Ensuring {profitable} Growth

Rich StillmanThe Upswing Group

My objective this morning

• Help you think about how to ensure continued growth

• Suggestions for a growth “toolkit”

Couple of questions

• Are you satisfied with your company’s ability to identify the big opportunities that will drive your growth for the next 5 years?

• Do you know who the visionaries are in your company?

• How confident are you about the degree of total company alignment around your strategy?

{profitable} Growth: Obvious but not easy

• Growth for growth’s sake?

• Growth without profit?

Helping to ensure growth

• Define your key opportunities in a disciplined way

• Make annual strategic planning an on-going process

• Think in terms of a portfolio of offerings

• Make your key stakeholders co-creators of your future

• Gain alignment by having a “playbook” developed ahead of time

What about the opportunities?

Do

CheckAdjust

Plan

Edison’s definition of genius

• 1% inspiration, 99% perspiration

BUT• Without the right inspiration, all you’ve

got is a bucket of sweat

• Edison’s concrete houses for example

Working on the right opportunities?

• Edison devoted nearly as much time and effort (and millions of dollars) to concrete homes as he did to any of his better-known discoveries.

Finding the right opportunities

• Make the inputs to annual planning an on-going process– Update your strengths, opportunities and realities all

the time– Analyze your competition all the time– Be talking to your customers all the time

• Beyond sales people

– Analyze market trends and developments all the time

• All the time = at least quarterly

Take a portfolio approach

• No matter how small the company, be thinking in terms of a portfolio of offerings

• Don’t wait for core growth to start slowing before identifying the next big opportunity

Growthrate

Market share

?

$

Harsh realities

• Every really good idea ultimately becomes a battle for market share (and all too soon!)

“For more than 10 years, Sternlicht obsessed over every detail at Starwood. Now he’s counting on the same mania to help him build a second empire, as he launches three luxury hotel and condo brands aimed at the high-end customer…

The difference this time is that his competitors are copying his every move.” (Emphasis mine)

Conde Nast Portlfolio, October 2007 issue

Involve your key stakeholders

• Find, and develop a trust-filled dialog with, the innovative minds among:– Your employees¸– Your suppliers– Your customers– Your peers

• Make them co-creators of your future– It’s their future too!

Planning Cycle

Employees

Suppliers

Customers

Outside Help

Peers

Do

CheckAdjust

Plan

Gain alignment by planning ahead

• Prepare a “playbook” ahead of time for getting total company understanding of and commitment to the plan

• Put your plan on a single piece of paper

• Use the Plan-Do-Check-Adjust model to reinforce key strategic themes and build alignment– Real alignment is hard to achieve, and most

executives overestimate employee commitment

The Goal: Up and to the right

Start planning here

To get here

rich@upswingllc.com www.upswingllc.com 206.412.7952