It’s our anniversary! Answering your questions

Pam Harper: It's our seventh anniversary and we're answering your questions. Welcome to episode 187 of Growth Igniters Radio with Pam Harper and Scott Harper!

Chris Curran: This episode is brought to you by Business Advancement Incorporated, enabling successful leaders and companies to accelerate to their next level of growth. On the web at BusinessAdvance.com. And now, here's Pam and Scott.

Pam Harper: Thanks, Chris. I'm Pam Harper, Founding Partner and CEO of Business Advancement Incorporated. And sitting right across from me as always is my business partner and husband, Scott Harper. Hi Scott.

Scott Harper: Hi, Pam. It's great to join you again for another episode of Growth Igniters Radio. And as always, our purpose is to spark new insights, inspiration, and immediately useful ideas for visionary leaders to accelerate themselves and their companies to their next level of game-changing innovation, transformation, and growth. Now, Pam, as you said, we're entering our seventh year of Growth Igniters Radio podcast.

Pam Harper: It's hard to believe. It was back in February of 2015 when we recorded our first episode.

Scott Harper: Who knew? And we've had a tremendous number of really interesting conversations between you and me, and with a wide variety of guests ranging from game-changing CEOs to a whole range of thought leaders. And we feature that in a press release that just went out. It was picked up by a wide range of major media outlets, including MarketWatch, Seeking Alpha, Yahoo! Finance, Morning Star, and others.

Pam Harper: And in addition to praise, we love getting questions from our listeners. So this is a different format for a different type of episode. Today, we're going to respond to some of your questions, and along with our answers we'll reference a few relevant episodes, so you can dig deeper on your own.

Scott Harper: Right. And you'll be able to see links to those episodes when you go to our show notes page, for this conversation at GrowthIgnitersRadio.com, episode 187. Scroll down to resources.

Pam Harper: Okay, Scott. So let's move to questions. What's the first one?

Scott Harper: All right, first question: “What do you mean by game-changing business growth? And why do you keep talking about it?”

Pam Harper: We do keep talking about it, don't we? Well, it's no secret that the world is rapidly changing in so many ways. I mean, we're sitting here in the middle of a pandemic. We mostly live on Zoom, and we're not alone.

Scott Harper: That's right. There are so many changes and they're all happening at once. You have changes in technology and competitive threats, you have changes in demographics and social norms and so many more.

Pam Harper: So, what do these changes mean for all of us? It means we need to take control and change the game, or the game will be changed for us. We can't go backwards to what was normal, we can only move forward. We need to keep discovering opportunities, keep bringing them to life and keep creating new value for the world faster than ever before. In other words, we need to lead for tomorrow, starting today.

Scott Harper: That's right. And a game-changing leadership hinges upon our ability to discover new opportunities ahead of everybody else. And this often relies upon gaining perspectives from a wide range of key stakeholders. The question is though, who are our key stakeholders? That really goes beyond the list of the usual suspects, right?

Pam Harper: It's not always who you think at first.

Scott Harper: Right. We've seen that sometimes the greatest ideas for real opportunities -- game-changing opportunities -- can come from people way away from the core of the organization who are out there interacting with people and ideas we never interact with.

Pam Harper: That's right. Just remember there's changing the game and changing the game wisely. When Rita Gunther McGrath, who was our guest in episode 168, was talking about her book Seeing Around Corners, she told us about conducting research on how to spot inflection points that have the power to change the very assumptions on which organizations were founded.

Scott Harper: The trick for successful game-changing leaders here is to be able to help the organizations separate signals from noise. You don't want to react to something you think is an inflection point too soon, because it may be nothing. You don't want to be too late because other people will beat you to it. You have to be just right. And that “Goldilocks leadership” — that's an art.

Pam Harper: That's why in future episodes of Growth Igniters Radio, we'll continue to talk more about emerging issues and trends that we believe have the ability to impact your leadership and your company's ability to keep changing the game.

Scott Harper: So, we've tackled that one. Here's another one. It comes right at the title of our podcast. “What exactly is a Growth Igniter?”

Pam Harper: This is a term we created back in 2015. It describes a visionary leader of an established company who's able to ignite and keep igniting game-changing growth. They have this special quality of being able to embrace the paradoxes that naturally emerge as they lead their organizations to navigate uncharted territory.

Scott Harper: So, by paradoxes, you mean competing truths. “I see it one way, you see it another way. Our points of view may seem to clash, but there's real power in bringing them together.”

Pam Harper: Exactly. And in episode 123, we talk about one of the biggest paradoxical leadership issues that visionary leaders run up against. Which is, “I have a great vision. And guess what? The bolder the vision, the more of the pushback comes in from people who either don't understand or don't agree with the vision.”

Scott Harper: Yes. This can be really frustrating to us as leaders when the vision is so clear and so powerful in our minds and yet we get this pushback. The question is, how can we bring people together so that we can get to an even better place?

Pam Harper: The key is to seek understanding when you run into mystifying resistance because the source of the pushback can often be surprising. That was the case in a story I shared during episode 123, called “The Surprising Truth About Visionary Leaders.” Look for us to talk more in future episodes about what we call the growth igniters paradoxes and ways you can begin to address them to accelerate game-changing transformation for business growth.

Scott Harper: That's great, Pam. That's two of the four questions we're going to take on today. And before we go on, let's take a moment to talk a little bit about the advisory services we offer at Business Advancement Incorporated.

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Scott Harper: You are listening to Growth Igniters Radio with Pam Harper and Scott Harper. We're brought to you by Business Advancement Incorporated. On the web, at BusinessAdvance.com. Many of you know us only from Growth Igniters Radio, but did you know that our client engagements of Business Advancement Incorporated are focused on advising and speaking to visionary CEOs, C-suite leaders, and their teams on a variety of issues that are related to bringing out the full potential of their organizations? This enables them to accelerate momentum for game-changing growth.

Pam Harper: Some of our success stories include transforming a C-suite team for growth under new leadership, accelerating post-merger integration, transitioning business models for record growth, and more. You can see all of us under client results at BusinessAdvance.com.

Scott Harper: So if you're curious about how we could help you and your company accelerate momentum for game-changing growth, contact us today at BusinessAdvance.com.

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Scott Harper: Welcome back. Today we're answering some of the questions we've been asked over six years of our Growth Igniters Radio podcast series. Now here's another question that's near and dear to my heart. People ask, “There's all this talk about disruption and disruptors, and ‘I want to be the disruptor and not the disrupted’. What do these terms mean to you?”

Pam Harper: We see them as being about being first, fast and foremost in the hearts and the minds of stakeholders. So not just employees, not just customers, but anybody that you're interacting with.

Scott Harper: And this includes our communities as well. There are so many disruptive influences in our business environment and they happen all at once. It can really set us back on our heels, but it can also be a source of opportunity.

Pam Harper: People don't think about finding the positive side of disruptive turbulence, and yet that's exactly what we discussed with Amy Segami, who is the president and managing principal of Segami Studios and Consulting. We explored how understanding the dynamics of turbulence can help you lead yourself and others through times of crisis.

Scott Harper: People can find that conversation by going to GrowthIgnitersRadio.com, episode 172.

Pam Harper: Because the pace and the interaction of disruptive forces is only accelerating, we all need to stay attuned to what it takes to be the disruptor and not the disrupted as we lead through unprecedented challenges. That's why we'll be talking more about these issues in future episodes.

Scott Harper: Absolutely. Now, here's the last question: “You often speak about ‘accelerating momentum for game-changing growth.’ That's not always easy. What do you see as the major reason that momentum sometimes falls off as we're transforming for business growth?”

Pam Harper: It really varies by the company. There can be many reasons why momentum falls off.

Scott Harper: That's when things that should be happening to achieve the objectives you're going for aren't actually happening as fast as they need to happen.

Pam Harper: Right. That's why it's important to go beyond the symptoms to address what really needs to be addressed. There can be a lot of nuance in this. For instance, distinguishing between engagement and commitment.

Scott Harper: Engagement and commitment...

Pam Harper: Well, think about marriage. So we're engaged to be married, we're not married. Somebody can decide not to go through with the ceremony. Once you're committed, once you're married, the commitment is there. You're going to be committed to finding ways to overcome the obstacles that are always going to come up, especially during transformation for growth.

Scott Harper: So, it's the difference between the initial excitement of, "Hey, that's a great idea," and, "We're running into issues, but I really believe in this and we're going to work out how we're going to get through it." Right?

Pam Harper: Exactly.

Scott Harper: So how do you do that?

Pam Harper: It comes down to deepening the level of trust between people. “Transparency” is a word that comes up a lot these days in terms of understanding how leaders are making decisions, and leaders needing to understand how employees are operating, especially when we're talking about remote workplaces. So it's mutual deepening of the trust. It's also true about how you deal with suppliers, how you're dealing with partners and other relationships. This is especially true as we're facing unprecedented challenges. You need at least twice as much commitment to move through uncharted territory to bring your vision to life.

Scott Harper: Now, we've been talking about this actually for a long time. Way back in 2015, we had episode 14.

Pam Harper: That was one of our earliest episodes.

Scott Harper: Yes; the title was "What Can You Do to Accelerate Major Transformation?" We talked about commitment back then; it's even more important now.

Pam Harper: This is going to be one of the biggest leadership issues we will encounter as we move into the future. That’s why we're going to keep talking about leading from engagement through to commitment, so you can accelerate momentum for game-changing business growth.

Scott Harper: That's all the questions we have today. Keep them coming. We love the way you make us think. In the meantime, thanks for listening to Growth Igniters Radio with Pam Harper and Scott Harper. To get show notes and resource links for this week's episode, go to GrowthIgnitersRadio.com and select episode 187

Pam Harper: Until next time, this is Pam Harper…

Scott Harper: And Scott Harper. We're wishing you continued success, and leaving you with these final thoughts — and a question:

Pam Harper: Think about what is happening in your industry. Maybe you've been impacted by new competitors with new technology or new business models. Perhaps it's more difficult to find critical talent, or maybe there are new regulations about where and how your company can do business. What do these changes mean for you? And what are you going to do to take control to change the game?

Chris Curran: Growth Igniters and Growth Igniters Radio with Pam Harper and Scott Harper are registered service marks of Business Advancement Incorporated. All Growth Igniters Radio episodes are copyrighted productions of Business Advancement Incorporated, intended for the private use of our audience. Except as otherwise provided by copyright law, all other uses including copying, editing, redistribution, and publication without the prior written consent of Business Advancement Incorporated are prohibited. © 2021 All rights reserved.