When I meet new companies to advise them on growth, the number one question I get is “What tactic should I use to grow my business?” At first I would try to give an answer. But it never felt right. After all, I just met this person and knew next to nothing about their business or customers. Even more important though I started to realize that the question typically stemmed from the search for a secret, hack, or tip about a growth tactic that was going to unlock all of their growth problems.

My answer to that question since has changed. I shrug my shoulders and say “I have no idea.” My response now is typically met with a look in their face like I just knocked the wind out of their sails. After I leave the awkward silence hanging for a few moments I follow up to tell them to stop looking for tactics first, and start focusing on establishing a growth process.

Process?!?!? Really?

There are 4 reasons why I emphasize process first and tactics second.

1. Growth Is The Sum Of A Lot Of Small Parts

The internet loves to fawn over stories of growth curves that look like the below. As a result everyone tends to focus their attention on what happened right before it looks like growth started to explode. Once again, looking for that single thing that unlocked an explosion of growth.

What we should really be interested in were what were all the things they did before that point in the curve? What are all the things they did after to keep that growth going? How did they find all those things?