John Hans joined ArchPoint Consulting after forty years in sales, marketing and operations across multiple sectors. In previous roles, he led transformation efforts at PCHI, The IMAGINE Group, RSCS (Restaurant Supply Chain Solutions), and H.J. Heinz that drove commercial success by modernizing operations, strengthening teams, and implementing structural strategies to support sustainable growth.
Growth seems to be the ultimate and universal goal of all organizations – expand your reach, acquire more resources, drive greater impact, and stand the test of time. Why do so many companies struggle with driving sustainable growth?
True long-term, sustainable growth is not a business initiative. A leader cannot decide to grow 10% year over year in perpetuity and leave it to sales or marketing or R&D to accomplish. I believe growth should be a mindset that people bring to work every day and that leaders should foster in their organizations.
Because at the end of the day, growth is not a switch you can flip on and off. Like momentum, it must be built and sustained.
PwC’s annual global CEO survey found that almost half (45%) of CEOs have concerns about their organization’s viability over the next decade without meaningful reinvention. This speaks volumes about the importance of shifting the concept of growth from something outside day-to-day operations to something that is of the business, embedded in how the organization thinks, plans, operates, and interacts with the market.
This shift towards a growth-minded culture is usually made difficult by a resistance to change and can be exacerbated by other business challenges – financial pressures, skill shortages, and supply chain vulnerabilities, among other challenges. Prioritizing a growth mindset can also seem like a problem to solve further down the road, but if prioritized it can ultimately help alleviate the effects of these challenges. Another study conducted by Talent LMS validates this in their findings that 80% of companies say a growth mindset among employees directly drives profits.
Can you define growth mindset and talk more about its relevance?
The term was coined by Stanford psychologist Carol Dweck, to describe the theory that our abilities and intelligence can be nurtured through effort. A “growth mindset” is the opposite of a “fixed mindset,” which is the belief that abilities and intelligence cannot be changed. In a speech, Dweck talks about “the power of yet” and the “tyranny of now,” which is a contrast between the two mindsets and makes the case that by embracing the former, challenges are perceived as opportunities for learning and success is a continuous, never-ending process.
You can tell a leader or culture has a fixed mindset if criticism is refused, others’ success is perceived as a threat, new or unfamiliar ideas are shunned, or if talent is seen as static. Growth-mindedness is evident when constructive feedback is embraced, others’ success is seen as inspirational, the comfort zone is always stepped out of, and there is a belief that talent can be improved with effort.
It’s important to restate that a growth mindset should include all facets of an organization. To experience its full impact, it should be an intrinsic part of an organization’s DNA. I believe that’s done through people, capabilities, culture, products and services, and strategy.
Again, growth is not just up to sales, marketing, and R&D. For example, if a manufacturing function is entirely focused on cost reduction and the lowest cost per unit, it can create tension with growth-minded organizational focuses like expedited speed to market or exceptional service levels. Similarly, if growth initiatives are excluded from planning, testing, and piloting stages due to a lack of integration between sales, marketing, innovation and production capabilities, speed to market will suffer.
What are the benefits of shifting toward a growth-minded culture?
What we are talking about is not a simple tweak to culture or strategy. This shift needs to be broadly embraced and driven deep into the fabric of the organization. When done correctly, the reward is worth it.
When companies are growing, good things happen. There is money to reinvest in people, products, capabilities, assets, and new opportunities. Your relationship with customers strengthens as the value you create grows in tandem with their own success. If you can help them grow a category or their business, you shift from being a transactional vendor to a collaborative partner and trusted advisor.
Organizational growth creates opportunities for learning, development, and internal mobility for employees. This, in turn, feeds back into the overall health of the business, strengthens customer and consumer relationships, and builds a workplace people are excited to be part of.
Culturally, growth makes a company an exciting place to work. It is simple biology that winning and success trigger the reward system in the brain – it feels good to work and as a result, accomplish big things. The places where I’ve grown the most were some of my most fun career moments. Growing is winning, and winning is fun. That’s what is so inspiring about growth and why it is such an important part of why you get up for your job every day.
If you wake up every day to a list of grinding tasks, it’s no fun. But if you frame it in the context of growth, it changes everything. It doesn’t matter what the task is – whether it’s building a PowerPoint, running meetings, or operating a production line in a factory. If it’s about being part of the growth engine and a winning team, you wake up, put your helmet on, and go do it.
At some point, the shift towards a growth-minded culture triggers a virtuous cycle where growth fuels more growth. On the other hand, when growth slows or stalls, things get harder. And when businesses are in decline, it can be brutal. The virtuous cycle disappears, and instead, you enter a downward spiral of continuously cutting costs, reducing headcount, and scaling back resources just to meet objectives.
This is the reason why it is important to embed this growth mindset into the culture, so that when times get tough, the team has the mindset to respond and return the organization back towards a path of growth or prevent it from declining further.
For example, let’s say there’s heavy inflationary pressure on your consumer base resulting in declining sales, and you suddenly need to sell more products. If you don’t have a long-term growth strategy, your options can be limited. Growth is not always something you can turn on instantaneously, so many firms turn to promotions and discounts in these windows. Although these tactics may help for short periods of time, they are unsustainable long-term.
What attributes do growth-minded leaders have in common?
Curiosity to start with – being truly open to learning and exploring. They must be great listeners, constantly tuning into the marketplace, customers, consumers, and their own teams. They need to listen and ask: What does the market need? What do customers need? What do my people need? Listening is essential.
Leaders also need to be innovative, thinking differently about challenges and processes. Growth-minded leaders also find new ways to help people solve problems and remove blocks in “fixed” thinking.
Lastly, they must be great collaborators.
Innovation and growth do not happen in isolation. It takes many voices from many functions and levels working together to make changes that drive sustainable growth.
Simon Sinek gives a great example of this. American manufacturing company Barry-Wehmiller experienced an immediate 30% drop in orders after the 2008 stock market crash. A reduction in force seemed to be the obvious path forward, but instead they implemented a furlough program where everyone was required to take four weeks of unpaid leave. In the end, they didn’t fire a single person, avoiding a negative impact to morale and a loss of resources.
When this happened, employees who had the financial means volunteered to take more time off, borrowing time from those who needed the income and could not afford unpaid leave, allowing them to work their full schedules. This created a collaborative, symbiotic solution that not only avoided layoffs but generated $20 million in savings – double the original goal.
This is a perfect example of rethinking the problem, involving the team, listening, and coming up with solutions that are growth oriented.
How can leaders develop this mindset and foster it in their organizations?
One way to learn is by stealing shamelessly from others that have done the work before. I have had the privilege of working with many leaders who demonstrated a growth mindset and used their tactics to create my version of a growth mindset. These concepts have helped me form my own growth mindset.
Learning from failures is also critical. Early in my career, I implemented a trade promotion system, and it was a disaster. That failure happened because I didn’t bring people along in the process – I skipped the step of building ownership and managing the change. After we realized that it was not going to work, the company concluded we needed to try it again differently. This time, I used “the power of yet” and took people along the journey. They were part of the solution build which created ownership and adoption. We ended up building what became the industry best practice for trade promotion management, evaluation, and implementation.
Another big lesson is being a student of the customer – go ask customers what they need. Customers have great ideas, but they do not get asked as often as you think. I learned so much from being open to new ideas, customer collaboration, and building business processes that allowed us to work together to drive growth and efficiency.
Model the behaviors you wish to see others develop and lead by example. Encourage learning, experimentation, and viewing failure as a learning opportunity. It is also important to create psychological safety for people to feel comfortable taking risks, sharing feedback, and not being afraid to be blamed for mistakes that were made in an effort to explore new possibilities. Give people opportunities to stretch their growth mindset and reinforce both small and big wins.
It all starts with strategy and culture. Your strategy must be built around growth, and every investment, initiative, and cultural element should reinforce that. Ultimately, everything comes back to strategy because strategy drives everything. But culture can either be a catalyst or an obstacle to sustainable growth.
Are there any other core leadership principles you’ve relied on consistently throughout your career?
The bottom line is that people and performance matter!
Success depends on people, and building relationships and trust with your team is essential. That includes everyone from the first person they meet from the company all the way to the leadership team. It is about truly knowing your people and being an empathetic, servant leader.
Do not ask people to do something you would not do yourself. That is a core principle for me. When I ran a manufacturing facility, despite not being a manufacturing guy, I spent a lot of time on the shop floor, talking with people and understanding their work. Most importantly, I made sure they understood their value to the business and that I was there to support them in doing their job more effectively.
The other big one for me is that performance matters, especially in relation to having a growth mindset.
I used to have a sign behind my desk with those words to remind me why I was there.
Work is not an entitlement. You are there for a reason, and your job is to put points on the board every day, no matter what your role is.
Everyone is part of the team, and every day we have a job to do. There will be tough days, and when that happens, we’re here to lift each other up.
Leaders have the power to shape both growth and culture. True leadership is about developing people, fostering their professional growth, and empowering them to drive organizational impact. Ultimately, growth fuels more growth, making growth a leader’s most critical responsibility.