Business growth, especially sustainable profitable growth, is highly desired and very elusive. Margaret Reynolds, formerly lead strategic office of Hallmark Cards and now known as America’s Business Growth Catalyst, set about to determine why similar companies have very different levels of growth. She captured her results in a new book, “Boost Your GrowthDNA” which explains the invisible markers in a company that constrain or enable growth.
“Growth is rarely the result of working harder or having a strategic plan. It requires a company to be “growth-minded”, to look at business opportunities differently than they do today—with an ‘outside-in’ lens. When companies change how they think about growth, they can be so much more effective in generating it. The great news is that the changes needed don’t have big price tags -It is about changing the questions asked and the ways people work together,” says Reynolds.
A company’s invisible growth markers are much like human DNA—a genetic imprint that determines outcomes. There are four essential DNA strands, or components, of GrowthDNA. Each of these strands is distinct, but also interconnected. All four GrowthDNA strands must be boosted to achieve sustainable and significant growth results. Leaders need to know their organizational DNA to understand their “genetic code” that constrains or enables growth, which can be proactively managing to change outcomes. Those companies who have boosted their GrowthDNA score 26% higher and are seeing 2-10x growth.
Marshall Goldsmith, bestselling author of numerous business books, including Mojo and What Got You Here Won’t Get You There, says, “Margaret Reynolds is a true expert with a fresh and powerfully effective results-oriented business growth philosophy. If you are a growth-minded business leader, this is a must-read book.”
The book shares the limitations of traditional growth tools, like strategic planning, and why they fail to produce the intended results more often than not. Reynolds has organized the book into four sections:
- Why Growth Matters which includes startling information such as a 1% increase in long-term growth generates 4-5x greater increase in equity value than a 1% increase in pretax operating profit.
- What is GrowthDNA introduces the GrowthDNA framework and the four strands that contribute to GrowthDNA. A company’s ability to grow is defined by the strength of their genetic code in these four strands.
- How GrowthDNA Works covers how leaders can apply the framework to their businesses. It is focused on helping them change how they approach opportunity identification, strategy development, organizational commitment, and developing a growth-minded culture.
- The GrowthDNA Experience provides case studies of how leaders have successfully applied the book’s concepts. These leaders represent businesses of different sizes and industries as the principles are universally adaptable.
Because it is important for leaders to understand their GrowthDNA, Reynolds has developed a no-charge GrowthDNA Scorecard Assessment which can be accessed at www.dnascorecard.com.
