Having spent years of navigating through a string of market disruption working for growth businesses, I came to a very critical conclusion: standing still is the riskiest business decision of today.
But I've also witnessed something spectacular. Disruption doesn't necessarily have to be a threat. Disruption can be rocket fuel for growth for agile growth companies. Through quick reinvention, fast businesses are turning chaos on its head and creating compound growth possibilities. This is not being lucky or having great vision; it's having a repeatable system.
Stemming from rich experience with fearless businesses, I designed a four-step playbook for growth businesses to navigate turbulence and deliver sustained growth: Make Sense, Design, Translate, and Transform.
I'll explain how these stages work in practice through examples of existing businesses which have implemented them successfully.
Phase 1: Make Sense
Gain clarity on the new reality and recognize change signs
This stage demands being away from immediate demands in order to critically examine what is occurring in your market.
Yoco, South Africa
They could easily have panicked since lockdown reduced in-shop card transactions by 40%. But they looked at their real-time till data and discovered a mirror-opposite spike in web payments.
Interpreting the data appropriately, Yoco took swift measures: they suspended new hardware investment and, in six weeks, deployed an online-voucher suite and Payment Links. These helped more than 200,000 merchants to maintain cash flow during a historic crisis.
Practical Tool for This Phase
Conduct a two-hour Pre-Mortem workshop (described by Gary Klein at Harvard Business Review). You assume your plan already failed and generate potential causes. A good way to unearth buried risks and assumptions.
Phase 2: Design
Produce bold new possibilities and scenario-test them
Having set out the situation, you then produce bold new possibilities. This entails crafting at least two development options and actively scenario-testing them.
Dogfish Head, USA
With their bars closed and draught beer sales erased, they had a defining question: "What can we get our stills to solve right now?"
They replied: 80% ABV sanitiser recipe.
They re-tooled bottling lines within 48 hours, shipped several thousands of gallons to state authorities, and recovered their lost draft income in its entirety. They re-employed their core competency – facilities for distillation – to exploit a spot demand in the market.
Suggested Approach
Stress each of your growth possibilities against three futures – best case, base case, and worst case. This makes tenuous assumptions more apparent and toughens your thinking.
Phase 3: Translate
Put strategies into concrete action with organizational alignment
Having devised prospective solutions, this step entails putting adopted strategies in concretized forms with organizational coherence intact.
Hungryroot, USA
Initially a vegetable noodle company, during 2019 they transformed their model to an AI-powered grocery box service. Most importantly, leadership re-wrote each of the team's goals (OKRs) around a single unambiguous metric: reaching a "fridge-full-by-Friday" Net Promoter Score.
This single, unifying metric connected activities throughout the whole organization. Everybody could see what winning looked like. This agreement spurred spectacular growth – 2022 revenues were at US $250 million, a 50% year-over-year increase.
Implementation Tool
Initiate a 30-minute weekly Business Plan Review. Color-code projects (red/amber/green) to track progress and sustain momentum. By emulating Alan Mulally's Ford turnaround method, you foster accountability and transparency.
Phase 4: Transform
Scale projects and embed them into operations
The final step is scaling projects and putting them into operations, typically through the use of digital capabilities.
Sky Ting Yoga, USA
When their New York studios were closed, Sky Ting Yoga had to entirely transition its business model. Its founders produced Sky Ting TV, a subscription-streaming service currently running in 55 nations, which replaced entirely revenues lost due to cancelled in-person classes.
They set up a digital channel for their core product, showing even very physical businesses can find digital growth pathways.
Executable Step
Roll out one AI service (such as chat-enabled upselling or demand planning) within 30 days. Monitor some key metrics such as adoption rates, margin impact, and customer churn. Today's AI technologies allow us to do so more easily than ever.
Additional Evidence of Agile Growth
Such cases are not exceptions. Most successful growth companies have navigated disruption:
Psychopomp (UK)
This British gin micro-distillery began producing WHO-grade sanitizer, retaining all its employees while building significant local brand equity.
Tarquin's (UK)
A niche gin producer entered the growing low-ABV market with their zero-alcohol "Cornish Dry," which penetrated distribution through 200 outlets.
Wildgrain (US)
A frozen sourdough subscription model by a former bakery artisan, which achieved revenues of US $30 million within a period of three years with profitability.
All these varied cases illustrate how systematic agility – recognizing market changes, conceptualizing novel approaches, articulating them in terms of actions, and changing modes of delivery – brings about resilience and development.
The Reinvention Habit
Reinvention is not an occasional incident of crisis intervention – it's an organisational skill that must be regularly practiced. By marrying this disciplined method of operating, growth businesses can navigate repeated market disruption with confidence, transforming disruption from threat to source of compound gains.
Most of the highly successful businesses I counsel serve themselves re-strategize on a quarterly basis even in good times. They understand that tomorrow's burden can be today's competitive strength unless they keep adapting.
Leader Checklist: Are You Reinvention-Ready?
Ascertain whether your organization is ready for reinvention by answering these questions honestly. Mark Yes (✔) or No (✘):
Make Sense:
- Have we identified the 5 biggest external shocks that can upset our business model?
- Do we conduct a Pre-Mortem before a critical strategic decision?
Design:
- Do we develop at least two bold alternative plans for growth and rigorously scenario-test them?
- Are each of the dreams aligned with a clear, quantifiable north-star metric?
Translate:
- Have we segmented our strategy into time-bounded milestones with designated owners?
- Does a system of strategic management (OKRs/Balanced Scorecard) monitor weekly progress?
Transform:
- A customer-facing pilot with live performance dashboards can be implemented in less than 30 days.
Interpreting Your Results
Future Outlook
Those organisations shown here were not successful by virtue of superior resource or good fortune, but by virtue of a disciplined approach with boldness and courage. They comprehended disruption, built innovative products, transformed strategy into coherent action, and transformed their capabilities to fit for the new conditions of the market.
In today's world of business, the question is not whether disruption is coming to your business, but what you're going to do about it when it does. Do you let disruption occur to you, or let it be the spark that ignites your next period of growth?
It is a workable model. The case studies are factual. All you have to learn is: when would you begin your reinvention process?