Introducing the Six Imperatives for High Growth

Growth is hard. Taking an idea from inception and turning it into a stable, predictable, sustainable double-digit year over year high growth company is one of the most exciting and excruciating challenges a leader will face. It’s a 24/7 job that can often feel like running through a gauntlet filled with enemy combatants armed with a variety of medieval torture devices whose only job is to eliminate you.

It’s hard to see the path forward when your day is filled with never-ending challenges: decisions to make, problems to solve, capital to raise, people to hire. Leveling up to the next stage of growth presents completely new challenges and requires new skills, people, systems, and processes. Through our work we guide high growth leaders through this gauntlet; to help companies level up and create strong sustainable organizations in the process.

PeopleCap has been working with high growth companies for 20+ years focusing on organizational growth and people development. Our deeply held belief is that people drive results. Most founders and entrepreneurs start out with an idea for a product or a service. Their area of expertise is rarely management of people. But for a company to scale successfully, leaders must master the ability to achieve their goals through other people. As organizations grow, they add more people and the more people you add to the team, the greater the complexity in achieving those results.

Working with our clients over the last 10+ years, we began to see that people related issues often stalled their growth. As we catalogued those issues, we saw they reliability fell into one of six buckets: strategy, culture, leadership, talent, organizational structure, and communication. We codified those areas into The Six Imperatives for High Growth.

The Six Imperatives are the factors that together impact an organization’s health. Let’s say you have a new year’s resolution to get in shape. Odds are that would involve focusing on more than one area of your life. For example, you might resolve to eat healthier, drink more water, lift weights, commit to some form of cardio, sleep eight hours, cut back on sugar and cocktails, etc. The sum of your efforts moves the needle on your health. As with any quest to live healthier, the work is constant. We deliberately use the imperative format because the work is never finished - these six key areas are constantly evolving, and a leader must always be vigilant - working to make forward progress in each of the six interrelated areas.

Another way to think about The Six Imperatives is that they are the levers that a leader moves to create value in the organization through people. Each has its own unique set of milestones, opportunities, and threats. Within each imperative there are proven methods to accelerate growth and avoid mistakes that waste time and resources. In our work, we provide leaders with the tools to navigate the imperatives at each stage of growth.

The Six Imperatives for High Growth are:

Sharpen Focus

Clear vision creates a common purpose. Everyday employees make decisions on how to allocate their time and company’s resources. The best way to ensure that they make the right decisions that lead to forward progress is to have a sharp focus that is clearly understood by everyone in the organization.

Calibrate Culture

You can’t leave culture to chance. Culture starts with establishing a set of core values that communicate to employees what behavior will be rewarded and conversely, what behavior will not be tolerated. As you grow, your vision and strategy change, your culture must evolve to support your business strategy and help reach your goals.

Strengthen Leadership

Strong leadership is fundamental to growth. Leadership begins with a passionate founder and moves to a distributed team as a company grows. Each leader added to the team changes the dynamic. Building a cohesive and aligned leadership team requires intention and effort.

Elevate Talent

Your organization can’t outperform its talent. High performance demands raising the bar on talent. There are three ways to elevate talent: develop existing talent, attract the best new talent, and liberate poor performers.

Align Structure

Structure follows strategy. Organizational structures and processes must evolve to align with your business strategy. Aligning structure leads to increased efficiency, speed, agility, and accountability.

Amplify Communication

Communication is the lifeblood of any organization. As you grow, it’s harder to keep everyone in the loop. Leaders must drive the sharing of knowledge, information, and feedback across the entire organization - in every direction.

For more information on how we use The Six Imperatives to drive growth check out our website at www.PeopleCap.com.