How to Achieve Rapid Growth

A new Egon Zehnder study published in Harvard Business Review surveyed more than 500 senior revenue-driving leaders worldwide - CMOs, Chief Revenue Officers, Chief Commercial Officers - across every major industry.

Their finding?  Only 29% of companies surveyed achieved rapid growth, defined as top-line revenue increases exceeding 10%.

Twenty-nine percent.

‍The researchers found that growth accelerates when leaders are aligned, empowered, and equipped to collaborate across functions.  That's the formula.  Leadership alignment.  Real empowerment.  Cross-functional collaboration.

Here's what most hiring managers miss:  These are skills you must test in your hiring process.  If you're not testing for them before you hire, you are gambling with your growth.

The study identifies the capabilities that separate high-growth companies from those that stall.  ‍ ‍

Let me translate them into hiring terms - specifically, the "interview workouts" you should be running in your hiring tryout before you make an offer.

TRUTH CHECK

A hiring tryout isn't just an interview workout.  It's a scrimmage.  You don't offer an NBA contract after watching someone shoot free throws alone in an empty gym.  You watch them play defense under pressure.  You see how they talk to teammates when the score is close.

The same logic applies to your next leadership hire.  Here are five areas the research flags - and one example of how to test each one.

Building high-performing teams.  Ask the candidate to map the last team they built or inherited.  Who did they move into different roles?  Who did they let go?  Who did they develop into a leader?

Then ask them to role-play a performance conversation with a struggling team member - you play the employee.  Watch whether they can balance accountability with trust.

Wisely applying AI.  This isn't about whether they know the tools.  It's about judgment.  Give them a real business scenario from your company - a marketing campaign, a customer service bottleneck, a sales forecasting problem.

Ask them to walk you through exactly where they would use AI, where they wouldn't, and why.  The candidates who can't answer the "where I wouldn't" question are the ones who often create problems.

Collaborating efficiently and effectively.  Give them a cross-functional project scenario with competing priorities - sales wants speed, finance wants margin protection, and operations wants lead time.  

Put two or three of your team members in the room.  Watch how the candidate facilitates.  Do they dominate?  Do they defer?  Or do they actually move people toward the best decision?

Achieving a high marketing ROI.  Ask them to submit an example of their past results - but realize someone else may have done the core work.  More importantly, have them analyze a real campaign result from your company - or a sanitized one - and tell you what they would change and why.  

Then ask them to walk you through their process and specifically how they would achieve the results you require.

Building trust with prospects and clients that grow sales.  Role-play a first discovery call with a skeptical prospect.  Or a renewal conversation with a client who is considering leaving.  The 71% of companies that aren't growing rapidly often have leaders who are excellent at pitching and poor at listening.  Watch for which one shows up.

The hardest test of all:  Can they balance one or more of these with operational excellence?

Give them a "house on fire" scenario - revenue is down, a key client is at risk, and a critical team member just resigned.  All in the same week. Ask them to walk you through their first 72 hours.

You aren't looking for the perfect answer.  Observe how they think under pressure.

The research is clear.  Growth is a leadership problem.  Alignment, empowerment, and cross-functional collaboration don't happen by accident. They happen because someone hired the right leaders - you test them before making an offer - and keep developing them after they join your team.

Your interview workout process is your first management decision about every person you hire.

Make it count.

QUESTION:  What's one question you've used in an interview that successfully revealed whether a candidate could do the job?  Share it in the comments.

If you want to build a hiring system that tests for the capabilities your growth strategy actually requires, let's talk.  

If you prefer to better understand the cost of your bad hiring decisions first, then try our free Bad Hire Calculator to put a real number on it. 

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