Seeing this title, some of you may be thinking, “Dave’s such a broken record. He keeps talking about business/financial acumen in our GTM strategies…. Enough already!”
Well, this is another business/financial acumen post–but with a different twist. I will continue to write how important it is to understand our customers’ businesses and engage them in discussing their business challenges. But this is a slightly different perspective.
How well do we (including executive levels) understand the business fundamentals underlying our own businesses and our own success?
Almost surprisingly, this topic keeps coming up in conversations. Many experienced colleagues, some of them “wizened” (read, we’re old farts) wonder, “Have we lost the fundamentals of business success?” Alternatively, “Do we really understand our own businesses?”
Business success is about more the creating revenue. It’s about more than scaling and growth. It’s about more than “exits,” and “market cap.” Those are all elements of, or possibly outcomes of great business success, but they do not define the fundamentals to building, growing, and sustaining businesses.
Take a look at your LI feeds, you’ll find endless guru’s proclaiming “2025, the year of Profitable Efficient Growth (PEG!)” Hmmmm? When I was getting my MBA, that was a fundamental????
Other’s offer endless cheatsheets on how to excel in any role. I’ve seen CRO, CMO, RevOPs, VP of Sales, Sales Managers, Sellers, Marketers. The promise is, “all you need to know is what’s on these cheatsheets!” What’s more astounding than these cheatsheets are the 1000’s of likes and hundreds of requests for copies of the cheatsheets. Apparently, all business experience/acumen can be found in these success guides.
Or I talk to founders. Their most compelling questions are, “How many SDRs/AEs do we need to hire, what CRM should we buy?” When I ask about their overall business strategies, ICPs, competitive strategies, value propositions, risk assessment, market outlook, and fundamental business processes, they look at me with blank eyes. It’s only about seats/retention/revenue/scaling.
When I think of the business lessons we learn from people like Warren Buffett/Charlie Munger, Alan Mulally, Indra Nooyi, and others. Or writers like Michael Porter, Jim Collins, Clayton Christensen, Peter Drucker, and Ram Charan; give us profound lessons about how to think about and build businesses more holistically. But too many people I see have no curiosity or interest in understanding these fundamentals.
This morning I was speaking with a colleague in Europe. He said, “It builds my ego to be the smartest person in the room, but it’s so disappointing that so many don’t seem to grasp the importance of these fundamentals, and some don’t seem to care!”
There’s a profoundly different level of business understanding/involvement in strategies focusing on “Built to last,” rather than “Built to exit.”
This limitation of the business acumen and expertise we apply within our own businesses seriously limits us and how we think. Whether it’s looking at our own organizations, looking at how we engage others. We are limited in how we maximize value creation within our own organizations, with our customers, with our shareholders and communities.
What do we do about this?
It’s simple, it’s really about getting back to business fundamentals, the basics of what a business is, and how we build businesses to endure. Some key things:
- What is our purpose, what are our fundamental values? What are we trying to achieve other than a unicorn exit?
- How do we build a real economic engine that supports us in achieving our purpose?
- What are our strategic priorities, what trade offs are we making, why? What we choose not to do is as important as what we choose to do?
- Who are our customers, how does what we do serve them, supporting their own business growth strategies?
- How do we build an aligned and accountable talent base to drive what we are trying to achieve?
- How do we achieve operational excellence driven by a mindset of continual improvement?
- How do we maintain financial discipline in our capital allocations?
- How do we manage risk/resilience? How do we constantly adapt to shifts in markets, new opportunities, uncertainty?
- How do we …..
These are all business fundamentals. They have always been the core to sustained business success. They are enduring.
But until we start focusing on these, within our own businesses, we will never achieve our potential. And as we learn, ourselves, we can leverage these lessons in helping our customers achieve their goals.
Afterword: Here is the AI generated discussion of this post. It’s concise, but has a slightly different and informative take on the post. Enjoy!
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