Jul
13
MIT Sloan Management Review has a great article “In Search of Growth Leaders” by Sean D. Carr, Jeanne M. Liedtka, Robert Rosen and Robert E. Wiltbank discussing the importance of growth leaders. Growth leaders are these managers who can generate organic growth to “find new streams of revenue without always resorting to acquisitions”. After three years of research the authors have identified the following characteristics and strategies that distinguish growth leaders:
- Rich in Experience “All of the growth leaders in our study had unusually varied experience early in their careers. Along the way, they acquired skills that eventually helped them explicitly in their launching of growth initiatives…. Along with diversity of experience, we found in our subjects a deep-seated belief in their own abilities and in their power to change the world around them. For them, life is a journey of learning. They thrived on accepting challenges, taking action and getting immediate results. These positive traits tended to reinforce one another in a virtuous circle…This type of growth mindset prepared them to see and to chase opportunity.”
- Changing the Rules… “Most managers are programmed to think the way the head office does, to seek certainty and to rely on data with which to predict and plan. That approach can work well for an established business that knows its field and where surprises are few. But it is deadly in the world of growth, where what a company doesn’t know is far more important than what it does know. Growth is all about uncertainty and how to work with it. Prediction and analysis have their place, but they can’t be the only tools a business has.”
- …But Managing Risk “Although growth leaders embraced new ventures, they weren’t risk seekers. In fact, they minimized risk wherever possible.… while most managers are taught to approach new projects by calculating expected return on investment, growth leaders are more likely to estimate an acceptable degree of loss to start. This lets them pursue interesting opportunities without investing more than they can afford to lose… The managers in our study tended to place small bets fast, then study how their bets had influenced the market. This, in turn, encouraged them either to double-down or to place new bets elsewhere. It’s an approach that allowed them to be fast, flexible and capable of capitalizing on early success.”
- Preferring People to Data “Success was based more often on thoughtful exploration of customers’ needs than on dry market data. The managers in our study personally sought detailed knowledge about individual customers, instead of just seeing them as data in market-research reports… Direct knowledge about customers also helped the managers see what was most important to the customers in terms of products and services.”
- Pragmatic Idealists “In assembling teams, growth leaders learned to combine two seemingly opposing forces: holding people ruthlessly accountable for results, and engaging their passion to build something great together… Their overall approach was to be tough but fair. But they were adamant about acquiring staff with only the needed skill sets. Team effectiveness often depended on moving people quickly into positions that optimized their strengths, and removing people who did not fit or who lacked the necessary capabilities…. Groups pursuing new ventures were seen as no place for rookies. As one leader commented, growth initiatives should be about testing markets, not people. Yet despite this hard-nosed attitude, employees who worked for such managers invariably described them in terms such as ‘caring,’ ‘motivating’ and ‘inspiring.’”
Grow leader seem to be able to hold people accountable, to inspire passion for the vision and purpose and have a gut feel for making business decisions, informed by their rich experiences, their courage to challenge rules and to make calculated risks.
Technorati Tags: Growth, Leadership, Leaders, Business, Management, Risk, Organic, Innovation
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[...] citing a MIT Sloan Management Review article, George recently wrote an post entitled “Searching for Growth Leaders“. Growth Leaders, as defined by the MIT researchers, are: … managers who can [...]