Escaping the Growth Curse

11 ◼ Revitalizing the Company for Renewal

Even when armed with robust strategic options and a long-term strategic direction, a firm’s renewal and transformation efforts can easily be thwarted at the implementation stage if a lack of energy and commitment runs through the company. We have already seen some of the ways in which culture is negatively affected when operationally focused mature companies have been through the wringer of the growth curse, resulting in a lack of leadership unity, infighting, political point scoring, misrepresentation, and a sense of despondency infecting the company at every level.

But even in companies that aren’t consumed by the short-termism of managing the bottom line of a dominant core business, attempts to reenergize ...