Andy Bass

How To Grow Your Business Faster: Start With What Works

Senior leaders are understandably concerned about how to manage growth, especially against today’s backdrop of uncertainty, shaky morale and rapid changes to workplaces.  The good news is that most organizations are more resourceful than they think.

In his new book, “Start With What Works: a faster way to grow your business”, Andy Bass argues that businesses are full of underappreciated potential, human and otherwise, and that the fastest growth opportunities may come from identifying and capitalising on this ‘hidden gold’.

To benefit, we need to look beyond our habitual ideas about our people, our products and indeed our whole businesses.

Key takeaways

• Why it makes more sense to start with what works, and what stops us.
• How we miss hidden resources
• How to find and tap into hidden resources in your organization
• Tools you can take back to your next team meeting
• How the same ideas can apply to your own career.

While it’s easy to focus on problems – on what’s not working – a powerful alternative is offered by starting with what works.

Decommoditize Your Business

What do you do when prospective customers can’t (or won’t) acknowledge the difference between you and your competitor, and all they’re interested in is getting a deal? 

Is this happening with your business…

• The conversation is all about price
• You have to get more and more efficient just to hold your margins
• Customers don’t respond to your supposed points of differentiation
• Salespeople are too quick to offer discounts
• You’re doing a lot of stuff for free in an attempt to separate yourself from the competition – customers are even starting to expect it

It is really easy to be commoditized. Everyone has access to the same ‘best practices’. Everyone has access to the same business school theories. Everyone has access to the same tools. Everyone seems the same. 

You need to be different.

(This is not about being wild and crazy – it’s about identifying your unique resources and putting them together in ways that make you different – BETTER – than the competition.)

Key takeaways

• Why value is in the mind of the customer
• How best practices, benchmarking and other popular management methods fight against your differentiation advantage
• Finding the differences that make a difference (warning: engineers often will hate this)
• How starting with what works is the royal road to true differentiation
• Ways to get started.

Stand out in your career by ‘decommoditizing yourself’

Fed up of being processed by the job market? Recruiters, recruitment platforms, HR departments, formal  qualifications and even the standard appearance of your LinkedIn profile all conspire to make you look as much as possible like every other candidate. That’s so employers can make “apples-to-apples” comparisons.

So how do you stand out? You could try and manage your image, your ‘impression’ and your ‘personal brand’, and those things can help. But only if there’s really something substantially different behind the image.

People often look outside for answers, but they can achieve more than they think by discovering hidden value in resources and talents they have already. My experience coaching leaders has taught me that seeking this hidden value can bring big leaps forward. In this session, we’ll look at how you can tap into what you already have, to give you a strong, differentiated growth direction for your future success.