The presentation starts from a single claim: traditional business growth formulas are lacking. It then builds an alternative out of seven building blocks of Real Growth, each supported by a measured gap between overperforming and underperforming companies.
The research behind it combines more than five hundred vision interviews, more than four thousand five hundred survey respondents across seventy-three markets, and analysis of LinkedIn data covering over eight hundred million connections across three million employees, contrasted against revenue growth.
Key findings
- On abundant markets, eighty-five percent of overperformers assess and understand market developments well against thirty-three percent of underperformers.
- On multiple models, willingness to accept new business models splits sixty-six percent against thirty-eight.
- On evolving experiences, delivering ever-evolving experiences splits seventy-seven percent against twenty-two, the widest gap of the set.
- Culture divides on vocabulary. Underperformers more often describe their culture through procedures, structure and quality, while overperformers describe it through innovation, change and entrepreneurship.
- The clearest structural difference is connectivity. Overperformers show three and a half times more connections with other functions and five and a half times more with senior leaders.
- Contribution to growth is unevenly distributed across the blocks, from twenty-six percent for abundant markets down to four percent for anticipative organization, with humanized growth itself at six percent.
Why the old formulas stopped working
The pressures listed are structural rather than cyclical: barriers to entry disappearing, new players breaking the rules, disruptors themselves being disrupted, slowbalization, a war for talent, transparency of corporate culture, and a license to operate under challenge.
The answer offered is not retreat. Growth is described as still available, but in uncomfortable places, with new partners, through niche brands, and by going direct to consumer at both ends of the size range.
The consequence for the individual is stated bluntly. When growth is lacking, the chief marketing officer is typically the first to go, and the deck points to the 2018 shuffle as the evidence.
The seven blocks
Abundant markets is about where a company looks for opportunity. Overperformers excel at spotting and choosing the right wave, and Mars moving from pet food to pet care is the example given.
Multiple models is described as playing chess and checkers simultaneously, moving from supermarket shelves to cafes and subscription models. The capability implication drawn is that marketers need to boost their financial literacy.
Evolving experiences means being always beautifully dissatisfied, focusing on eliminating friction, with Spotify constantly improving the experience as the example.
Open culture is where overperformers rewrite the script. Seventy-two percent against thirty-eight build an ecosystem with complementary partners, and Unilever welcoming outsiders to promote internal change is the example.
The anticipative organization is described as organizing to win wars through micro-battles. Competitive agility splits sixty-six percent against fourteen, effectively removing internal barriers forty-seven against twenty-five, and integrating marketing and sales for e-commerce sixty-six against thirty-eight.
Whole-brained means unlocking data with human insights. The ability to attract whole-brain talent splits sixty-four percent against twenty-five, data and analytics at the core of strategic decisions sixty-four against thirty-five, and marketing creativity fifty-five against twenty-six.
Humanized growth is the seventh block, and it is introduced by challenging the assumption that the objective is profitable growth. Top-line revenue is the top ambition for both groups, at forty-one and forty-four percent. Bottom-line profit leads for more underperformers at thirty-six against twenty-five, and impact on people for more overperformers at thirty-five against twenty. Cisco moving from a product focus to what it called the people deal is the example.
Answering the objections
The deck takes on two detractor arguments directly. The first is that companies spending money on this typically underperform. The response cites companies that added total societal impact to total shareholder returns outperforming peers on margins, valuation and net income, share value of companies connecting effectively with all stakeholders beating competitors by more than two percent a year, and evidence of no financial trade-off between sustainable and traditional funds.
The second objection is that this is the job of government. The deck’s answer is placed in a wider movement, tracing a fundamental shift from 1970 to 2008 and a set of adjectives attached to capitalism: creative, conscious, compassionate, inclusive, sustaining.
Three statements are cited as the turning points: BlackRock’s chief executive in 2018 on companies needing to show a positive contribution to society, the Business Roundtable statement of purpose in July 2019, and a November 2019 formulation that a company’s purpose is to engage all its stakeholders in shared and sustained value creation.
The Da Vinci Growth CMO
The leadership section starts from the problem it has to solve. More than half of business leaders have a low understanding of marketing’s value, alongside a lack of alignment with the chief executive and a perceived over-focus on communication and on digital novelty.
The profile was built with Spencer Stuart and consists of ten experiences and five attitudes. The experiences run from decoding the world and growth strategy through strategic brand development, product and service innovation, breakthrough content, creative customer experience, integrated stakeholder engagement, revenue and channel leadership, marketing capability, and media and performance.
Each experience is broken into specific capabilities. Decoding the world covers translating trends, total stakeholder understanding, deep human insights, and market segmentation. Growth strategy covers business growth visioning, balancing time horizons, market assessment, integrated business planning, financial and data literacy, commercial leadership, and aligning business and marketing measures.
The five attitudes are curious and agile learner, connected and collaborative, servant leader, speed and impact obsessed, and courageous and inspiring storyteller. They sit around the ten experiences in the final profile diagram.
Scope and limitations
The percentages throughout are self-reported survey answers compared between two performance groups, and the LinkedIn analysis is behavioral rather than causal. The contribution levels attached to each building block are presented without an explanation of how they were derived.
Source
This page summarises The Architecture of Real Growth, by Institute for Real Growth, January 2020.