3.12. Growth Proces

In childhood, some of us were lucky enough to have puppies or kittens or other pets that we had to take care of. It was our obligation to feed them, give fresh drinking water, take them for walks, give baths, and keep them healthy, happy, and safe. Those, who did not have real pets, probably planted some fruits or flowers, or had to take care of siblings or maybe electronic pets. The point is that with time you were able to see the result of your doings — your kittens grew into charming cats, your seeds grew into delicious fruits or your flowers started to bloom. The same is with business — by carrying out specific activities and investing your time and efforts, you will be able to witness the growth of your company with all benefits included.

How the Growth Process Works?

Speaking mathematically, growth is the sum of all small parts and in order to grow your business, there are 7 steps that you need to carry out. To start with, you yourself need to know what you want to achieve. Do you want to increase conversion? Do you wish to have as many registrations as possible? Or do you desire to grow your income?
The first thing you need to do is set strategic goals. In order to set goals, you need to refer to your metrics: Norths Star Metric, some inbound metrics, or metrics that matter at each stage of the funnel. Having understood which metric you wish to change, improve, or influence to get the maximum result, you can then move further.
Once you’ve chosen your goal(s), you need to do some research. Ideas and thoughts are great, but for you to know the right direction to move in, it’s necessary to gather and analyse all the possible data, not some assumptions or guesses. For example, you can use Lean Canvas — by filling in all the blocks, you will be able to see the overall picture and whether there’s a problem in 1 or more than 1 block that needs to be solved. You also need to analyse the current situation — what is wrong, how to improve that, and what to work on. Finally, as it have been mentioned more than once — your customers know the best. Don’t skip talking to your customers and conducting user interviews. By the way, it’s one of the cheapest ways how to do research, because you don’t need to buy data or hire experts to read information, you simply need to talk to your customers and get to know their opinion or whether they have experienced any problems.
You’ve carried out the first two steps, so now it’s time to generate a hypothesis. Keep in mind that anything can be a source for hypothesis! Use some observations from the studies carried out in the past, check whether your competitors provided any insights, or explore the environment. What is more, when formulating a hypothesis, do not forget about correct wording and format. A hypothesis should be formed using only concise and simple words, with no unnecessary information, it should be clear of ambiguity, it should be measurable and contain numbers. Besides, it’s advisable to formulate hypotheses in the same format as later it will be easier to read them and prioritise. Don’t forget that a hypothesis is your knowledge forever. Therefore, run only those hypotheses that you believe in the most. Don’t waste valuable time and efforts on something that you’re not certain about or have doubts, especially if those hypotheses require a lot of testing and are difficult to check.

You’ve generated a number of hypotheses, now it’s time to prioritise them. You can’t decide on the importance of a hypothesis by its looks or because you ‘have a feeling’. No. What you can (and must) do is carry out ICE scoring, i.e. assign a numerical value to a hypothesis on the basis of its impact, your confidence in it, and the ease it can be conducted with. The whole team must participate in the prioritisation of hypotheses, because discussion with the team members will help objectively choose more those hypotheses that have quality and must be tested. You must run only those hypotheses that will bring the strongest results, avoid testing those that will bring no value.
The fifth step of the growth process is experimentation. How will you check the validity of your hypothesis? Will you do an UX-testing? Will you do a split test? A corridor test? Will you create an MVP? You need to ponder over the possible ways of implementing tests and choose that verification method that will provide enough statistical data to prove the result. Moreover, it would be wise to appoint a responsible person, who will be in charge and accountable for the implementation of the test and afterwards preparation and collection of data.
You yourself have run some tests or a responsible person brought you a whole document case with all the numbers, reviews, and other data. The better the document with all records related to the experiment is arranged, the easier it will be for you to analyse the result and understand which direction to choose. Moreover, pay attention that the more hypotheses you test, the more results you will get and increase your knowledge. Keep track of all the changes that became visible at the time when the experiment took place and even after it was completed. Which of the metrics hypothesis had an impact on? Were there any changes in the product? Were there any changes in the marketing? All details, even those that at first sight seem inessential, do matter, because they will allow you to make a thorough analysis and sum up the results. Having analysed the results, the last action that you must carry out at this stage is decide on the scaling. Regardless of the result of the hypothesis, whether it was successful or not, you need to understand if you need to scale.
The last step that is no least important for growing your business is systematisation of knowledge. Systematisation, being the process of combining accumulated knowledge into a system that clearly indicates all interrelationships and regularities, is a very important step that may lay the foundation for the appearance of other hypotheses or prove to be a failure and a dead-end. As a matter of fact, about 20% or even 10% of hypotheses are successful. Nonetheless, regardless of whether the hypothesis was successful or not, it still provided some valuable information and you still gained knowledge. Now you need to write that knowledge down, record it for yourself or/and new members of the company in order to avoid spending time on doing the same thing again. Finally, having carried out the analysis of results and systematisation of knowledge, you are now able to choose one’s way of acting, whether you will implement the changes or make some development, or not.

Final Words

You have finally reached and completed the last step, but don’t get too happy and/or relax too much. Growth, unfortunately, doesn’t come very easily. If you want your business to continue growing and flourishing, you need to constantly put a lot of effort, time and resources. Daily. Weekly. Monthly. Therefore, when you’ve went through the last step of the growth process, you are welcome to start all over again.