Growth Strategy Process to Accelerate Your Growth Strategy!

Growth is exciting. Developing the plan. Envisioning a future of opportunities for your organization, your team, your customers, your investors… Whether it is entering a new market, developing a new product or service, implementing new productivity tools, or growth through alliances, mergers, and acquisitions – these are all great opportunities to accelerate growth.  

Each of these areas of growth will require changing business processes, the work of your team, the expectations of your customers, and intentional alignment and collaboration across the C-suite to realize results. 

 Why do so many growth strategies fall flat? 

Let’s presume the executive team developed a great strategy, performed due diligence - including unbiased market need assessments and thorough financial planning and analyses - and they have committed ample resources to support a high-performing team dedicated to realizing accelerated growth.  

In earlier CMO Syndicate Insights, tools such as the V/TO and the Business Model Canvas were highlighted to illustrate benefits of intentional engagement across the C-suite and clarify how marketing executives contribute as executive team partners in developing go-to-market strategies. 

In the Harvard Business Review article Why Do So Many Strategies Fail?, David J. Collins states, “Today [strategy] must be broadened to become an integrated set of choices about the business model, competitive positioning, and capabilities required for long-term success.”  

Collins offers the Complete Strategy Landscape process framework to CEOs for making decisions about which opportunities to pursue, how much value the organization can create and capture, and how to sustain value and build a foundation for long-term success. 

He further illustrates how this process framework supports growth within a continuously evolving business environment through his work with Edward Jones. Building on Edward Jones’s strong competitive positioning, he shows how they use the Complete Strategy Landscape process framework and decision making for growth. One key takeaway from the Edward Jones example is the emphasis on maintaining the firm's customer scope and competitive positioning even as business practices evolve.  

Activating growth strategies and transformation 

The Complete Strategy Landscape process framework is a great reference for aligning growth strategies across the C-suite. It helps reduce the disruption often associated with transformation by supporting a limited number of long-term initiatives that guide individual experiments within ongoing change programs, cutting across silos and boundaries.  

Additionally, here are a few perspectives for C-suite executives to consider related to strategic partnerships and the implementation of growth strategy transformations: 

• According to this McKinsey Insight, organizations with CEOs who engage their CMOs as equal partners and create clarity for KPIs aligned with growth strategies “…are twice as likely to have greater than 5 percent annual growth compared with their peers.” 

• Conversely, a Bain Brief, reveals that CEOs and other C-suite executives often have different perspectives on how their marketing executive peer contributes to growth. The report notes, “…we find that CEOs and boards have only a vague understanding of the role, or of what their next CMO should bring to the table.” This vague understanding can lead to misalignment in how their marketing executive partner contributes to the strategies of expanding into new markets, developing new products or services, implementing productivity tools, or mergers and acquisitions.  

Modern CMOs balance the skill of developing strong go-to-market strategies with the agility to navigate continuously evolving market dynamics, all while understanding the ideal customer profile (ICP) to create value for the company, customers, employees, and investors. Regardless of how a company employs operating constructs, theories, or systems, a Chief Marketing Officer is a key executive partner who contributes to each company’s opportunity for success and growth.  

At the CMO Syndicate, our team of global Fortune 500 Chief Marketing Officers provides top-tier marketing leadership and strategic guidance. We help CEOs/Business Owners, Boards & the C-Suite accelerate growth and optimize marketing performance on an advisory, project, or interim basis. Contact us today to learn how we can partner with you to achieve your growth objectives and navigate your Complete Strategy Landscape to accelerate your growth.