Listening to the media speculate over what’s hindered corporate growth in recent years can feel a bit like a game of Clue. Was it the Fed in D.C. with the high interest rates? The many geopolitical conflicts? The techies in Silicon Valley with the never-ending disruption? Or just fickle customers with their constantly shifting preferences?
But in conversations with senior leaders across industries, it’s become clear that the real threat is far more insidious—and it’s coming from inside the house. A structural bias against bringing innovations to market quickly, coupled with a lack of clarity and confidence from the C-suite, is preventing companies from generating and sustaining growth.
The reality is that most businesses today simply aren’t built to meet the rapidly shifting demands of the marketplace. With leaders under constant pressure to show quarterly gains, organizations are incentivized to emphasize the short-term. Moreover, in a post-pandemic world, market opportunities are coming and going faster than companies can shift to meet them, leaving CEOs discouraged and unsure of the path ahead, while long-term strategies go obsolete before they can be acted upon.
This reality is borne out in our own research: 34% of business leaders told us their firms overemphasize short-term results, and 37% said their organization has no long-term planning process. “You’re constantly in this space of change,” one executive told us. “Plans are abandoned almost as soon as they are made. There’s no real plan because things just sort of happen.”
However, organizations that possess a few key capabilities and cultural attributes can build the muscle memory to launch new products, services and experiences, devise new business models, and execute other types of growth strategies in a timely, repeatable way. At the heart of this approach are five key capabilities that businesses must develop to unlock and sustain growth in today’s volatile, uncertain, chaotic and ambiguous marketplace.
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Form Cross-Functional Go-to-Market (GTM) Teams for Speed to Market
Many organizations assign growth initiatives to specific departments, such as marketing or product development (“Go invent me something new!”). This approach can slow down the process, leading to missed opportunities and delayed market entry. Instead, companies must form cross-functional GTM teams that build speed and agility into the process end-to-end: Speed to insight, speed to strategy, speed to impact, and speed to capability.
This team should include members from finance, HR, technology, design and strategy. Empower these teams to launch new products quickly, with a clear mandate to deliver specific, measurable results. Because all relevant functions are represented from the start, all critical factors are addressed earlier—so products launch faster and more successfully.
Real-world example: Despite the challenges of the pandemic, Chick-fil-A continued to innovate drive through and home delivery at the speed of light. It required partnership of multiple teams across strategy, store operations, marketing, digital, HR and finance—even working virtually. One big learning: in the face of disruption, how powerful it was to have all of the functions working together seamlessly to solve a major business issue. It’s a learning that has carried forward propelling Chick-fil-A’s growth and innovation.
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Build a Coalition of Stakeholders for Informed Decision-Making
Effective growth execution requires more than just speed; it requires informed decision-making. This can be challenging in large organizations where decision rights are often unclear and political dynamics can delay progress. To overcome these obstacles, build a coalition of stakeholders across the organization. Align them on the growth strategy and their interdependent roles in delivering it. Their clarity and shared vision will set them up to collaborate. You’ll get faster, more informed decision-making.
Real-world example: T-Mobile’s game-changing transformation to save (and turn around) a business included tough decisions such as eliminating contracts along with a rolling thunder of other moves. The change required C-suite collaboration around a shared set of data-driven inputs and a scenario-driven business and marketing plan.
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Make GTM Innovation Business as Usual
To be ready to respond to new market opportunities that keep coming faster, innovation needs to become a core business capability. This means that the processes and competencies necessary for launching, operating and scaling new products need to be integrated into the organization’s everyday operations. It also means senior leaders need to cultivate a culture of risk tolerance, so the impulses for growth and organizational resilience stay in balance.
Real-world example: Amazon is continually experimenting with GTM innovation, from its inception through the present day, including the acquisition of Whole Foods and its physical retail experiments with Five Star stores and Amazon Fresh. All are designed to take advantage of consumers’ constantly shifting needs.
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Move at the Speed of Markets
The companies best poised to capture growth opportunities ahead of competition will be faster in three interconnected phases: insight, strategy and market execution. They will prioritize deeper understanding of customer needs, rapid translation of insights into strategic priorities, and swifter implementation. The key is to build an organization that is agile, adaptable and capable of scaling its operations to meet growing demand.
Real-world example: Pfizer recently launched its ambitious “Pfizer for All” consumer-facing platform, a first for the company. There was roughly 15 months between the launch of an earlier idea in early 2023—vaccine-finder VaxAssist—and the launch of the far more ambitious platform, Pfizer for All, in August 2024. The approach helped test and learn before scale, working through what consumers, patients and channel partners want and need. It shows a commitment to going rapidly to market, learning fast from what works and what doesn’t, and doubling down on where there’s traction.
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Embrace AI to Enhance Growth Capabilities
From tracking customer preferences to developing rapid prototypes, AI can help businesses move faster and more efficiently. Focus AI on improving existing capabilities and creating new opportunities in customer engagement and operational efficiency, as is the case with Walmart. The focus should be on how AI can be integrated into your company’s overall growth strategy to drive sustainable results,
Growth is no longer a byproduct of past successes; it’s a result of deliberate, strategic efforts to understand and meet the evolving needs of customers one step ahead of the competition. External forces will always be in flux. By moving at the speed of growth, companies can build an organization nimble enough, creative enough and innovative enough to stay ahead of the curve.
Mike Leiser is Chief Transformation Officer and Senior Partner at Prophet.
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