Growth

Why do organizations tend to pull back budgets for exploration and opportunity discovery when they fail to meet their revenue goals, despite having aggressive revenue targets moving forward?

When uncertainty creeps into the core business, the natural reaction is to stay away from it. But this is actually 'risk-taking'. Isn’t continuing to execute the way 'it’s always been done' in the face of uncertainty a path to failure?

 It does not have to be a resource intensive endeavor. The goal is to bust assumptions and cut through biases to gain new knowledge, mitigating risk and improving efficiency in delivering the desired outcome. The likelihood is that teams will also discover insights that point to new growth opportunities.

The hype around AI is mind-boggling—more than the standard tech hype, which is saying something. Leadership is demanding to know what it means for their organizations. So what does it mean? Is this just the latest iteration of FOMO? How do you get answers?

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AI and Digital technologies are creating a seismic shift that has reshaped industries, disrupted traditional business models, and left no corner of the world untouched. At its core, effective AI adoption and digital transformation requires a human-centric approach. Enter Growth Innovation — a blend of methodologies that acknowledges and navigates uncertainty and complexity effectively, enabling businesses to adapt to ongoing disruptions quickly.

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The transformation of support functions from mere cost centers to strategic partners requires a fundamental shift in perspective. Moving beyond a myopic focus on cost efficiency, these functions need to adopt a forward-looking stance. Embracing a customer-centric approach is paramount — support functions must treat internal colleagues as customers. In this way, they foster innovation, facilitate timely resource allocation, and collaborate with revenue-generating units to optimize desired business outcomes. By embracing innovation, nurturing collaboration, and aligning with strategic objectives, support functions can shed the cloak of the traditional “cost center” image and emerge as essential catalysts for organizational success in the digital era.

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One of the most powerful aspects of delegating outcomes is that it creates accountability. By entrusting team members with achieving objectives that impact the greater organization, leaders create a sense of ownership. Teams and their leaders should collaborate to define their missions, outcomes, and metrics that measure progress toward the desired result. In order to establish sustained growth check out our 3 principles and proven coaching behaviors to delegate work effectively.

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Product Management has been a discipline in the business world for several decades. However, it has become increasingly important with the acceleration of digital transformation in large businesses. As organizations continue to adapt to advancements in technology, and increasingly incorporate digital solutions into their products, Product Management will be a critical part of product success and innovation. Product Management will help organizations understand what their customers need and create new products and services that meet those needs for both the short and long term. The Product Management function leads the way in the human side of digital transformation.

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Opportunity discovery is the practice of figuring out where a business can find new growth. It’s the phase that comes before customer discovery and before product idea. (You can actually start with either of those, but should take a big stop backward to figure out more about the actual opportunity.)

There are 4 parts to opportunity discovery. In this episode, we'll be going over these 4 parts and the process of finding said opportunities.

What’s so interesting about KPIs and OKRs is every few years there’s a new framework for metrics, but essentially, they’re always about outcomes. So, what are the desired outcomes?
We want more customers. We want happier customers. We want more revenue, more growth, and more market share.

That's going to keep the bosses happy and their bosses happy. And ultimately, will make investors and Wall Street happy. The challenge is when we’re down levels from those mega-desired outcomes, we don't feel like we can influence them too much.

The trap that many corporations fall into is the belief that digital transformation is mostly a technological thing. This couldn’t be further from the truth, as there’s a human side to digital transformation. And while technology is disruptive to the business, it is not disruptive innovation. Disruptive innovation is a purposeful re-imagining of how you structure and manage your work. It's recognizing that the real disruptions are external to the company, mostly in the form of pandemics, war, ransomware attacks, supply shocks, energy grid collapses, etc.

So the question becomes: how do you drive disruptive innovation? Start exploring within the core?

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The increased complexity and endless disruptions of the modern world brought on by the transition to the digital age means uncertainty is everywhere. All across our businesses, we face new challenges, as what used to work no longer achieves desired outcomes. The self-awareness of admitting what we don’t know is the first step toward figuring out new best practices. Fundamentally, people must act differently in the face of uncertainty. Businesses need to adopt learning strategies in order to improve, adapt, or even reinvent their execution strategies.