This session sits in the why module of the IRG100 program, alongside the humanized growth study, leading humanized growth, and decoding the world. It ran to an agenda of introduction, personal connect, the humanized growth content, a breakout and plenary, and next steps.
Humanized growth is defined as value created across four stakeholder groups: colleague value, customer value, community value, and capital market value. The line the session uses for it is that being human is everyone’s business.
Key findings
- Top-line revenue is the near-universal growth ambition. Both groups index close to the average on it, at 93 and 98.
- The divergence is in second place. Bottom-line profit indexes at 130 for underperformers against 85, and impact on people indexes at 120 for overperformers against 76.
- The session poll found that participants rated marketing’s role highly: 51 percent gave the top rating to the statement that marketing plays a leading role in helping the organization understand the world around it.
- The same poll found much less confidence about stakeholder balance. On whether the organization has an equal understanding of the needs of colleagues, consumers, communities and capital markets, only 2 percent gave the top rating and 33 percent answered at the low end.
- The seven building blocks of humanized growth are evolving experiences, whole-brained, multiple models, anticipative organization, abundant markets, and open culture, with humanized growth over all of them.
A belief-based market definition, worked through
The example runs on a redefinition: from selling cans of paint to selling tins of optimism, expressed as adding color to people’s lives.
The idea then travels into locally powerful activation. The examples given are the favelas in Brazil, the townships in South Africa, schools in the UK and Morocco, sport canteens in the Netherlands, and nursing homes in China.
The idea is described as a true north star, with clear and compelling benefits at functional, emotional and societal levels, and a consistent total experience across touch points from pack and in-store to digital, events, PR and social media.
The commercial outcome shown is market share rising across four years, from 20.9 percent to 25.6 percent.
What participants were asked to do
The personal connect asked each participant to spend five minutes introducing themselves and saying how involved they are in value creation for each of the four stakeholder groups.
The individual exercise asked three questions: whether the company has a clear strategy for value creation for all stakeholders, whether the strategies are coherent, and whether they are long-term. Participants then shared their review in a breakout and brought a single most important learning to the plenary.
The wider frame is what the session calls the business plan for the planet, with the Sustainable Development Goals in practice, an acknowledgment that there is plenty of work to be done, and a closing reflection on growth tensions and what needs to be actioned.
Participants were asked to prepare a key purpose challenge, personal or corporate, for discussion in their breakout team, and were pointed to upcoming community forum sessions hosted by the IRG founders.
Scope and limitations
The index figures are presented without a stated sample or a definition of the two groups, and the poll results come from the participants in this one session rather than from a representative survey.
Source
This page summarises Humanized Growth, by Frank van den Driest, Marc de Swaan Arons, January 2021.