McKinsey identifies 12 traits of a growth company that will outperform its competitors

Are you choosing  sustainable, inclusive, and profitable growth in your business? 

Do you know why you want to grow ?

Have you  got a solid mission , value prop for customers and stakeholders that feeds the story of the business? 

If you say yes to the above - This will attract attract talent, foster innovation, and create jobs.

Opportunities happen in downturns 

We seem to be in a downturn - and this is where the opportunities are to grow . 

My grandmother said to me - Ivan, When the tide goes out , peoples pants are down - and represents great pickings for solid companies and savvy buyers! 

Hewlett-Packard, Burger King, Hyatt Hotels, Microsoft, Uber,  Airbnb a and Google  were founded during economic downturns.

Buy low and sell high I say!!!

12 Traits of a growth Organisation 

• The team shows a behavior and a mindset of growth - with a risk appetite. Have clear targets, milestones, and motivators. Measure everything - what you can measure you can manage.     celebrate wins !!
• Have a culture that continually seeks out and pursues opportunities. Finding opportunity in tough times  and  innovate and acquire where others retreat and batten down the hatches
• Identify and understand  the needs and wants of valued customers, and developing the right value propositions to appeal to them. Give people what they want and you will get what you want!
• Be agile - having small, cross-functional teams with the autonomy to focus on rapidly building and testing products, features, or services with customers.
• M&A -  rapidly test and learn, fail and iterate, and invest in scaling opportunities. Know when to invest longer-term and commit before seeing returns but also   know when to call it quits. - tough Have a solid m and a plan - know what you are looking for and how you can lever the investment 
• Have the right People and the right team who continually scan for these types of alliances, joint ventures, and M&A opportunities. 
• Continue to invest in your people, creating a pipeline of talent - have a system to upskill and reskill them . People will be attracted to organisations that will enable them to be lifelong learners!
• Make sure that you are outstanding on what you do functionally and continually delight your customers .
• Have a solid operating model and be able to allocate resources to best opportunities required to achieve goals
• Building ecosystems around their core capabilities - create strategic alliances. Learn collaborate and grow together . The 5 Cs of our #bbgforum to build a strong community of connection collaboration contribution continuous and capability 
• Get Stakeholder buy in - as Clive Smallman says communicate communicate communicate communicate and communicate
• Invest in your core  but look for breakout opportunities that can  enable a long-term shift to a new core within a higher-growth market. 

The McKinsey article sites Tencent and AWS breakouts that were game changers 
Tencent, now worth $500 billion includes messaging, gaming, payments, e-commerce and advertising—in addition to evolving its social messaging app WeChat into an extensive “super app.” Tencent’s full ecosystem offering spans fintech, entertainment and media, cab hailing, location sharing, and more, fueling a revenue compound annual growth rate of 28 percent over the decade 2011 to 2021.

Amazon famously expanded beyond its e-commerce business into public cloud services through Amazon Web Services (AWS). By leveraging its core competencies of brand and commercial strength, it built AWS into a business that generated $62 billion revenue.

Inspired by McKinsey article authored by 

Michael Birshan is a senior partner in McKinsey’s London office, where Biljana Cvetanovski is a partner; Rebecca Doherty is a partner in the San Francisco office; Tjark Freundt is a senior partner in the Hamburg office; Andre Gaeta is an associate partner in the Sao Paulo office; Greg Kelly is a senior partner in the Atlanta office; Erik Roth is a senior partner in the Stamford office; Ishaan Seth and Jill Zucker are senior partners in the New York office.

The authors wish to thank Jaidit Brar, Luis Cerquiera, Vincent Cremers, Brian Gregg, Eric Hazan, Martin Hirt, Anna Koivuniemi, Pablo Leon, Duncan Miller, and Dennis Spillecke for their contributions to this article. And to the many McKinsey colleagues who contributed their industry expertise and perspectives to this research: Marco Aukofer, Matt Banholzer, Kurt Bazarewski, Dani Ebersole, Stephen Guerin, Tim Koller, Karin Löffler, Katherine Lovemore, Patrick McCurdy, Sakina Mehenni, Camille Meeùs, Bridget Morton, Michael Park, Tido Röder, Jeff Rudnicki, Manny Sasson, Balint Stellek, Marija Vukojevic, Qian Wan, and Michelle Wycoff.

Thanks Rob Nankervis for the share!!!!