How can you enable business growth? Todays business leaders are full of ideas, theories and information. They are exceptional at traditional business thinking, yet many feel uncertain about how the future will play out and are afraid of managing change. Truly innovative leaders naturally foster new ideas and boldly discover new opportunities.
In his newest book "Gamechangers - Are You Ready to Change the World?" Peter Fisk investigates a wide range of gamechanging businesses from across the globe. His book unveils key strategies behind these innovative thinkers and he challenges you to recharge your thinking and optimise your opportunites for future business growth.
“Gamechangers are disruptive and innovative, start-ups and corporates, in every sector and region, reshaping our world. They are more ambitious, with stretching vision and enlightened purpose. They see markets as kaleidoscopes of infinite possibilities, assembling and defining them to their advantage. They find their own space, then shape it in their own vision. Most of all they have great ideas. They outthink their competition, thinking bigger and different. They don’t believe in being slightly cheaper or slightly better. That is a short-term game of diminishing returns".
In our latest report VQ6 - Going for Growth, Vistage asked Peter how business leaders can ignite the growth in their businesses. Using the research from his book, here are 10 qualities that gamechanging leaders have that drive their organisations to be bigger, bolder and better than the rest.
Are you a gamechanger?
- Do You Outthink the Competition?
Gamechangers think differently from the rest of us, they generate and implement powerful ideas that serve a bigger purpose and aim to change the world.
The best companies are guided by an inspiring vision, they explore new possibilities, are overly curious and heavily connected, they aren't afraid to be different and work from the future back, giving them more audacious and disruptive ideas that outthink their competition!
- Are You a Market Explorer?
Do you explore the best opportunities for growth no matter where they are?
Gamechangers have the foresight to see beyond traditional borders, geographies and categories; they take advantage of change. From masses to niches, averages to individuals, geography to global tribes; gamechangers go forth into pastures new and discover new opportunities for growth.
- Do You Love to Disrupt the Status Quo?
If you are a pioneer that loves to discover and claim your own space, or create new strategies that disrupt the future of your markets - then you are a Gamechanger.
Forward thinking strategy is about finding your own area within already saturated and convergent markets. It should never be an extrapolation of the past, nor a fixed point in the future.
The most successful leaders are agile enough to consistently disrupt and challenge their current thinking with room to manouvre. Peter Fisk says that "You can choose your future – reframing your context, choosing a different audience, playing by new rules. Gamechanging strategy is about pivoting to this better place, from mediocrity to magic, staying focused yet agile as you progress."
- How Does Your Brand Inspire Others?
Gamechanging brands are brands that make people’s lives better. They focus on what people want and aspire to be, rather than selling companies and products.
They want to be enriching and enabling, giving people the confidence, and helping them, to achieve more.
- Do You Continue to Innovate Beyond Your Products?
Innovating the whole company, from business model to customer experience is gamechanger behaviour. True innovation is about making the best ideas happen profitably. It uses design thinking to look beyond products, to rethink business models and customer experiences, hard and soft, and then the products and services to deliver them.
"Every aspect of business can be innovated, open and collaborative, simple and frugal. Innovation is driven by a human cause, to make a positive and profitable difference to our world."
- Do You Tell Great Stories?
Tuning into the customers world with real-time and relevant marketing content is important. Gamechangers are in sync with their customers world, engaging them in relevant and meaningful ways and at the right time and place. Peter says "Forget broadcast campaigns, advertising push. Think digital and physical, in context and on demand."
- Do You Focus on Experience?
Gamechangers deliver customer experiences that enable them to achieve more. The best customer experiences are much more than the touch points that lead to a sale, they are intelligent and interactive, collaborative and personal.
Fisk states that "Through digital interfaces and physical theatre, big data and human service, they immerse people in a brand that enables more."
- Have You Created a Community?
Today customers have more in common, they trust each other and want to connect with each other in much more powerful ways than with any business. Advocacy, trust and loyalty between customers can be far more powerful than any CRM or loyalty card. Social and collaborative, brands and networks support your customers desires to collaborate and share ideas, to build communities, and empowered movements with cause and passion.
- Are You Creating a Positive Impact?
Gamechangers are focused on delivering and sustaining a positive impact that is both human and financial. Value creation is about more than sales, it is about sustaining long-term profitable growth, which is good financially and good for the world.
Sustaining growth means being sustainable more broadly, through circular business models, and enabling customers to be better too.
- Are You Supercharging Your Potential?
Great leaders amplify the potential of themselves, their people and their organisations, and gamechangers are no different. Changing the game will require you to continue to develop your own capabilities as a leader, it will require your organisation to learn new innovative ways of thinking and help you to develop gamechanging ways of doing business before anyone else.
"Gamechangers are typically the speedboats, rather than the supertankers, with the speed and agility to seize the new opportunities of change."
Are you a gamechanger? Joining a leadership organisation such as Vistage will give you the opportunity to enhance your potential as a leader, give you the tools to challenge your thinking and push you to make your greatest ideas a reality.
Learn more about how to enable business growth these resources from Vistage: