Insights Blog

Is your organization hungry for organic growth?

A common problem in organic growth is a focus on short term results. Often, insufficient time, people and money resources are allocated to longer term developments. A proven way to address this shortfall is with a simple tool called Brand Vision and a planning tool called LEAP (Long Term Equity Action Plan).

We live in turbulent times. The report this morning in the Wall Street Journal talked of the 6th CEO of a publicly held company getting fired within the past eight days since the start of the year. While many industries are in distress, the one that caught my attention over the past couple of weeks is the retail industry. As consumer demand wanes, many retailers are falling by the wayside. So what is common amongst retailers that are likely to survive and even emerge stronger at the end of this downturn? While being financially well-run is a given, the defining characteristic of strong retailers today is a well-defined and commonly understood focus.

First let’s ask a simpler question...Who ‘owns’ organic growth in your company today? If you took a water cooler survey, chances are most people would say ‘the CEO’. Okay, but the CEO ‘owns’ everything. So let’s confront the basic question...which function should own organic growth?

Sustainable profitable growth is tough to achieve under any circumstances. It is even harder in the current environment. With a few exceptions, marketers in every industry are finding the going really tough with customer spends waning, prices spiraling and budgets evaporating. Yet this is also a unique opportunity. The behavior of marketers over the next 3-4 years could very well determine the future of marketing in their organizations. If marketers prove instrumental in eking out organic growth despite their constraints, they will become champions of customer-centricity and long-term change in the fortunes of their company. So what are the secrets of organic growth success that we have discovered working with companies such as P&G, Microsoft, GE, IBM and others?:

Organic growth is the goal of every company in every vertical. Yet most companies consistently miss their organic growth goals. Some have been missing them for years. That’s one reason the Wall Street M&A guys have been so busy and made so much money over the past 20 years. Companies couldn’t grow organically so they bought ‘growth’. Why is organic growth such a problem?