Charan and Tichy assert that growth requires sticking to two principles: "strategy from the outside in" and "changing the genetic code." The first means putting yourself in your customers' shoes and asking what are their needs and how are they changing. From this perspective, a company can redefine its market and come up with creative ways to expand demand. The second principle, changing the genetic code, means revamping the corporate culture so that a new mindset for growth can thrive. As anyone who has ever worked in a company knows, corporate culture is a hard thing to overhaul. The book gives concrete steps to make that happen; sometimes it requires whole new leadership.
Charan, who has been on the faculty of the Harvard Business School and Northwestern University, and Tichy, a professor at the University of Michigan Business School, speak from experience. They've advised companies such as Royal Dutch/Shell and Mercedes-Benz. One of their heroes is the late Roberto Goizueta of Coca-Cola. When Goizueta took over, the company was on cruise control. It dominated the U.S. soft- drink industry--a market that many experts believed was mature with nowhere to grow. Under conventional thinking, Coca-Cola was maxed out: it would do well just to defend each tenth of a percent of market share against archrival PepsiCo. But in the 1980s, Goizueta framed the question of market share in a different way. Goizueta got his top executives to see that globally, Coca-Cola accounted for less than 2 ounces of the 64 ounces of fluid that each of the world's 4.4 billion people drank on average every day. In one simple stroke, he redefined the market and opened vast new areas of opportunity for his company. Coca-Cola became an immensely successful growth company under his leadership. Similar stories about Compaq, Citibank, and other companies abound. Every Business Is a Growth Business is an inspiring and practical book for business leaders looking to grow their company. --Dan Ring