By Sarah Hex, Head of Growth at Clarion, Connect Yorkshire Partner.
In my experience, growth is quite often spoken about in relation to opportunities. Things like new markets and new clients, investment, recruitment, expansion… All of which represent progress or milestones in the growth journey. However, I feel there is a more fundamental question for businesses with ambitions to grow. How are they creating the conditions that enable those opportunities to happen?
Over the years, I’ve become increasingly convinced that sustainable growth more often comes from the environment a business creates around itself. Of course, that includes having the capacity to grow, making the right investments, and having strong leadership in place. But one thing I’ve seen consistently is that it starts with people.
They’re the ones creating momentum. They’re having conversations, challenging assumptions, spotting possibilities and building the relationships that can lead to something new.
To me, that, is one of the most important parts of growth that can’t be overlooked. What I’ve often seen is that opportunities don’t typically arrive neatly packaged and ready to go. What does often happen is a conversation or introduction, or someone identifying a challenge or gap the business hadn’t yet been aware of.
It’s these interactions and different perspectives that unearth things others might have missed. Which is why businesses that stay closely connected to their people, clients and wider market can often find it easier to recognise and pursue those opportunities.
There’s also something important here about growing together. Really understanding a client or customer means understanding where they’re trying to get to. If, for example, a business has ambitions to grow internationally, the conversation becomes about understanding the steps involved, anticipating what they may need next and connecting them with the right people at the right time.
Opportunity starts with connection
One of the things I see across the northern business community is that there’s no shortage of ambition. It’s full of entrepreneurial businesses, established organisations, investors, advisers, and people with ideas about what comes next. But businesses still need to create the environment that allows them to take advantage of what’s happening around them.
In my experience, relationships are central to that because so much sustainable growth is built on trust. Strong relationships help businesses understand what’s changing around them. They make it easier for ideas to surface and create introductions and collaborations that might never have appeared on a strategic plan.
That’s also why listening matters. Effective leaders spend time asking questions to understand what clients and customers are really experiencing and listening to the people closest to the work. I’ve seen businesses do this really well, and they tend to have a much clearer picture of where the real opportunities are.
Sometimes it’s about knowing what to leave behind
One thing I’ve also learned is that pursuing every opportunity that appears isn’t always the answer. If a business has a clear sense of where it wants to go, what it’s good at and what it wants to be known for, it becomes easier to recognise which opportunities are genuinely a good fit and which ones to walk away from.
That also means continuing to build on what’s already working. Growth is often presented as something that requires constant reinvention, but I’ve never been convinced that’s necessarily true. Established businesses typically have valuable foundations in place already, whether that’s reputation and expertise, culture and client relationships, or years of accumulated experience. These should be the platform for what comes next.
A few questions worth asking
For businesses thinking seriously about growth, there are a few things I’d keep coming back to.
Are we treating challenges purely as problems, or looking at the opportunities they might reveal? Rather than expecting growth to come from a single person or decision, are we hearing enough different perspectives? Even if we’ve already invested time in something, are we willing to change direction when it isn’t working?
And finally, does the evidence support the ambition? Data shouldn’t limit the dream, but it can help businesses understand whether they’re making progress and whether their decisions still support the purpose and direction they started with.
Chase vs choice
In short, I believe making deliberate choices is a more sustainable approach to growth than simply chasing more and more. The right decisions build the right environment that brings good people together, which in turn helps people and the business to stay close to the market and build trusted relationships.
If a business can listen properly and do these things consistently, then opportunities have a habit of appearing. After that, it’s a case of being ready to recognise them when they do.
Article via thebusinessdesk.com
