Three Hidden Dimensions to Explore Business Growth

Companies are gradually opening up to the next practice to enforce change, catalyze growth, harness innovation, and accelerate digital transformation.

In the “VUCA” business new normal, the abundance of information and the lightweight digital technologies play a crucial role in forecasting emerging trends and bring significant opportunities for companies to solve business problems through the methodical examination of alternative ways and renovate traditional organization to reach the next stage of the business growth cycle. Here are three hidden dimensions for companies to explore the “art of possibility,” pursue growth, increase revenue, accelerate performance, and achieve the long term business results.

Potentiality: Performance keeps the business lights on, churning the number, but potential can lift up the business to the next cycle of the growth. Business potentiality includes the overall organizational ability to perform in the future by discovering their strength and building their core competency. The potentiality is the worthy investment and hidden dimension to explore the emerging opportunities, design new business models, and investigate different paths for accelerating business growth. In many companies, employees with potential haven't performed to the level where there is the actual performance in all the areas desirable. The importance of potentiality management really depends on how and what the organization is utilizing the potential for and how to invest the collective potential for building the business competency. Ideally, organizations need to unleash their collective potentiality just like the gardeners nurture their plants and develop their unique scenes and special landscapes. A high potential organization can grow, innovate and transform by taking a systematic approach to identify and develop potentiality into a more solid form and transform it into differentiated business advantage. The collective human potential transcending into the business competency is the greatest thing that the organization should ever invest in because it is the driving force to fuse change and catalyze business growth and build the long term organizational value proposition that the competitors cannot beat.

Diversification: From a strategic management perspective, the aim of the organizational diversification is to grow the business; fully utilize existing resources and business capabilities; create business values in excess of what firms would enjoy without diversification; escape from undesirable or unattractive business circumstances, etc. From a talent management perspective, orient people and make them aware of the power of diversity as the hotbed of creativity, help them understand the value of harnessing cognitive difference to make effective decisions; encourage them to embrace the fresh perspectives and diverse point of views with the goal to generate more novel ideas and run an innovative business. Diversification is the hidden dimensions to reach the next level of business growth. When there is an intentional strategy in place to not only increase awareness but to link the power of diversification to key business initiatives and team effectiveness, it will make a significant difference between cosmetic diversity makeup and the essential diversification movement.

Uncertainty: Organizations no matter large or small, all face high velocity, uncertainty, and continuous disruptions. There are both opportunities and risks in uncertainty which, in the business or in any situation, is the hidden dimensions to catalyze growth and achieve business goals. There are known unknown and unknown unknown. There's nothing to be done about uncontrollable situation although the management can truly have a humble attitude to collect information and feedback, doing enough homework for planning (not just make the plan). A good plan can identify the external factors with necessary adjustment on the way to fit the emerging situation, broadly involves the organization for adaptation, adopt the process enabling a company to work around the externals and dealing with the issues of uncertainty systematically, Uncertainty is only certain and the best opportunity in business or any field to explore the "art of possibility." If there is no uncertainty, then there will be a monopoly, in fact, anarchy. Uncertainty per se is not a problem, it poses a risk for those who have a fixed mindset and creates opportunities for those with a growth mindset. In practice, we cannot predict anything beforehand but can imagine with many experiences involved in current or in the past. Business managers should take the “entrepreneurs’ or intrapreneur spirit to turn the status quo upside down for dealing with uncertainty via interdisciplinarity of art and science.

Companies are gradually opening up to the next practice to enforce change, catalyze growth, harness innovation, and accelerate digital transformation. Organizations that are skillful at exploring the hidden dimensions of growth can gain advantages by pushing the boundaries of a more complicated business mix that provides opportunities to create inter-business value and shape long term organizational competencies.

Posted in: Digital Master,Digitalization,Strategy