Why Growth Feels So Hard (And How to Finally Make It Predictable)
Not long ago, I sat down with the CEO of a UI/UX firm. Sales had stalled and his solution was simple. "The sales team needs to work harder."
I wish I could say this was the first time I heard that answer. It is not.
After decades of working with hundreds of companies, one truth has become painfully clear. While every struggling business struggles for its own unique set of reasons, the companies that consistently grow all seem to follow a very similar playbook. To borrow from Tolstoy, all growing companies are alike. Each stagnant one is uniquely stuck.
This might sound poetic, but it highlights a harsh reality. Sustainable, profitable growth is ridiculously difficult because there are so many ways things can go sideways. Fix one issue and another one pops up. It is like playing business whack-a-mole, but with higher stakes and angrier stakeholders.
Over time, though, a pattern emerges. The companies that grow year after year are not the ones that pull off a single brilliant move. They are the ones that quietly, systematically hunt down and eliminate the friction that slows them down. They look across every part of their business model, operations and market strategy to remove anything that blocks momentum. When you chip away at enough of these barriers, growth starts to feel almost inevitable.
The real problem is not a lack of ideas, talent or opportunity. It is death by a thousand small friction points pulling in different directions. Some are obvious, many are hiding in plain sight. The key to unlocking growth is figuring out where the friction is coming from. Once you can diagnose the problem, you can finally take real action.
Here is what I have seen consistently. And here is how you can finally make growth predictable.
Growth Problems Are Not Usually Execution Problems
One of the biggest mistakes executives make is assuming that stalled growth means someone is not working hard enough. Maybe sales needs more training. Marketing needs sharper messaging. The product needs another feature.
But in most cases, growth stalls because the entire business model is not designed to scale smoothly. The machine itself is broken. And without a way to accurately diagnose where that machine is failing, leaders often double down on the very tactics that are accelerating the decline.
Luckily, the causes of growth failure follow patterns. Once you know what to measure, you can see where the friction lives. When you get the data, you stop guessing and start fixing.
Here are the five key areas every company needs to diagnose.
1. The Momentum Engine: Is Your Flywheel Spinning?
Sustainable growth requires momentum. You need a business model that becomes more efficient and more effective with every customer you add. That is the magic of the flywheel effect. Each happy customer creates referrals, strengthens your reputation and makes the next sale easier. Over time, your sales effort shifts from outbound hustling to inbound demand.
The companies that master this are the ones where reputation feeds growth. They deliver great outcomes, generate long-term service relationships and create embedded trust in their industries.
The question is simple. Are you generating more and more business from referrals, repeat customers and reputation? Or are you still grinding it out with expensive sales and marketing just to keep the pipeline full?
To measure this, we use the Opportunity Growth Index. It tracks how efficiently referred opportunities convert compared to self-generated leads. If your referrals are closing faster and at higher deal sizes, your flywheel is working. If not, you are still manually cranking the wheel with sheer effort.
2. Ecosystem Positioning: Are You Sitting in the Right Spot?
No company operates in a vacuum. You live in a business ecosystem filled with customers, suppliers, partners, regulators and competitors. Where you sit in that ecosystem has a huge impact on how much value you get to keep.
The companies that thrive long term are not easy to replace. They own unique integration points, simplify complex processes, remove headaches for others and become the essential partner that everyone needs to succeed.
The key is to look at profit share, not just market share. Revenue can fool you. A small player in the right spot can capture more profit than a much larger competitor. The real question is who controls the most valuable part of the value chain. Who controls the leverage?
We use a tool called the Value Equation to map these value flows. Think of it like a financial ledger that shows who gives up value and who captures it. This lets us see where there is trapped value and where new profit opportunities are hiding.
3. Strategic Flexibility: Do You Have Optionality Built In?
Markets change. Customers evolve. Competitors get smarter. The companies that survive over decades are not locked into one narrow path. They build options into their strategy.
Optionality is not just about diversification. It is about creating real pathways to expand into adjacent products, customer segments or business models that build on your existing strengths. It also means having financial flexibility to invest in emerging opportunities when they appear.
We measure this through real option analysis. We assess the future profit potential of different growth paths, adjusted for risk and capital requirements. We also look at your innovation pipeline and the percentage of revenue coming from recently launched offerings.
Resilient companies never rely on one product, one customer or one market. They always have multiple levers they can pull as conditions shift.
4. Financial Resilience: Is Your Core Business Self-Funding?
Growth requires investment. But it is much easier to invest when your core business is already paying the bills. Companies with strong recurring revenue from services, subscriptions, parts or long-term contracts are far more stable. They have breathing room to make smart bets instead of desperate moves.
The Waterline Index tells us how much of your core SG&A expenses are covered by recurring profit. If that number is above 1.0, you are in a good place. If it is below, you are dangerously exposed to every market wobble and may be forced to chase low-margin deals just to stay afloat.
When recurring revenue covers your overhead, leadership can focus on innovation instead of emergency sales tactics.
5. Operational Alignment: Is Everyone Pulling the Same Direction?
The best strategy in the world will fail if the organization is not aligned to execute it. Many companies suffer from internal silos where sales, operations, product and finance are all working from different playbooks.
Alignment means shared goals, shared metrics and synchronized planning across the business. Sales and Operations Planning, extended into Integrated Business Planning, creates one unified view that connects forecasts, production, finances and strategy.
One of the best indicators of operational alignment is On-Time In-Full delivery. When companies consistently meet delivery promises with complete orders, it signals strong cross-functional coordination. OTIF performance reflects the maturity of planning, forecasting, accountability and communication across the business.
Why Growth Is So Elusive
Here is the hard truth. You cannot fix one thing and expect growth to magically appear. Great sales execution will not save you if your ecosystem positioning is weak. A strong product pipeline is not enough if your operations are constantly misaligned. Financial flexibility means little if your flywheel is not spinning.
Sustainable growth happens when you reduce friction across all these areas at once. That is why growth feels so elusive. It requires solving multiple problems at the same time. But once you see where the friction lives, growth becomes a solvable puzzle.
The companies that nail this build engines that compound over time. They are stable in bad times and aggressive in good times. They grab opportunities while others hesitate.
From Guessing to Knowing
In the past, diagnosing growth problems was mostly guesswork. Leaders relied on instinct, war stories and gut feel. But we do not have to guess anymore. The patterns are well understood. The measurements exist. The friction points are visible.
If you are leading a company that feels stuck, the answer is not another sales seminar or flashy marketing campaign. The first step is a serious, data-driven diagnosis across these five dimensions. Once you have that clarity, you can finally focus your resources where they will make the biggest difference.
Sustainable growth is not luck. It is engineering.
If you'd like, I can also create:
A LinkedIn post version to promote this
A more "viral thought leader" version
A sharper version for CEOs or investors
Just let me know.