Who we help

To put it bluntly, we can only help businesses that want help. By “wanting help”, we mean businesses with leaders who are:

• willing to innovate

• willing to change

• enthusiastic about collaborating with us to solve their problems

By “enthusiastic”, we mean they will lead the charge by setting the example.

If a business has such leaders, we can help.

Broadly speaking, such businesses usually fall into one of the following five categories:

1. Businesses wanting sustainable growth

To survive and thrive (i.e., to grow), businesses need to stay on top of, and ahead of, many things. These efforts, however, are usually done haphazardly rather than in a well-orchestrated manner.

For this reason, every business has areas in which it could do much better.

And even when you get one area running well, the subsequent level of performance tends to decline quickly, often returning to the original status quo.

There are many contributing factors to why it is so difficult to improve and sustain performance, such as high employee turnover, counterproductive legacy operations or rules, lack of know-how, lack of focus and direction, or an unsupportive corporate culture.

The main reason, however, is that the means and systems necessary for improving and sustaining performance have not been properly engineered or possibly not even put in place.

As James Clear said, “You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems.”

And this kills growth.

The purpose of Growth Engineering is to integratively engineer human and non-human operations, to build in best practices, and provide real-time support to sustainably improve performance. Thus keeping your organization growing and operating at a high level.

2. Businesses undergoing rapid growth

When your business grows rapidly, everyone is scrambling to get the products and services out the door. Everybody is overloaded and just striving to hold the ship together.

This is a great problem to have.

However, if that ship is Gerry-rigged and being held together with Band-Aids and bubble gum, then it’s bound to start springing leaks. Instead of being able to focus fully on high-value activities, everybody is going to be running around with buckets to bail out the water. You’ll be bringing on new crew members to help out, but most likely this will be equivalent to just employing more buckets to bail faster.

What a waste of resources and opportunity!

Growth Engineering is used to assess such situations to strategically prioritize where and in what order to make repairs first. This will free up more and more crew members to focus on the main business of safely steering the ship.

3. Startups and businesses planning for growth

It’s always better to build a good ship before setting sail rather than struggling to make repairs while underway.

Growth Engineering is the best way to do this.

Much time and other resources can be saved and opportunities captured by using Growth Engineering to strategically plan and build a Growth Engine to not only get you safely underway, but to also intelligently scale as you grow.

4. Businesses changing direction

Changing direction is messy. Changing direction quickly is even messier.

Old projects and operations need to be wound down while new ones are started up. People are shuffled around to new assignments. They’re unsure how to execute their roles properly. Management needs to focus on the success of the new direction; often having little time to help their operations and people keep up.

Concern, stress, and chaos are everywhere.

Growth Engineering can help.

Using Growth Engineering as a strategic triage combined with robust change management enables the most impactful actions to be taken first to set up workflows with built-in training, support, and guidance to get people in critical roles quickly up to speed.

The Growth Engine will be engineered in line with this triaging effort to ensure the changes made are sustained and leeway is generated to initiate the next round of adjustments to keep the change in direction intact.

5. Businesses acquiring or merging with other businesses

According to the Harvard Business Review, most studies show that between 70 and 90 percent of mergers and acquisitions fail. The main explanation for this depressing number is problems integrating the two parties involved.

But how can that be with so many smart experts and experienced businesspeople working on these M&A deals?

In our opinion, this is due to a myopic focus on expected high-level financial, asset, and operational efficiencies and synergies. These are based on an unspoken assumption that the underlying corporate cultures, mindsets, processes, AND customer bases will somehow magically merge and generate all the promised synergies, despite it being common knowledge this rarely happens.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results.”

If you’re planning or struggling with a merger or acquisition, Growth Engineering can help you successfully navigate the transition.

Growth Engineering is successful because it enables your people to be successful.

The Growth Engines designed through Growth Engineering arrange your operations to do the right things, in the right way, with the right priority, to enable and empower your people to achieve your business objectives.

In the case of mergers and acquisitions, the guiding concepts of the Golden Rule, Top-Down Enablement, and Bottom-Up Engagement, as well as the disciplines of change management, project management, and problem-solving are heavily relied upon. These support people at all levels to identify the trouble spots, triage the priorities, and help individuals negotiate win-win solutions. Thus creating a working environment necessary to realize the aims of the C-suite.