Growth Insights for CEOs

Winning the Fraud and Cybersecurity Race: A Go-to-Market Blueprint for Competitive Edge
Fraud and cybercrime have become a systemic, trillion-dollar drag on the global economy—but the fight to turn the curve is more than a market opportunity.
Over the past few years, I have worked alongside cybersecurity and fraud-management teams in government, banking, and payments, and nothing is more satisfying than seeing a new solution stop a romance scam or prevent a pensioner from losing their life savings.
Recent Posts

Growth Engine Roadmap, Metrics, and Financial Benefits
Fri, Jul 27, 2018 — If you have been following this series of articles on sustainable business growth, you know that we have arrived at our fifth and final topic. If you missed the previous articles in the series, you can read Article 1 (The Difference Between a Growth Plan and a Growth Engine), Article 2 (Best Practices in Processes) and Article 3 (People and Organizational Best Practices), and Article 4 (Platforms: Playbooks and Tools).

How Platform Capabilities Sustain Business Growth
Tue, Jun 19, 2018 — If you have been following this series of articles on sustainable business growth, you know that we have arrived at our fourth topic: Platforms. If you missed the previous articles in the series, you can read Article 1 (The Difference Between a Growth Plan and a Growth Engine), Article 2 (Best Practices in Processes) and Article 3 (People and Organizational Best Practices).

Three Reasons Why A One Page Marketing Plan Will Keep Your Growth Strategy on Course
Thu, Jun 7, 2018 — If you type in “marketing strategy” on Google, your screen will instantly become flooded with a spectrum of software tools and new-age philosophies. With all the information available to us at the click of a button, defining and implementing the right strategic plan for your business can become time-consuming – and overwhelming.
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The Top 12 Internet Trends Executives Should Know About in 2018
Wed, Jun 6, 2018 — For business executives, staying relevant in this time of innovation and rapid technological advancement can be challenging. Thankfully, we can leverage consumer and marketplace data to help our companies optimize products and services. One of the premier analytical reports on emerging business-related trends, Mary Meeker’s annual Internet Trends 2018, was just released. While the more than 290 slides in the full report come packed with useful information for driving your company forward, here are 12 important and actionable insights for business executives.

How People and Organizational Capabilities Sustain Business Growth
Thu, May 31, 2018 — If you have been following this series of articles on sustainable business growth, you know that we have arrived at our third topic. The first article introduced the difference between a growth plan (singular event) and a growth engine (recurring system). The theme we developed in that piece supported the need to go beyond growth plans to create sustained growth performance. Our argument that while growth plans are good, growth engines are better.

How Healthy Business Management Processes Sustain Business Growth
Tue, May 15, 2018 — In our first blog of the series, we defined the difference between a growth plan and a growth engine. In that discussion, we defined a growth plan as a singular event that identify future revenue and profit streams and identify capabilities, assets, and competencies the business needs to build to take advantage of future growth opportunities. As we define it however, a growth engine is not an event or a document or a plan, a growth engine is a system of integrated and replicable growth focused processes that support and enable sustained growth performance over a number of years. That blog included a brief questionnaire that helped you assess your company's ability to put a growth engine in place.

How Your Executive Team Can Sustain Your Business Growth through Best Practices
Tue, May 1, 2018 — If you don’t believe that consistent, profitable business growth is a need of virtually every small- and mid-sized business, and especially for yours, you probably won’t get value from this article. The real challenges aren’t understanding the value of growth to your business--they are about determining where your best growth opportunities are, prioritizing across multiple potential growth opportunities, integrating both shorter- and longer-term growth opportunities into your management processes, and organizing for success and building an ability to tap into new revenue streams consistently and over multiple years.

The New "Growth Kid" on the Block: Introducing Horizon (Zero)
Wed, Apr 11, 2018 — Since the introduction of Horizon Growth planning in the late 1990’s, businesses which have successfully understood and adopted this multi-year approach to generation of new revenue and profit streams have realized the benefits of forward planning. Horizon Growth planning was introduced in 1999 in a book titled The Alchemy of Growth: Practical Insights for Building the Enduring Enterprise by several McKinsey associates (Baghai, Coley, White). If you want to read a Cliff Notes version of Horizon Growth planning from the author, you can read excerpts here.

Is Your Org Chart Aligned with Your Growth Strategy? Four Questions to Ask Today
Tue, Mar 27, 2018 — Growth strategy conversations have accelerated in boardrooms of mid-market organizations across America. There’s a growing recognition among CEOs that the people around the table may, in fact, may not be suited for the changes that have roiled today’s marketplace. As technology has assaulted brick-and-mortar businesses; a savvy public has flipped the consideration funnel on its head. As competitive advantages between like companies have grown razor thin, the gap between corporate strategy and the traditional org chart has become ever wider.