Healthy growth is much more than simply ‘growing’ – at least according to the authors of the new bestselling management book “Five steps towards a healthy, growing company” (Naar een gezond groeibedrijf in vijf stappen, in Dutch) professors Tom Mom and Justin Jansen. In an exclusive webinar hosted by RSM Alumni Office on 11 May, co-author Prof. dr. Tom Mom (Professor of Strategic Growth and Implementation, Academic Director Executive MBA, Director Executive Programme in Strategic Management at Rotterdam School of Management and Erasmus Centre for Entrepreneurship sr. fellow) outlined five steps to grow as healthily as possible and remain successful in a changing world. We highlight the key insights from the webinar in this article. 

Across the business landscape, for corporates, startups and SMEs alike, we see that prospering and even surviving has proven to be difficult. In the ScaleUp Dashboard 2020, a phenomenon known as the second “Valley of Death’’ was even identified where more than 2/3 of scaleups stopped growing after 8-12 years. To make sure that companies can survive and not only grow, but also grow in a healthy way, we have established a platform of High-Growth together with key partners. Central to this platform is the insights from this book that is based on learnings from long-term high-growth companies in the Netherlands such as Coolblue, Young Capital, Just Eat Takeaway.com and Jumbo. Here is a sneak peak of the five steps to healthy growth covered in the book:

Step 1 – Explore the growth landscape

High-growth leaders tap into unexplored growth potential by continuously hunting for more/new value creation for their customers.

Step 2 – Discover the growth formula of the company

By primarily looking for reinforcing effects when selecting opportunities for growth, high-growth leaders build a growth landscape.

Step 3 – Tell the growth-story

High-growth leaders create a collective growth ambition by creating and telling the growth story over and over again.

Step 4 – Develop collective growth-abilities

In order to prepare their team and organisation for growth, high-growth leaders create a winning team, focus on the growth-fundamentals (and delegate other things) and create a growth climate (culture, kpi’s, data democratization, etc).

Step 5 – Reinforce the growth-engine

High-growth leaders stay dynamic and maintain growth by scaling up new growth paths and start a “new round” of growth paths again.

Interested to learn more and hear examples of these steps being implemented? Check out the full webinar: