Why the growth levers are hard to see in your data

Most Leadership Teams we meet are full of capable people doing the work in front of them. Put them in a room with an Issues List and they'll work it down. Maximizing growth or finding the growth in your data might not be their focus.

It also isn't easy. The levers that drive growth are hard to see in the numbers most companies track. That's why a company can run EOS® well and still not grow as fast as it wants.

Revenue shows the result, not the cause

Problems announce themselves. A client complains, a number turns red, someone raises a hand. Growth is quieter. It shows up as revenue that's a little behind plan, month after month, never bad enough to feel urgent. And revenue only shows the result. The causes, such as which customers convert, which products carry margin and how much capacity is left, sit in different systems and rarely make it onto the Scorecard.

The weekly rhythm is built for this week

The weekly meeting is designed to keep the business running: Scorecard, Rock updates, headlines, then the Issues List. It does that very well. But the questions that drive growth, like which customers to pursue or what to stop doing, take longer to answer than one meeting allows. They're easy to push to next week.

Growth has no natural owner in the weekly rhythm. That's not anyone's failure. It's a gap in how the time gets spent.

Rocks get picked from what's visible

At the quarterly, Rocks often come from the Issues List: things that are broken and need more than a week. Those Rocks are worthwhile, and finishing them makes the business better. But if every Rock keeps the business running, none of them is aimed at the gap to plan.

Aligned on the plan, not on the pace

EOS puts real weight on being on the same page, and teams usually are. Everyone agrees on the plan, the Rocks and the Issues List. What can stay unspoken is how fast the company should grow, and how fast it could. Every L10 meeting makes the company better, and the Visionary is happy. But better is not always bigger, and the team often assumes it is. A team that agrees on everything else can still be on different pages about pace.

What helps

Make the gap visible

People act on what they can see. Put actuals against the Growth Plan in front of the team every month, with the gap in dollars and the trend and forecast, so the team can see how fast the company is really growing and where it lands. A gap that's visible becomes an issue, and Leadership Teams know what to do with issues.

Give each Growth Lever an owner

Break the plan into a few Growth Levers and assign each to one person. Now growth has owners, the same way every Scorecard number does.

Pick at least one Rock from the gap

Before choosing Rocks, ask: if we finish all of these, will we be on plan? If not, add one that moves a Growth Lever.

Protect time for the long questions

Set aside part of a monthly review for one growth question at a time. Not every week, but every month.

None of this changes how EOS works. It points the strengths your team already has at the plan. To see where growth hides, start with the 15 Growth Levers, or get our free guide, Organization Growth Levers.