, they seem to effortlessly turn out a steady stream of great products and services which everybody wants.

The dirty secret is we are only seeing their successes. These are innovation-driven organizations that are constantly experimenting, testing, and refining new offerings. They invest huge sums of time and money into the effort, and have a well-developed playbook to bring them to market. Rarely do we see their failures because they have quietly killed them off and moved on.

Everyone wants the quick fix, but it doesn’t happen overnight. You have to be willing to put it all out there. I call it ‘the secret to being an overnight success,’ which means there really isn’t such a thing as an overnight success! The secret is you work really hard for 10 years, and then you become an overnight success. – Jon Gordon

True, there are those rare companies that get lucky and realize stratospheric, seemingly overnight, growth. Sadly, most of them do not survive in the long-term because they failed to build a solid foundation or invest in a sustainable business model.

There is no silver bullet for growth.

What to Do Next?

So what should you do if you are seeking growth for your organization?

First, make sure you really are ready for growth.

Next, take a disciplined and methodical approach to develop the best strategy for your organization from the ground up. A great place to start is by answering these six fundamental growth questions.

If you are feeling stuck, a fractional CMO can provide immediate assistance.

The harsh reality of the VUCA forces in our world is there are no silver bullets.

You need to be prepared. Have a plan. Execute (MFGSD) relentlessly. Expect the unexpected. Pivot quickly and adapt to changes. Keep on moving!

-Full speed ahead

A Bias to Action (MFGSD!)

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“Plans are only good intentions unless they immediately degenerate into hard work” —Peter Drucker

For much of my career I have focused on helping organizations grow. This focus on growth has allowed me to sit at the interesting intersection of strategy, innovation, marketing, sales, and customer success in a number of leadership roles across a few industries.

With the benefit of this experience and perspective, I can clearly see that there are two consistent ingredients required for success: Strategy and execution.

I have written extensively about how important it is for organizations to develop agile and flexible strategic plans designed to achieve long-term goals in a hostile VUCA business environment.

However, a plan by itself is useless. There is something even more important to success than having a plan. What could that ingredient be?

A bias to action.

Most Plans Just Gather Dust

Despite the enormous investment of time and resources that leaders of organizations put into developing their strategic plans for the future, most fail. Why?

There are many common reasons why organizations don’t achieve the results they define in their strategic plans. These can include a bad strategy, flawed situational awareness, unrealistic goals, unforeseen (VUCA!) scenarios, weak teams, and even poor leadership. However, by far the biggest culprit is bad or non-existent execution.

Strategy without execution is a complete waste of time.

Business leaders know that nothing good happens in business until someone does something. The alternative to this proactive approach is simply to wait for the universe (or your competitors) to take action. In my experience, this reactive approach never ends up well. Unfortunately, too many people wait for things to happen instead of proactively making them happen. With this approach, you don’t make forward progress. You don’t learn anything.

Mary Kay Ash, they dynamic founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics said it best: “There are four kinds of people in this world: Those who make things happen, those who watch things happen, those who wonder what happened, and those who don’t know that anything happened!”

A bias to action is what makes things happen.

Focus on Execution

A common ingredient to every successful startup or highly functioning executive team that I’ve been involved with in my career has been a simple operating philosophy that I like to call “Move Fast and Get S#!T Done.” Over the years I’ve shortened it and made it a little more politically correct by referring to it by the acronym: “MFGSD”.

It boils down to a laser-like focus on execution.

Effective leaders make sure their teams know the vision and strategy of the strategic plan, ensure they have the support and resources they need to execute, and then get out of the way.

MFGSD!

How do you create this bias for action? It starts with effective leadership and developing your team. The goal is to move your people up what I call the “action ladder”:

  • Level 0 – Ignorant of opportunity or threat, therefore no action
  • Level 1 – Can identify there is an opportunity or threat
  • Level 2 – Proposes a viable solution for opportunity or threat
  • Level 3 – Can develop a plan of action to address opportunity or threat
  • Level 4 – Can develop a plan of action for opportunity or threat, and it is feasible
  • Level 5 – Solving the opportunity or threat by executing the plan of action

If you have ever had a “star” employee on your team, you will recognize how valuable (and rare!) Level 5 players are. They make sure important things get done.

Most execution problems are easy to fix. Start with your people. You have two basic options: Get the people in your organization motivated to perform at a higher level than they are today, or get higher-level people into your organization.

Go Forth, MFGSD!

The late Herb Kelleher, co-founder and former CEO of Southwest Airlines, said something that in my opinion perfectly sums up the concept of being strategic, having a bias to action and the MFGSD ethos: “We have a strategic plan. It’s called doing things.”

The important lesson for leaders – there is a very long list of things in the world you cannot control. Execution is not one of them. You can control your actions.

Pick a direction. Create a plan. Execute. React to what you learn. Keep going.

MFGSD!

That’s it. A very simple concept, and extremely powerful if you (and your team) practice it.

-Onward