What will move the needle for growth in your business by 2024?
Session Intelligence June 2021
Introduced by Andrew Stoneham Knott, Managing Partner at Miramar Global and delivered by Paul Cuatrecasas, CEO of Aquaa Partners, our session in June focussed on how we can all deliver business growth in the current market. We discussed mindset shifts to assist in future proofing a company’s bottom line and market value. We reviewed how we can think differently about opportunities to discover innovative acquisition and growth strategies and change our mindsets.
Overview
Paul’s introduction explained his approach to growth, using digital transformation to disrupt industries and encourage the evolution of a growth mindset. He explained how by focussing on organic and/or inorganic models in the medium term, 3-4 years, we can begin to influence the near term. While there is pressure to deliver against shorter term cycles, they can prevents leaders from being able to see the bigger picture. Executives can be aware of this and focus on creating short term results from a medium term strategy.
He asked the session to consider:
- Where is the disruption in your market?
- What is getting in the way of growth?
- What critical actions will enable wider growth for your business?
Organic growth
Focusing on business optimisation, staffing and culture, the key observations and takeaways from session attendees were:
- Customer intimacy is critical to plan for any future
- Be open to changing mindsets; see everything as an opportunity
- Work hard to keep the innovation and agility borne from the pandemic, even in larger organisations
- Harness organic market intelligence to drive decision making
- Mindset can be the biggest obstacle for innovation
- Company transformation can be challenging but industry transformation requires coopetition and partnership
- Cognitive diversity frees thinking
- Look outside your own industry for new hires to gain a new perspective
- Encourage your business to articulate its vision
- Allow for new cultures to evolve
- Connect your people to the business mission
- Bold moves to change culture can drive industry growth
- Business disruption is industry agnostic; it’s an open playing field
- Leadership and culture ultimately drive business change
Inorganic growth
Focusing on acquisition, specifically digital and tech, JV’s, partnerships and strategic investments, the key observations and takeaways from the session attendees were:
- Legacy businesses are slower to instigate tech driven change than tech businesses; this is down to fear of the unknown and lack of agility for change
- There is a balance to avoid missing out on ROI of previous investments while still driving growth
- Partnerships can be easier to initiate and still offer an opportunity for growth
- How and when data is used and for what value essentially drives the intelligence for actionable change
- A business requires strong strategic rationale and vision for successful growth
- Due diligence from the acquirer, the acquired and the new leadership is essential for successful integration
- Understand people will leave after an acquisition. If you are just buying in talent understand the characteristics of that talent to minimise exit flow
- Consider what is realistic from an acquisition and how you can preserve talent, culture and innovation within the larger organisation
- Start ups fear being anonymised by their acquirer; only culture can change this
- Acquirers have a fear of failure; only culture can change this
We would like to thank Paul for partnering with Leading Minds. Paul is a strategic advisor to CEOs, boards and shareholders of companies operating in or interested in the technology and digital sectors. His experience is in helping companies partner with technology companies to avoid being left behind by exponential change. You can contact Paul at paulc@aquaapartners.com.
