Wayne Simmons and Keary Crawford are passionate about entrepreneurship, and helping small companies realize their growth goals. To that end, they started The Growth Strategy Company in 2010. Much to their surprise, large and middle-market companies soon began knocking on their door, looking to tap their expertise and bring the same kind of growth innovation typically reserved for smaller companies to their firms. The pair is no strangers to entrepreneurship, previously they started Icor Partners, which was named one of our Small Jewels in 2007. When they sold the company in 2010, it afforded them the opportunity to work where their true passion lay: helping companies realize sustainable growth. "The demand for business growth is relentless. We are focused on helping companies better measure, visualize analyze and act on the critical information related to business growth," says Crawford. Consulting One on One sat down with Simmons, who is CEO of the firm, about the myths of growth, the "outmoded" business consulting model, and how large companies can feel entrepreneurial and pursue growth just like smaller companies.
Consulting: What are some ways companies can position themselves for sustainable revenue growth?
Simmons: We have a very strong point of view about that. I think it's around this idea of "Growth Thinking". You hear about systems thinking, design thinking—they're pretty prevalent within the corporate lexicon right now. We've come up with this idea called Growth Thinking. Growth Thinking is about entrepreneurship. It's about business innovation and growth strategy and building their organization around those elements. That counters to what we see as the dominant force now, which is around operational excellence. Companies are really good at the operational side of the equation and now shifting to the growth and innovation side of the equation we believe Growth Thinking is the way to do that.
Consulting: When companies are finding themselves limited on their growth, is that typically market-driven or self-perpetuated by the companies?
Simmons: Usually it's a combination of both. The macroeconomic conditions are definitely tough right now. There's a lot of saturation and competition going on at the industry level. Companies are hard-wired for operational excellence, so the shift to innovation and growth is a fundamentally different way of thinking.
Consulting: Why did you start the firm?
Simmons: After the sale of Icor partners, it was about what we're passionate about. It was truly about entrepreneurship. We love starting things and seeing them grow, so that became our mission. We found the right market for it. All the stars lined up, with our passions and market demand, so we started the company. When we first started with Growth Strategy Company, what we found was the absence of a discipline of growth strategy. It was kind of surprising, but when we asked clients "What is your growth strategy?" We would get multiple responses and really no coherent, consistent way to articulate growth strategy. So we really worked in our consulting practice to define what Growth Strategy means–to give it structure and form. That's kind of where we landed. We want to be the Growth Strategy company.
Consulting: What are some of the "myths of growth"?
Simmons: One of the primary things that comes to mind is the M&A story. I think companies look to M&A as a proxy for growth because it drives the company for a period of time. The other side of the equation is there are a lot of reports out that indicate that M&A doesn't actually equate to growth over time. So there's that myth that you can actually go out and buy growth. There's also financial engineering, where you can look at the numbers and kind of extract out a growth story from the numbers. I think underpinning all of this is this idea that large companies can't be entrepreneurial, can't create new things.
Consulting: What do you see as the future of The Growth Strategy Company?
Simmons: Our future is built around technology. We're going to make that leap and we're making it in a pretty significant way. We're building a platform called Growth Cloud. It's going to be an advanced technology platform to help companies grow and sustain growth. It's a cloud-based platform with built-in growth analytics.
Consulting: You say the business-consulting model itself is outmoded. Why do you say that and what are some ways it can be changed?
Simmons: We think it's outmoded in a couple of ways. I know it's a bold statement to make, but as consultants one of the things we have to do is help our clients sustain change on an ongoing basis. If you think about consulting and break it down, it's about knowledge transfer; it's about outside perspective and problem solving. That current model accomplishes those things with consultants getting on planes every week. It's a tough business. I think consulting firms can change and transform by changing the fundamental of the model of how those things are accomplished, using technology to accomplish them. Technology has progressed to the point where you really can effect change on an ongoing basis with technology. This is done through social technologies in enterprise environment. Connecting with clients and exchanging knowledge and content through social networks, as well as online analytics. That's another way that supports the transformation of consulting. A lot of content that's currently in presentations, reports or studies kind of collide with technology and make it more robust and dynamic and engaging.
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