Think Differently: Swing When You're Winning

By Mark Tarchetti

We all know from many aspects of life that moments can matter.  Times you look back and realize with hindsight the moment was there for a major move or a decisive action.  Whether personal or professional, missed moments are the source of many regrets.  Equally, the times you did act decisively are often the forks in the road, the life-changing decision that you remember many years later that set you on the path to achieving what you are proud of.  

In my experience, this is also true in business.  Yet there is a big bias to fixing negatives over building positives.  We love to focus on turnarounds.  Years of underperformance to be addressed.  Latent potential in the brand.  Missteps by former management to correct.  Resources to be realigned.  Waste to be eliminated.  Impossible odds but huge returns if you beat them.  Time after time people go to the portfolio casino and encouraged by the potential size of prize, sign up to a career fixing negatives.  It works sometimes.  Often it doesn’t result in permanent progress, just sideways moves, despite a lot of effort - after all the odds are stacked against you.  The opportunity cost can be great. 

By contrast, momentum businesses have a lot to be proud of and a lot of value being realized every day.  Worthy of celebration and recognition of the team.  Yet very few I have seen can look beyond the moment.  Perspective blinkers potential.  Just like when you are hiking up a mountain and you keep thinking it’s the top approaching, only to get closer and see the next slope ahead.  So it can be with success stories.  A tendency to look down from on high at the truly remarkable progress and a perspective that the top of the mountain is close and that you have broken the back of the climb. 

This is the time for the strategist to hold up the mirror.  There are multiple dimensions of growth and many success stories are really only semi-formed brands well short of the household names we all use every day.  Momentum really matters in business.  When your flywheel is working you are generating resources that can be reinvested thoughtfully into what comes next.  Consumers and customers are receptive to new and bigger ideas.  Your relevance is increasing and that makes it cheaper and easier to expand.  Your team will be growing not retrenching and should be sharing in the success through reward and recognition.  You can hire more easily.  You can retain and develop more easily.  The limits are those you place on yourself. 

To keep saying “what next” is an incredibly irritating and intense mode of leadership.  It can also be inspirational and rewarding.  It can be most impactful when you make your moves from positions of strength.  Don’t waste momentum.  Double down.  Rather than focusing on how far you’ve come, focus on how far you can still get.  Always look up the hill, rarely down.  Don’t let profitability dominate, reward shareholders but simultaneously reinvest in the next tranche of value creation. Make the P&L algorithm work for you with a constant push on your team to bring investable ideas.  Growth accelerators with sharp business cases, mining an additional area of attractive opportunity.  Never make the mistake of milking a momentum business. Fuel it further.

As you think about this intense approach, I have one observation to offer.  At first read, this will sound like you need to do a lot of new things.  New products, adjacent categories, channel expansion, geographic expansion.  Maybe some of that is needed, but in many years of strategy work I have found the primary opportunity is almost always to absolutely maximize your core.  Nurture it for all it is worth.

The highest awareness leading to the greatest level of trial.  Constant investment in the hero product to earn repeat and generate loyalty. Always focus on what makes us better and making sure everyone knows it and experiences it in use.  Every point of distribution chased, every channel weakness addressed.  Ranges optimized for market share and a portfolio logic driven by the consumer.  Be on trend and ahead of trend when you can. 

Great rewards lie in the constant battle for untapped potential.  Don’t rest, kick on and climb the hill.  Good enough never is.