The clinic opens on the growth challenge as IRG frames it. The license to grow is being challenged, traditional business growth formulas are lacking, and marketing has lost influence.
The evidence is the Humanized Growth Study: more than 750 qualitative interviews, more than 5,000 quantitative responses across markets and functions, an AI analysis of 3,500 growth publications, and behavioral analysis of more than three million LinkedIn members. The output is seven building blocks, which participants then score themselves against.
Key findings
- Reading the market is the widest single gap in the deck: 86 percent of overperformers assess and understand market developments, against 36 percent.
- The culture that delivers evolving experiences indexes 133 for overperformers, and is described in terms of innovation, change and entrepreneurship.
- On organizational change, competitive agility runs 68 percent against 16 percent, and effective removal of internal barriers 50 against 24.
- On growth ambition, top-line revenue indexes 98 and 93 and separates nobody. Underperformers weight bottom-line profit, at 85 against 130. Overperformers weight impact on people, at 120 against 76.
- IRG’s own CMO survey shows 78 percent against 4 percent reporting a significant shift to humanized growth, and 65 percent against 11 percent reporting increased CMO influence on growth.
The study and what it found
The seven blocks run from abundant markets, through multiple models and evolving experiences, to open culture, the anticipative organization, whole brained working and humanized growth itself. On markets, overperformers are described as thinking about Nielsen, Amazon and Kickstarter, and Mars moving from pet food to pet care is the worked example.
On models, 71 percent accept new business models against 39 percent, playing chess and checkers at once. On experiences, 81 percent focus on eliminating friction and delivering ever-evolving experiences against 32 percent, and overperformers are described as always beautifully dissatisfied.
On culture and organization, overperformers rewrite the culture script. Sixty-seven percent build ecosystems with complementary partners against 39 percent, 70 percent show diversity in strategic decision making against 45 percent, and they carry 3.5 times more connections with other functions and 5.5 times more with senior leaders.
Whole brained working covers both talent and method: 65 percent can attract whole-brain people against 25 percent, 66 percent put data and analytics at the core of strategic decision making against 36 percent, and 59 percent develop creative solutions inspired by the data.
The clinic exercise
The framework is then handed back to the room. Five minutes scoring your own organization on the seven blocks, twenty minutes discussing the best and worst scores, then choosing the biggest recommendations and taking them to plenary. Forty minutes in total.
Why the moment matters
The new reality is described the same way IRG describes it elsewhere: the future is unknown, systems are being questioned, and empathy has increased. Before COVID the stakeholder emphasis fell on customers and the capital markets. After it, colleagues and community joined them, and the move is from working separately to being all purpose based.
The opportunity for marketing rests on a hard fact about the role. When growth is lacking, the CMO is typically the first to go, and the 2018 CMO shuffle is cited. The charges are the familiar ones: over-focus on communication, shiny digital toys, insufficiently commercial. The answer offered is the da Vinci growth CMO profile, and the closing question is whether, if not now and if not me, then when and who.
Scope and limitations
The comparison figures are between overperformers and underperformers as the Humanized Growth Study defines them, over more than 750 qualitative interviews and more than 5,000 quantitative responses. The self-scoring exercise is a discussion device, not a measurement.
Source
This page summarises Driving Humanized Growth, by Marc de Swaan Arons, 2020.