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Strategy

Top 10 Reasons Why Startups Fail

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“I have learned fifty thousand ways it cannot be done and therefore I am fifty thousand times nearer the final successful experiment.”

– Thomas Edison

When developing a growth strategy for an organization we often rely on benchmarks and best practices. Imitating what has successfully worked for other companies is a proven and widely used approach.

Less common, but equally as useful, is to examine business failures. By observing what has not worked for other organizations, growth leaders can not only avoid running into common landmines, but also identify warning signs of trouble before they become fatal.

Fortunately, growth leaders have many publicly available resources to learn from. One of the most comprehensive and useful reports is published by CB Insights, a business analytics firm focused on high growth private companies and investor activities. They keep a running list of failed startup post-mortems, which is now up to 368 and counting. And from that list they identified the top 20 reasons why startups fail.

In this article, I will share the top 10 reasons, and my insights for how growth leaders can avoid them. While there is not a perfect correlation to non-startups (i.e. established organizations that are already in a market with their product and/or service offering) I think most of the lessons apply equally as well.

Note: The percentages add up to more than 100% because many startups suffered from more than one reason for failure.

Here they are:

1 –  No market need (42%)

I like to call this the “solution looking for a problem” syndrome.

Unfortunately, this is extremely common among entrepreneurs. They get so excited and passionate about their new product and/or service innovation that they gloss over a fundamental requirement for business success: there has to be a problem in the market that buyers want to solve.

Strategy for growth leaders: Do not fall in love with your offering until you have validated there is a market for it. You have to make something that people want to buy.

2 – Ran out of cash (29%)

This one doesn’t really need much explanation. There are two old business truisms that apply here:

  • “Cash is king”
  • “It takes money to make money”

There are many costs involved with starting and scaling a business. Very rarely do you find a startup that is able to finance its growth entirely from operations.  Most startups need investment capital to get going, and established businesses also need liquidity to fund their growth.

Strategy for growth leaders: Create a realistic growth plan that accounts for all your costs, and build in a cushion for the unexpected. Recognize that money is a finite resource, which needs to be carefully allocated and managed.

3 – Not the right team (23%)

Almost all problems in business are ultimately people problems, and so are the solutions. To execute your growth strategy you need to build and manage a team of professionals who believe in your mission and are dedicated to your vision of the future for the organization. This team needs to include capability across a diverse set of skills (i.e. finance, product, marketing, sales, client success, etc.)

Strategy for growth leaders: Growth leaders have the primary responsibility of getting the right people on the bus, and then organizing them into the rights seats.

4 – Got outcompeted (19%)

This reason for failure has some subtlety to it. Many growth strategists preach that organizations should not pay any attention to competitors. This is a mistake. While you should not be consumed by what competitors are doing, you cannot afford to ignore them either.

The truth is that while many startups were outcompeted by other companies, they also failed to execute at differentiating their solution in a crowded space.

Strategy for growth leaders: You must position your offering(s) against any competitive or alternative solution. If you have a demonstrably different or superior value proposition then competitive worries disappear since nobody will ever be in your exact market with your exact product. Continuously improving your products and/or services is a proven strategy for success.

5 – Pricing /Cost issues (18%)

Pricing is one of those business topics that is as much art as it is science. Most startups, and more than a few established businesses, struggle with how to price their offerings.

The challenge is that no matter how scientifically a pricing strategy is created, it ultimately has to survive the final test of what the market will accept. Your pricing has to be high enough to cover costs and hopefully make a profit, yet low enough so that it does not become an insurmountable obstacle to making a sale.

Strategy for growth leaders: The best approach to pricing is to define all the variables and then create a plan to test them out. In addition to the “retail” price of your product and/or service, there is a long list of items to also consider, such as: segmentation, bundles, incentives, payment plans, terms and conditions, etc. Test until you find the combination that optimizes conversion and profitability.

6 – User un-friendly product (17%)

Regardless of whether it is B2C or B2B, every buyer has options – including sticking with the dreaded status quo! Ignoring the user experience is a risky move that many organizations make (sometimes unconsciously). Products or services that are difficult or confusing to use, ultimately will fall aside to solutions that are easier.

Strategy for growth leaders: In addition to having a formal client success function in the organization, growth leaders should relentlessly focus on the user experience for the customers. A great place to start is to define your typical “buyer’s journey” – the process a prospect goes through to become a customer of your organization – then evaluate every step along the way, looking for areas to improve the experience and results.

7 – Product without a business model (17%)

It is hard to argue that a business model is not important – in fact, it is foundational for a company! This reason for failure is a bit like pricing in that there is not always a “correct” or “perfect” answer, but merely an answer that is better than other alternatives. The way to get to a solution is to test, and to remain open to other options.

Strategy for growth leaders: The challenge for many startups, and even more established organizations, is that their growth leaders do not explore all their options. Sticking to a single sales channel or failing to find ways to monetize client relationships can stall growth. Your business model and growth strategy should be based on research, your experience, and the market feedback you receive…your sales revenue is a pretty good indicator of a successful business model!

8 – Poor marketing (14%)

Defining a target audience, knowing how to get their attention and then converting them to leads and ultimately customers is one of the most important skills of any successful business.

A surprising number of startups and more established companies are not good at promoting their products or services. Sometimes this is due to lack of expertise (easy to address by making a hire or outsourcing to an agency) but more often than not it is due to a lack of clarity around your ideal client profile or the value proposition you deliver.

Strategy for growth leaders: The place to start is to define the value proposition your products and/or services deliver to customers. Next, get clarity on who your ideal customers are and where to find them. Then you are in a position to work on your branding, marketing campaigns, and go-to-market tactics. If you don’t have a competent go-to-market leader on your management team (you should!) then either go hire one, or make the decision to outsource the marketing function to a proven third party.

9 – Ignore customers (14%)

Ignoring customers is why companies fall victim to reason #6 above: User un-friendly product. It sounds crazy, but many organizations are so focused on landing new business that they completely neglect those who have already purchased from them. Growth leaders and their teams need to get out of the building and interact with buyers.

Strategy for growth leaders: Invest in customer service and client success. Pay attention to any feedback, and constantly seek more insight on how customers are using your offerings, what features they like and dislike, and their suggestions for improvements or new solutions. Don’t just listen to this valuable input, take action to make improvements. If you ignore customers, they will ultimately go somewhere else.

10 – Product mistimed (13%)

Many entrepreneurs and established company product executives are perfectionists. This is not necessarily a bad trait, but it can become a problem if it prevents your organization from going to market with your products and/or services.

In this case, perfect is the mortal enemy of “good enough!”

Occasionally (particularly with startups in emerging markets) you see companies that developed a solution the market was not yet ready for. More often than not, however, the case is that companies miss their market opportunity by not having a saleable offering ready to sell.

Strategy for growth leaders: The old saying that “you don’t get a second chance to make a first impression” applies here. Growth leaders need to learn to recognize when their offerings are “good enough” versus perfect. Don’t waste your market opportunity.

Learning from failure

Experience tells us that there are as many reasons for business success as there are for failure.

The top 10 reasons for failure highlighted above present growth leaders with a useful list of risks to be aware of and ideally to avoid entirely.

As always, please share your feedback, and feel free to give me a call if you need help.

-Onward

About the author: Kimball Norup is the founder of 1CMO Consulting, a business strategy and growth advisory firm based in Sonoma, California. To read prior articles, or sign up to receive future ones by email, click here.

10 Surprising Strategies to Increase Your Sales

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“Nothing happens until a sale is made.”

  – Thomas J. Watson

There is one fundamental truth in business growth, and it applies irrespective of the company or industry: In order to grow the organization you ultimately have to increase sales.

Not every organization is ready for growth, but those that are quickly discover there are many variables. It is often difficult to know which strategies and tactics to consider both individually and collectively.

In this article, I will share ten of my favorite strategies to accelerate your sales and drive growth. Some of these may be surprising, but they have proven to be successful in organizations I have been involved with, and I am confident they can work for you too.

But first, an important reminder…

Four Sales Growth Levers

Every go-to-market tactic (and there are many) has a common objective; namely to directly, or indirectly, improve sales results.

There are ultimately only four sales growth levers, which enable any sales tactic to work. Despite the vast number of options and the many complexities of executing growth tactics, it is possible to map each one of them back to one of the following four principles:

  1. Increase the number of clients. Identifying and turning more prospects into new paying clients.
  2. Increase the average transaction. Getting each prospect or client to spend more at each purchase.
  3. Increase the frequency that the average client buys from you. Getting each client to buy from you more often.
  4. Improve the efficiency and effectiveness of each step in the marketing and sales process. Driving greater “funnel velocity” and conversion throughout the buyer’s journey.

In the sections that follow, I will share ten proven strategies that leverage one or more of these core principles to accelerate your sales.

1 – Appoint a (Competent) Growth Leader

I often talk to clients about getting the right team on the bus. The most important one is the bus driver!

In order to execute a strategic growth plan successfully, you will need a proven growth leader. This individual needs to “own” the development of growth strategy, and the subsequent execution of the plan.

A weak, or non-existent, growth leader will doom the growth plan from the start.

It might be the head of growth, or the VP of sales, or the Chief Marketing Officer. The title is ultimately less important than having a leader responsible for driving the growth agenda for the organization.

2 – Fire Your Worst Sales Rep (Immediately)

Sales teams tend to follow a bell curve of performance. A few high performers, the majority in the acceptable but not stellar middle, and then the bottom of the pile. There is almost always someone bringing up the rear.

Growth leaders should quickly get rid of those underperformers who are incompetent in their role or just coasting along. They are a drag on the entire organization.

Underperformers come with a huge cost. They always consume a disproportionate amount of management time. They usually cause resentment and friction in the team. If allowed to fester long enough, they become a cancer that can literally destroy a sales organization from the inside out.

Competent growth leaders clean house quickly and get the right team on the bus that they are driving.

A new growth leader should make a top-to-bottom review of the sales team a top priority. Provided they truly are much worse than the rest of the team, fire your worst sales rep as soon as possible.

Not only does this send a strong message to the rest of the team about establishing a performance culture, it also makes logical sense. Your organization is probably investing significant marketing resources generating leads. Don’t waste valuable leads on underperforming sales reps. Give them to those who have proven they can close deals.

Invest your newfound extra management time in making your best sales reps even better.

3 – Know Your Target (Deeply)

One of the most significant, and often overlooked, leverage points when developing go-to-market strategy is to define your sales target.

Many startups struggle with this, and it is very common for more established organizations too.

What do I mean by “know your target”?

The logic behind this recommendation is straightforward – every individual (for a B2C company) or every organization (for a B2B company) cannot be your target. You need focus in order to be successful. Without focus, your messaging will flounder in the marketplace, and your team will waste a lot of precious time and energy chasing bad deals.

If you are very clear on your target then you the luxury of just focusing your marketing and sales teams on those targets.

Based on analysis of existing customers, and researching the market, most organizations are able to create a definition of their best target with a little bit of effort.

In marketing circles, this is called an Ideal Client Profile (ICP). Knowing your ICP provides a great target for lead generation, it also helps to refine the value proposition and messaging into tailored language that will appeal specifically to that ICP.

4 – Understand (and Respect) the Buyer’s Journey

The vast majority of sales organizations get this topic completely wrong.

Most sales teams force prospects into their pre-defined sales process and pipeline stages. Why do they do this? Sometimes it is based on implementing a trendy sales methodology, or a model the head of sales brought with them from their prior company. More often than not, it is simply because it is the way they have always done things and nobody has bothered to ask one simple question…

“How do buyers want to buy?”

By asking this simple, yet profound question, a sales organization can begin to map their buyer’s journey. Once you know your buyer’s journey, you can then align this to your sales process instead of force fitting your sales process onto the buyer.

If you put your “buyer cap” on this makes sense, right?

Once you understand the buying process of your prospects, you can then help them move along that path. Providing potential buyers with the right amount of content and sales interactions, at the right time, will accelerate your sales.

This will also make it easier to buy from your organization. A great technique for growth leaders is to put yourself in the buyer’s seat. Attach yourself to the buyer’s journey from lead stage all the way to a closed-won client. At every step try to remove friction, strive to make it easier to buy from you. Some common areas of opportunity: your collateral, your website, your pricing, your contracting process, implementation and startup, etc.

5 – (Make Sure) Marketing Enables Sales

Unfortunately, it is all too common to discover a dysfunctional relationship between marketing and sales within organizations who desire growth.

This broken dynamic is often blamed on poor delivery, but I think the issue goes deeper. It is the direct result of poor alignment and bad communication between the two groups.

In any effective go-to-market organization, marketing enables sales.

How does a growth leader make sure this happens? By creating metrics and accountability that both marketing and sales agree upon.

If the sales team thinks all the leads they get from marketing are crap (a very common complaint) then have them create a definition of a lead which they will gladly accept. This becomes the new standard.

If the marketing team thinks sales does not invest enough time in the good leads they receive (also a common criticism) then have them define the minimum threshold of activity for accepted leads, and build a process to nurture those leads that are not ready or those that are rejected.

Removing all the friction between marketing and sales can have a dramatic impact on sales performance.

A nice side benefit of this increased collaboration is better market feedback for the marketing team to use in developing content and refining messaging.

6 – Increase Your Prices (for New Customers)

Pricing is one of the most complicated, and often neglected, components of a growth strategy. Getting it right involves as much art as it does science.

Here is a radical suggestion: Increase your prices by 10-20% for new customers starting today.

Just like that. Boom!

You can always discount back down to yesterday’s list price, but at the very least, you have set the negotiation bar higher.

Raising prices on existing customers introduces significantly more risk, and should only be considered after careful deliberation. Smart organizations build pre-negotiated increases into their contracts, or at the very least have a well-rehearsed narrative that justifies the increase (greater costs, significantly more value, etc.)

Raising your prices is much easier if your product/service is good, and differentiated, and delivers real value to your customers…

7 – If You Don’t Know (Ask Your Customers)

When they attempt to charge more, some growth leaders discover their organization does not have much pricing power. They wake up to the realization that their product(s)/service(s) are in a commodity position with many alternative options for buyers.

These leaders need to revisit their differentiation and value proposition in order to make it more distinctive and valuable.

If you don’t know what else your customer wants, or even why they buy from you, get out of the building and ask them. You will be surprised at how honest customers will be if you ask them questions like this.

When you get back to the office, share these insights with your team and encourage them to bake them into what they do. This will help to improve your messaging, your sales, and ultimately your ability to charge more.

8 – Fire Your Worst Customer (Really)

When I am talking to CEO’s and growth leaders this next recommendation is always more controversial than firing your worst sales rep. Here it is:

Fire your worst customer.

I readily admit it is counter-intuitive to fire a paying customer in order to increase sales, but hear me out.

This highly symbolic move can have a long-lasting impact on your organization. Here’s why…

When you are out talking to customers, also pay attention to your support team and your financials. It really helps if you have profitability data at a customer level. What you will likely discover is your worst customer(s) come with a significantly higher service cost…often negating their contribution to the bottom line.

These customers cause stress, employee turnover, extra work-around processes, and many other bad support dynamics. Getting them off your books will send a message to your internal team that they are valued.

It will also send a message to your sales team…

I’m not saying this is true for your organization, but I have definitely seen sales reps (who are keen to make their numbers) chase after deals with customers they know are going to be a problem down the road. Firing a bad customer will reinforce to your sales team that there is a model for what a good and profitable customer should look like.

There is nothing more liberating (and symbolic to the team) than to cull a bad customer from the roster.

9 – Institute a Monthly Quota (Not Annual or Quarterly)

There is nothing like well thought out metrics to drive desired behavior in sales teams.

The metric most often discussed with sales teams is their sales quota. Unfortunately, this usually comes out of an annual budgeting process and is, by default, often expressed as an annual target number.

This is a mistake. Why? It is too far out in the distance to keep the attention of most sales reps. Smart growth leaders implement monthly sales quotas, not quarterly or annual ones.

Why is this important? Annual quotas are too far removed; they do not shine enough heat and light on immediate sales activity. Quarterly quotas take most of the pressure off sales reps for the first two months of the quarter.

I have heard pushback on this topic from sales teams who claim they have a longer sales cycle and/or high-ticket products/services, and therefore this does not work for them. The complaint is they have a low volume of transactions that cannot be measured monthly. That is fine. If this is the case for your organization, then consider measuring interim activity metrics that you have proven will ultimately result in sales quota achievement.

10 – Invest in Client Success (No Matter What Your Business)

This suggestion applies to any business, and is quite possibly the best idea of them all.

Here’s the logic: Depending on whose research you believe, and the industry you’re in, acquiring a new customer is anywhere from 5 to 25 times more expensive than retaining an existing one. Furthermore, the consulting firm Bain found that increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%.

If you help your customers to optimize and better use what they have purchased from you, then they will return the favor in the form of loyalty. The payback in terms of renewals, referrals, upsells, and lifetime value can be huge.

The best part is you don’t need to invest more in marketing and sales, you just need to keep more of the business you have already sold.

Sales Is the Fuel for Your Growth

Growth leaders ultimately must increase sales in order to achieve their organizational growth objectives. What makes growth strategy interesting and exciting is that every organization and market is different, and the levers to increase sales are different for each unique situation.

The proven strategies and tactics in this article have worked for me, and the organizations I have been involved with during my career as a growth strategist. My expectation is that some, if not all, of them can also work in your organization.

As always, please share your feedback, and feel free to give me a call if I can help.

-Onward

About the author: Kimball Norup is the founder of 1CMO Consulting, a business strategy and growth advisory firm based in Sonoma, California. To read prior articles, or sign up to receive future ones by email, click here.

There is No Excuse for Not Knowing Your Target

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“If you don’t know where you are going, any road will get you there.”

– Lewis Carroll

Two of the biggest mistakes I see leaders make when they are developing a strategic growth strategy involve the targeting of sales prospects.

The first mistake, and by far the most common, is simply not knowing who their target is.

The second, commonly found in early stage go-to-market organizations, is to assume everybody is a prospect.

The bad news: Many startups struggle with this, and it is sadly all too common for more established organizations as well.

The good news: It is not too difficult to develop a working definition for your organization.

Before diving into this topic, let’s start with a simple definition of “target market.”

Defining “Target Market”

Defining the target market for the products and/or services you are selling is a fundamental part of developing a strategic growth plan.

A quick online search will yield many definitions, here’s a pretty good one:

A target market is a group of customers within a business’s serviceable available market at which a business aims its marketing efforts and resources. A target market is a subset of the total market for a product or service.

Know Your Target

Developing an effective definition of your target market is one of the most significant, and often overlooked, leverage points in a go-to-market strategy.

What do I mean by “know your target”?

The logic behind this recommendation is straightforward – You need focus in order to be successful. Without focus, you will flounder in the marketplace and waste a lot of precious time and energy chasing bad deals.

Defining your target provides clarity for your team.

If you are very clear on your target then you also gain the luxury of focusing your limited marketing and sales resources solely on those targets. It is often just as powerful to know who is not a target, that way you can just ignore them.

Before getting in to details on “how” to develop a target market definition, let’s look at the other significant mistake many growth teams make.

“Everybody” is Not Your Market

It is very common in the startup world to hear excited company founders exclaim their market opportunity is almost infinite because “every company needs our solution.” (This is often supported by some lame back of the envelope math showing that they only need to convert 0.1% of the market in order to exceed their rosy sales projections!)

I have heard this many times from growth leaders and their sales teams.

Their enthusiasm and excitement is awesome.

As any venture capitalist or experienced investor will tell you, it is also very dangerous. Why?

Because, unless you have unlimited go-to-market resources, then every individual (for a B2C company) or every organization (for a B2B company) simply cannot be your target.

If everyone is your target, then your growth team will never gain the insights and experience they need to truly understand the prospect and deliver a meaningful value proposition.

You have to focus.

Ultimately, the life of your organization depends on it.

When times are great, many early stage organizations can get away with a loose or non-existent definition of their target market.

This kind of luck rarely lasts. It tends to get exposed by competition, exhausting the pool of early adopters, diminishing marketing ROI, or lack of sales skill.

Tips on Targeting

Most organizations find that they are able to create a working definition of their ideal target(s) with a small amount of effort. A great way to begin is with an analysis of your “best” existing customers, and using this as your starting place.

With a little more research, you can scan the broader marketplace to identify other logical segments that are also potential buyers for your products or services.

In marketing circles, this research is called segmentation, and the resulting definition is referred to as an Ideal Client Profile (ICP).

  • Knowing your market segmentation helps you prioritize opportunities and organize your go-to-market team and plans.
  • Knowing your ICP provides a great target for lead generation, it also helps you to refine the value proposition and messaging into tailored language that will appeal specifically to that ICP.

B2B sales organizations often choose to segment their market by readily available data points about their prospect organizations. This data can be publicly available, data you purchase, or data generated by your sales/marketing team. A few common examples:

  • Company size
  • Employee headcount
  • Annual revenue
  • Industry vertical
  • Geographic location or region

B2C companies may look at their potential buyer’s demographic data like age or sex, household income, home ownership, or geographic location.

Target or Die

For growth leaders and their go-to-market teams the imperative is clear: Know your target, or risk failure.

If you invest the time to segment your market and develop a clear profile of your ideal customer, then you will gain a huge advantage. Your marketing team will focus on generating more of the “right kind” of prospects, your sales team will close more deals, and the organization will grow.

This is win-win-win.

– Onward

About the author: Kimball Norup is the founder of 1CMO Consulting, a business strategy and growth advisory firm based in Sonoma, California. To read prior articles, or sign up to receive future ones by email, click here.

Nine Things That Can Sink Your Growth Strategy (and Your Company)

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Nine things that can sink your growth strategy

“You may not be able to control the waves of change, but you can build a different boat.”

– General Stanley McChrystal

As any seasoned entrepreneur or senior executive will quickly tell you, there are many things that can sink your growth strategy, and ultimately your company if you are not careful.

While it is almost impossible to predict the future, you can prepare for some of the most common growth challenges. It starts by recognizing factors that could negatively affect the growth trajectory of your organization, and then thinking strategically about your options for responding.

For those organizations, and leaders, who successfully navigated through the nightmare of 2020 there were many such learning opportunities. It was a year unlike any other, and for growth leaders it offered many lessons on how to survive and thrive in a true VUCA environment.

In this article, I will share a few of the more common challenges that I have witnessed.

Learning from the Example of Others

If you are really paying attention as a growth leader, you can learn many valuable lessons by observing the failure of others.

By understanding the elements that contributed to the failure, and identifying if they exist (or could potentially emerge) in your operating environment, you can make plans to prevent these challenges from derailing your organization.

The best part of this strategy? You do not have to endure the pain and suffering yourself!

Nine Common Growth Challenges (and how to avoid them)

Here are nine of the most common growth challenges, and suggestions on how to avoid them in your organization:

  1. No vision – A key element of strategic planning is to define your Envisioned Future. Without a defined vision and long-term goals, your organization will be aimless. During the pandemic, many organizations panicked but ultimately found their footing and a path forward. Some leaders reverted to “survivor mode” and did not uphold their envisioned future, losing sight of where they wanted to go, and likely losing the confidence of their team in the process.
  2. Strategy not aligned with core ideology – Most successful organizations have defined their Core Ideology (mission, values, and purpose.) In the past 12 months, many organizations failed to align their internal and external actions with their stated purpose and values. This misalignment might not show any immediate effect, but it creates a crack in the foundation that will only grow over time. The best growth organizations are consistently true to their purpose and values, in good times and in bad. Many organizations have some form of “honesty” and “integrity” in their stated corporate values…a great question for growth leaders to ask is, “Did our actions align with our values in the past 12 months?”
  3. Neglecting talent – Growth leaders recognize that most problems are ultimately people problems. As a result, they focus on getting the right people on the bus, sitting in the right seats. During the pandemic, many organizations downsized to protect their bottom line. While necessary to some degree, many organizations will discover they cut too far and are now unable to capitalize on a recovery ahead of more strategic competitors who kept their talent intact.
  4. Poor situational awareness – Let’s be honest, almost every organization was completely blindsided by the global pandemic. Very few saw that disruptive force coming. However, by paying better attention to their operating environment and developing better situational awareness, growth leaders can begin to anticipate other potentially disruptive forces.
  5. Lack of a plan – The side benefit to developing greater situational awareness, is that growth leaders can do scenario planning with their teams. While it is okay to be surprised, there is no excuse for being unprepared. Successful growth leaders are always asking questions like, “What is the worst case scenario?” and “How would our organization respond to that?”
  6. Failure to take decisive action – Successful growth leaders have a strong, and consistent, bias for action. During the pandemic, many organizations hunkered down, hitting the pause button on executing their growth strategies. While some slowdown was prudent – and in many cases necessary – to completely stop created a huge loss of momentum, and ultimately sent an inconsistent message to the market. Many of these organizations likely will not recover from the resulting loss of talent and market traction.
  7. Failure to pivot – Closely related to taking decisive action, is knowing when something is not working and it is time for a change. Growth leaders know that sometimes the best way to get through an obstacle is to chart a new course and go around it! They innovate new products or services, enter new markets, or find new ways to position what they are selling. In the startup world this is call a “pivot” and it is a vital life skill for any growth leader. The organization either adapts or dies as a result.
  8. Lack of liquidity – There is an old business finance rule that “cash is King.” In truth, it is King, and Queen, and probably the entire royal court. Liquidity is the fuel for any organization, and without it, the organization will likely fail. The obvious connotation of liquidity is money, but it also applies to people, and capacity. Every growth leader must ensure the organization has the required resources necessary to execute its growth plan.
  9. Failure to communicate – Finally, successful growth leaders are exceptional communicators. They have an open, honest, two-way dialogue with all their constituents – both internally and externally. They do not fall victim to the temptation of putting lipstick on a pig. This clear and consistent communication not only serves as a vehicle to share strategy, it also provides a continuous feedback loop, builds trust, and ultimately helps to sell whatever solutions the organization is providing.

Conclusion

The pandemic has taught us that if you do not take the time to imagine the worst, you might not be prepared when disaster strikes. Bad things come in many shapes and sizes, and they do happen. Even to the best organizations.

By thinking about these common growth strategy challenges ahead of time, growth leaders will have a big head start on how to avoid them. Others in the market might stick their heads in the sand and hope their challenges will go away. But not growth leaders.  They confront adversity head on.

The good news – you can learn from the experience of others and prevent them from happening in your organization.

The bad news – if you ignore them, they can be catastrophic.

-Onward

KISS: The Power of Simplicity in a Complex World

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“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger and more complex. It takes a touch of genius – and a lot of courage – to move in the opposite direction”

—Albert Einstein

There are many benefits to keeping things simple in an increasingly complex world.

Successful growth leaders know that it is a constant battle to fight the evil forces of complexity within their organizations. Complexity is the single greatest execution risk for any growth strategy.

Simple is good. Complexity is bad.

KISS

There is an old and often-quoted acronym, called KISS, which is most often interpreted as: Keep It Simple Stupid.

There are many variations of the KISS phrase, including: “keep it simple, sweetheart”, “keep it simple, silly”, “keep it short and simple”, “keep it simple and straightforward”, “keep it small and simple”, “keep it simple, soldier”, or “keep it simple, sailor”.

No matter which version of KISS you prefer, they all have the same core meaning: Simple is good. Complexity is bad.

The KISS acronym is credited to Kelly Johnson, lead engineer at the Lockheed Skunk Works (creators of the infamous Lockheed U-2 and SR-71 Blackbird spy planes, among many others).

The KISS principle states that most systems work best if they are made simple rather than more complicated. Therefore, simplicity should be a key goal in design, and unnecessary complexity is to be avoided.

A great example of the KISS principle in action is a story of Johnson providing a team of his design engineers a handful of simple mechanics tools, with the challenge that the jet aircraft they were designing must be repairable by an average mechanic, in the field under combat conditions, with only these tools. In this context, “stupid” refers to the relationship between the way things break and the level of sophistication available to repair them.

A great lesson that has application to any field.

Simple is good. Complexity is bad.

Norup’s Complexity Theory

During my career I have interacted with many other leaders – both as colleagues, competitors, partners, advisors, prospects, and clients.

With this first-hand experience, I have concluded that all leaders can be categorized into one of two broad buckets:

  • There are those who constantly seem to make things more difficult and complicated. This usually is not malicious – it is just how they think and operate. I like to call them “Complicators.”
  • And, then there are those who constantly try to simplify things and strive for effectiveness. The “Simplifiers.”

Unfortunately, I have also observed that they exist in a 4:1 ratio. In other words, 80% of leaders are Complicators and only 20% are Simplifiers.

The most effective growth leaders are Simplifiers. They strive to build efficient go-to-market processes, communicate clearly to the market, and build effective teams.

All things being equal, simplicity always wins. It is easier to build, maintain, and scale.

During times of massive uncertainty and crisis, even the strongest and most experienced professionals can get overwhelmed and freeze up. Taking complexity out of the equation enables teams to know what to do, where to start, and who to help.

Complexity makes the path forward much more challenging.

Complexity does not scale.

Simple is good. Complexity is bad.

Where to Start

Growth leaders should tackle complexity within their organization by evaluating the major go-to-market processes within their domain.

A useful model is to literally “follow a lead” all the way through a typical buyer’s journey for your organization. Starting with marketing and lead generation, and then moving to sales enablement, on to sales, and all the way through to your post-sale client success function.

At every step and through every stage, pay attention to extra steps that can cause friction or confusion in the process. Remove variables. Provide decision-making guidelines.

Before layering in any form of complexity. Make sure the simple case is optimized.

This approach of slow is smooth, and smooth is fast is a proven way to accelerate growth while reducing execution risk.

People often worry that making something simpler is, in fact, making it simplistic or dumbing it down. In fact, the opposite is true. As Leonardo Da Vinci so eloquently said, “Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.”

Conclusion

Eliminating complexity is not a one-time event.

In the post-pandemic “new normal” business era, the pace of change is accelerating, not slowing down. This relentless level of innovation and pushing boundaries can easily breed complexity if not constantly monitored.

Successful growth leaders should focus on being simplifiers, dedicating continuous effort to refine, simplify, and optimize processes.

Leader that fit in the Complicators category will find it difficult to stay ahead of sudden changes that are often forced on them by unforeseen economic, environmental, buyer, or competitive forces. The complexity of their organizations becomes an anchor – slowing things down and limiting growth.

Simple is good. Complexity is bad.

-Onward