Your Growth Strategies… Do You Have The Right Leaders?

George Roberts

July 14, 2011

At OpenView Partners we talk to founders and CEOs of early and expansion stage software companies every week. In all of the conversations we discuss each company’s growth strategies. Before we invest growth capital in software companies we want to understand how they plan on growing faster, grabbing more market share and operationally executing across all areas of their business to leave their competition in the dust and dominate their selected market segment.

Those of you who have followed some of my blogs in the past know that I believe people are the only strategic asset you have and that the key to building great companies that achieve great exits is having great management teams.

There was an article in the McKinsey Quarterly titled “Do You Have The Right Leaders For Your Growth Strategies”. I believe every founder and CEO should read it. The premise of the article is that few executives can do it all (I personally don’t believe any executive can do it all) and therefore it takes a mix of leaders and talent to pursue growth strategies.

They did analysis on the relationship between leadership competencies and growth. Out of their analysis they determined:

  • Leadership quality is critical to growth
  • Most companies do not have enough high quality executives
  • Certain competencies are more important to some growth strategies than others

In the article they discuss:

  • Great leaders are hard to find but vitally important
  • A “customer focus first” competency (delivering customer impact) drives the greatest gains
  • Tailoring talent strategies to your growth priorities (matching your management team to your growth strategies)

This is an excellent article that you can read about here.  I hope you enjoy it and pass it on to your team…

All the best!

G

Venture Partner

<strong>George Roberts</strong> is a Venture Partner at OpenView. He enjoys partnering with companies and helping them achieve their goals through strategy, focus and operational execution. From 1990 to 2003, George spent 13 years at Oracle Corporation, most recently having served as Executive Vice President of North American Sales. While at Oracle, George was responsible for over $1 billion in revenue and more than 2,000 employees, reporting directly to the company’s CEO and Chairman, Larry Ellison.