Defining growth tenets help a company focus on what is important and communicate that focus to the team. Each company should adopt their own customized tenets based on the needs of the company.

I use the word tenets, as I think it is the perfect emphasis on beliefs but a more appropriate term for business.

Clearly define the idea: What is the the business offering or product. Clearly defined without ambiguity,

Define what success looks like: Too often success is very abiguous, something like “we want to be the leader.” But success needs to be defined in near term steps so that all of the team can clearly understand what the company is measuring as success.

Who is the talent that is needed: It all comes down to people and building the team. Having a great team that is committed and empowered is the essential element to success.

Encourage improvising and creativity. Apply creative thinking to arrive at business solutions to the multitude of problems, barriers and market shifts. One of the skills that we work on developing is improvising. The core notion of improvising is that individuals and teams learn to perform at a more creative and effective level as they leverage core skills but achieve higher performance.

Build a culture of implement and iterate: We are not big fans of the term “fail fast” for two reasons. One, most companies who say “fail fast” don’t really embrace failure. Second, taking an idea on a journey is rarely a progression of failures. Often times its a progression of implementations when it is 80% right or 60% right. Rarely, in our experience is the progression complete failure. A culture of implement and iterate requires a culture that is supportive, transparent and truly believes in learning. Clearly today’s marketplace requires this type of agility.