The Rocket Fuel that Powers Exponential and Sustainable Company Growth
"Exponential growth comes not from the product you sell, but from the purpose that drives your entire organization." — Raglan Tribe
The thing about companies that grow fast is that they all think big. It’s not down to the product or business model, it’s deeper than that. High growth will quickly outpace your business model or product.
According to Salim Ismail, shown in the video below, all these high growth businesses have a massive transformation purpose MTP that drives the business through every stage of development.
Think of Google with the MTP that says:
“To organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful”
The scale of the vision is breath-taking, and the purpose has been constant from the outset. Imagine joining Google in the early days and being part of an organisation with a declared goal that stops slightly short of boiling the oceans dry. “OK, I’m in! So where do I sign up?”
And they haven’t done a bad job at progressing this aim.
So, let’s break the statement down into the three key components.
So first, there is their super power - the thing that they are exceptionally good at. In the case of Google, Larry Page was undertaking a PhD in organising information on the world wide web and so at the time, he was probably at the forefront of this field.
Then there is the customer job. What function is the customer trying to do, that is made easier by your super power. Again, in Google’s case, customers are trying to access useful information.
And the last component of an MTP is what makes it massive. So, for Google, they mean all the world’s information, whether it’s on the internet or not and that it is universally accessible for everyone on the planet.
In this context, it makes sense that Google went beyond internet directories to include email, maps, internet access for the under-developed world and so on. According to their MTP, no information is out of bounds.
Not all the components are present in every MTP, sometimes they are implicit, but they can always be readily inferred. Here are a few other famous MTPs. Try and pick out the key components or infer them when they are not explicit:
TED: “Ideas worth spreading.”
X Prize Foundation: “Bring about radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity.”
Tesla: “Accelerate the transition to sustainable transportation.”
SpaceX: “Humans must become a multi-planetary species”
Github: “Social Coding”
Quirky: “Make Invention Accessible”
Singularity University: “To positively impact the lives of a billion people or more”
Uber: “The best way to get wherever you’re going”
Pinterest: “The world’s catalogue of ideas”
The next piece of the jigsaw, is to connect the MTP with the myriad of tactical actions that progress the purpose. John Doer of the famous Venture Capital firm Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, proposes OKRs - Objectives and Key Results.
And John Doer, knows a thing or two about high-growth companies as he is the man behind many of the Californian start-ups including Google. OKRs are a technique that he learnt from his boss Andy Grove of Intel. Watch his inspirational TED talk to see how they work.
So there you have it. You now understand the Rocket Fuel that propels these exponential companies. If you want to put some Rocket Fuel into your Growth DNA then check out:
Further Reading
Grove, Andy, “High Output Management”, Vintage, 1995
Ismail, Salim, “Exponential Organizations: Why new organizations are ten times better, faster, and cheaper than yours (and what to do about it)”, Diversion Books 2014
Schmidt, Eric and Rosenberg, Jonathan,” How Google Works”, Grand Central Publishing, 2017
Sinek, Simon, “Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action”, Penguin, 2011
