How to uncover growth opportunities hidden in plain sight

Uncertain times provide an unique opportunity for those courageous enough to take it. Counter-intuitively, investing into existing and new products during times of crises actually strengthens your competitive advantage. That is, if you are able to meet the changing customer demand.

Watch the webinar recording below to:

• dive into what differentiates high-earning firms from the rest,
• consider an unsurprising, yet seldomly talked about, cause of losing market share, and
• practice uncovering growth possibilities by looking at the three critical gaps.

After you finish watching, feel free reach out with any questions you might have.

You can find recording, timestamps, transcript, and license information below.

Webinar recording

Webinar timestamps

Webinar transcript

Hello. Welcome to “How to Uncover Growth Opportunities Hidden in Plain Sight.” You see, this is such a tongue-breaker that I broke my own tongue when saying it out loud! My name is Bruno Pesec, and I work with business leaders, helping them innovate profitably. I have over a decade of experience in defense, manufacturing, financial services, education, and other industries as well. Before we jump into the core of this webinar, I just want to cover some technicalities.

We are on Zoom. On the bottom of your screen, you should have a Chat button, Q&A button, so feel free to leave comments, questions, and as we go along, I’ll address them.

When I talk about uncovering hidden opportunities, and using them to grow and innovate, what it really is about is thinking and seeing and feeling differently. But before we get to that, I need to address something that I commonly see both in the organizations in Norway, in Europe and Australia, but also globally. The things seen in the research, as well. And that is, people are afraid, or businesses are afraid, of innovation. Especially in turbulent and difficult times. But the research proves that otherwise, it’s not smartest to actually stop investing in growth innovation, that it’s not smart to ignore that, hunker down and just play an ostrich and put your head in the sand.

Actually, quite the contrary. The companies that are able to introduce new products and services and value propositions during turbulent times are able to actually strengthen their competitive advantage and are actually able to drive and overcome this difficult and challenging environment.

The caveat in that is that the things you introduce must actually meet customer demands, so you cannot just throw out products and services. You actually need to create things that people care for.

Another piece of research that’s critical to fighting this fear of innovation and fear of growth is considering innovation as something that creates value, and value must be two-fold. It must be for the creator of the innovation and for the recipient of innovation. But the research and my experience as well from firms is that when we roughly talk about two different types of innovation, incremental and breakthrough (or radical or destructive, etc.) it’s actually incremental innovation that in most cases differentiates higher-earning companies from the rest. Higher-earning companies, and let me not misquote, so I’ll read the specific number. So in higher-earning companies, improvements in incremental innovation accounts for 26% of business outcomes and 35% of product outcomes.

Business outcomes are basically financial metrics, and product outcomes are related to satisfaction with the product, meeting customer needs, etcetera. You can hear that incremental innovation has quite a significant contribution to growth and existence with higher-earning companies. That does not mean that radical innovation should be ignored, but it means that the role it has within an organization’s profitability and sustainability is a bit different than what we’ve come to expect.

Building on these insights, I want to ask you a question. Something to pause and reflect a little bit on, and you can share in the comments or directly to me later if you wish, is, “What do you think is then number one reason companies lose market share?”

I’ll give you some seconds to think about it.

Here is a bit of a shocker. It probably isn’t such a revelation; you’re already aware of this, but maybe you’re deluding yourself or trying to tell yourself stories that tell you it’s not true. The number one reason companies lose market share is their own internal processes. It’s not competition that puts market share away. Competition picks it up after you have screwed up.

If you want to separate it, to talk about internal reasons and external reasons, internal is exactly what I told you. It’s your internal processes, your internal policies, your internal organizational structures. That does not mean that everything is bad; I’m not saying that at all. But, when you start losing market share, you need to start looking inside. What has changed, or what hasn’t changed, that enables our competitors and other players to pick up our market share?

If we start looking at external reasons for losing market share, then it’s something that you probably have heard because it has been touted for the last decade in almost every presentation, especially in entrepreneurial circles. And that is, building something nobody wants. True? That’s a reason. But again, that is something I would call an external reason. Internal reasons remain your own processes, procedures, and policies.

Why do you end up building something nobody wants? Nobody wants to build things like that. Nobody wakes up saying, “Hmm, I gotta do something that absolutely no one will get any value from.” That’s just not true. People want to create something that excites others. They want to create something new, potentially something novel, but maybe internal processes and procedures don’t allow them, or don’t allow them to see how that can be done better.

Now that we have that grounding, remember what I said about uncovering new growth opportunities. It’s about seeing and feeling differently. Really, when I talk about opportunities, I’m very deliberate between two terms. There is a possibility and there is an opportunity. A possibility is more like a thought, an idea. “Hey, this could be possible.” But it becomes opportunity once I look at this possibility and start adding. “Okay, what can I do with this possibility to turn it into something beneficial to me and other people?” That’s how I transform it from this thought, from this idea of possibility, to actually an opportunity I can look at, evaluate and decide for myself. Am I going to invest in it or not?

When I made the distinction between those two terms, remember what I said. Opportunity is about seeing and feeling differently. It’s pretty much strategic choice, pretty much a strategic discussion. I want to go back to the practical definition, and practical way of thinking about strategy. Who better than Michael Porter? I really appreciate the way he put down critical elements of strategy.

One element is: strategy involves a unique and valuable position.

Two: Backed by a series of activities that are aligned in your organization to capture and maintain that position.

And three: With also a series of decisions. What is in, and what is out? What are you going to focus on and what you’re not going to focus on.

Because I like visualizing difficult concepts, let me share with you the visualization.

As I said, there are three critical elements of a strategy. Unique position, a set of activities to support and capture that position, and a set of decisions that clearly define what’s in your focus and what’s out of your focus.

I invite you to think about your own organization, or if you’re a consultant, about the client you serve. Can you write this? Can you write for each a few sentences, one to three sentences. What is your position? What are the critical activities that are supporting, capturing, and maintaining that position, and what are the decisions that you are deliberating accepting or rejecting?

Let’s spend two minutes on that. No need to overcomplicate it, just a sentence or two. No more than that. Just bullet points if it’s easier. No one is going to score the answers.

While this is useful, it’s difficult to think about it in terms of, “How can I actually use this to identify something new? Because when people do this exercise, they think, “Okay, are you telling me then that the only way to actually grow and uncover new opportunities is to select a new market? To target something completely different? To take a new position?”

Yes, but no. Let me walk you through how we can break this down into a useful and practical analytical tool I have developed together with Matthew Fenton. Let’s start with this. We have the three elements. What I want to introduce is something called “Strategy gap.” Let’s take a look at it.

This is your business – that is, the two elements I told you before, that’s your activities aligned through the business, how you create, deliver, and capture value, together with your decisions of what to focus on and what to ignore. And then, this is your position. This is your target customer. There is an exchange of value between these two, in most normal functioning economies. You create something and the market either receives it or rejects it. If it receives it, it gives you some value back. Usually money. But it can be something else, if it’s a social enterprise, etcetera. The difference between these two is your strategy gap.

The strategy gap is something that can hide a lot of potential. That’s why I say that opportunity is hidden in plain sight because it’s already out there. Strategy gap, another way to think about it, is the difference between what you have decided to focus on and the actual results you are getting. That’s also part of the strategy here.

The way I talk about strategy gap is not devoid of reality. A lot of approaches, a lot of the ways people talk about strategy, innovation, and growth, pretend that that world doesn’t exist. It’s talking about new markets that have never been invented before. It talks about things that have never been seen before. It talks about things that have never been imagined or comprehended before. But that’s not our reality. We, as a human civilization, have progressed so much because we are able to build upon each generation’s knowledge, culture, behaviors, technologies, and all the other inventions and innovations. Why would we pretend it is otherwise in business? It doesn’t make a lot of sense.

The same thing here: we should not pretend that we haven’t made our choices. Most of us are in the organizations that are already providing products, services, value propositions and other things to some customers, so it already exists. Your position already exists. Maybe it’s not as good as you wish it to be. Maybe it’s strong, and you want to make it stronger. The thing is, your position already exists. Your activities already exist. Infrastructure already exists. Where you have a unique opportunity is looking at that with fresh eyes and searching, actively searching, and then attempting to exploit growth opportunities hidden in those cracks. Those cracks might be much bigger and much wider than you have anticipated.

Again, to make it a bit easier, we will break this down into a few elements because when we present it like this, then it really seems like our only option is selecting a new position, selecting a new market. Often, when I speak and work with executives, they will tell me, “Bruno, corporate has decided a market for us. We cannot now go from dairy to automobile; it’s just won’t happen.” Yes, but that’s not the point. Even if you already have a position that’s carved out, what you probably don’t have is: Did corporate decide specific initiatives you should focus on? Did corporate decide specific jobs you need to address? Did they specify who should be served broadly versus who should be served narrowly? And all the other strategic discussions, possibilities, and opportunities.

Let me walk you through how we break it down. To what elements. We keep the business and we keep your target market. Then, we break down to these two elements. The output of all the activities, everything that the business is doing, is some value proposition. Value proposition, I’m using that term very deliberately, because it’s not just products and services. Value proposition consists of products, services, promises, relationships, brand, everything actually, that the customer is getting. The difference between target customer and existing customers. These are those that are currently getting your value proposition versus the whole target you are aiming at. It’s important to have these two, because then we can analyze it a bit better. Then, we can look at it with fresh eyes because strategic gap can be a massive undertaking. What’s better is, let’s look at the critical elements and then, let’s start breaking them into smaller gaps.

Before we go there, I want to invite you to actually start writing. What is, actually, your business? It sounds like a silly question, but can you describe your business? Maybe it’s easier to start, what are your value propositions? Feel free to start whichever way, for value propositions, or your business. Try listing down, what are you actually serving to your customers? Feel free to list down products, services, but also experiences, promises. What are you actually promising your customers? Then, list some critical activities. List down some things you do that make it possible to deliver these value propositions. Try to list all of that. You can re-use the things you have done in the previous exercise.

Then start describing your existing customers. Who are they? Feel free to use demographics if you wish, but also please try to describe them emotionally. You don’t need to write the whole persona. We don’t have time for that. Just try to describe your existing customers, then try to describe your target customers. Remember, you wrote a position just a few minutes ago. Is that the same? Can you describe them as well? Let’s do that for the next three minutes.

While you’re writing, I will distract you by repeating. Your business is how you create, deliver, and capture value. Your value proposition, that’s a bundle of products, services, promises, experiences, that you offer. Existing customers are those that are currently purchasing your value proposition. Finally, your target market is the one you’ve decided to focus on in your strategy, your position.

I’m seeing some great questions. I will address them right now because I think they’re relevant. One question is, “What do you think about Lean Canvas and Business Model Canvas for this analysis?” That’s a great question, and it’s something that I want to address because people confuse things. So, Lean Canvas and Business Model Canvas are great tools to describe ideas. After you have identified an opportunity, you need to have a discussion. How are we actually going to exploit this opportunity? You would use the analysis from this exercise. That would be input to your Lean Canvas and Business Model Canvas. We would say, “Okay, we have actually analyzed all of this, so we now have the canvas. We have this segment that we want to hit. We have this that we are offering. This is our business.” You would use that information. You would put it in your canvas, and then when you discuss how you want to exploit this opportunity, you would need to say, “Which parts do we want to throw out the window? Which parts do we want to keep?”

In most of these cases, some part of your key activities or part of your supply chain or value chain will be kept, and a part of your customers will be kept. Maybe even part of value proposition. But you will focus on other things that you want to tweak, innovate, and change. That is the relationship. Vice versa is possible to some extent, for example, if you actually don’t know your business and don’t have a good understanding of it, then you might use either of those analytics to try and understand your own business, and then say, “Now we understand our business. Let’s start looking at how we can actually find new opportunities.” Etcetera. What’s important is not to confuse the canvases with the strategy. Both of these canvases serve as means of describing and explaining products and business models. See the difference? It’s subtle, but important. Very good question. Thank you for bringing it up.

These were the elements and you have written them down in your notes. Now, I want to describe the next layer. I told you, we have a big strategy gap. It can be daunting. It can be challenging. How do I approach this? As I said, do you just want to suggest making big jobs selling to completely different markets? No. Not at all. That’s why we broke it down into smaller elements, so that we can break down the scary strategy gap into three smaller gaps.

They are, in no particular order, capability gap, value gap, my favorite one, and conversion gap, my second-favorite one. Okay, I shouldn’t be picking favorites. They’re all really great. But value gap is probably the one you should always be obsessing with. Let me show you that before we start.

When you have the elements, now we can start breaking down the strategy gap. The difference between what you’re making and what you could be making is the capability gap. The difference between what the customer is expecting and what you’re actually providing is the value gap. The difference between the customers you are getting versus the whole target is conversion gap. The reason I said that the value gap is the most interesting is because in most cases, the value gap hides the best and quickest growth or opportunities.

It’s…I don’t want to say shocking…surprising, to some extent, how oblivious…the bigger the company is, the more oblivious they are to actually why their customers are getting their products and services, which in turn, means there’s a lot of hidden, small gaps in the understanding.

These gaps can be exploited in many different ways. Let’s take a look at an example of a customer that’s procuring a product or service.

If we start looking at, “What are they actually trying to get done with that product or service, or job to be done?” in our approach, we then start uncovering, “Hey, our customers are actually getting our products to do something different than what we think we’re selling it for.”

Then, you can start tweaking the value proposition to match that product or service. To match that job or need. And viola! You’re starting growing! You’re getting a bigger market share just because you realized, “Oh, this is why our customers are getting this product and service.” All the small things. And remember, what I said in the beginning. Incremental innovation, incremental improvements, account for 35% of product outcomes. 26% of business outcomes. That’s not something that should be ignored. Think of it as a bunch of staircases. All these small tweaks and improvements filling in those value gaps. Bam. Growth, growth, growth, growth, growth. And it’s hidden in plain sight. It’s just out there; you just need to reach out with new eyes and new ways of thinking. It doesn’t need to be something crazy-bonkers. Really. My experience is, once this becomes obvious and you bring that either to marketing people, to engineering, product development, whatever, once they see it, like creativity is not a problem at all. Once they see it, they’ll be, “That’s easy!” Is that what I want? Is that the only thing I want? That’s easy. Just change a few lines of code. Just change a little bit mechanics. It’s not a problem. It’s not a problem, coming up and filling in this value gap. That’s why I say that the value gap that’s most worthwhile in focusing on all the time.

Because really, the other two gaps are driven by it. The conversion gap, the customers you’re getting right now versus your whole target position, is an interesting one. It can be through messaging, through marketing, but it may be through other things as well. It may be through reach. Maybe we need to experiment with different means of reaching a broader audience. Maybe there is something that’s different. We have selected a position, but accidently, we’re actually reaching a niche that’s part of that position but is maybe part of another position that’s bigger.

All of these inquiries, all of these revelations, can lead us again to uncover, “Oh, this is an interesting opportunity! Should we set up a team to explore it? Should we set up a project to explore it? What should we do?” Then you have choice. Then you have agency to select your own way, your own path to growth.

When we talk about capability gap, and capability gap is really the difference between your capabilities to create and deliver value proposition, your customer desires, and what you are doing right now. So you see, it is rooted, again, in understanding what the customer really wants and then figuring out “What capabilities do we need to make that possible?”

Different way of thinking, or another option, because when I talk about “growth” I’m really talking about profitable growth. I’m not talking about cost reduction, although this model could be used for cost reduction as well. But here, I’m really talking about new revenue. Fresh revenue. Another way of thinking of capability gap, or even dropping the whole capability gap and looking at the broader picture is, something that’s based in effectuation and that is looking okay. What are the capabilities that we have? What are the assets that we have? Can we imagine some new ways of using them? Think of it that way. You’re hungry, and instead of starting with a recipe, you start by opening your fridge or pantry and seeing what you have, and then thinking, out of these ingredients, what dish could I make?

The same thinking can be applied here as well. Instead of saying, “Hey, let’s take a look at what value propositions we have,” you might say, “Scrap that. Forget them. Let’s take a look at the customers, our position, their needs, their desires, their description. What are they buying? And let’s look at all the assets and capabilities and everything we know and make something out of that.” Instead of starting with, “Well, we have product A, B and C. Who are other people we can sell it to?” You start, “We have all these capabilities. We have all this knowledge. And we have all these desires and needs. What can we make out of this to meet these people?”

You see? Subtle difference. But again, opening your eyes, thinking a little bit differently. Suddenly, no one in the organization can complain or lament, “How will we grow? What are we going to do next?” Reality is. I’m guaranteeing, reality is, and every single day you have at least a hundred growth and improvement opportunities in your organization. No matter how small, no matter how big. If that sounds shocking, it shouldn’t. But I hope it helps you see a little bit differently.

Before we move on, I would like to invite you, again, to think. In your own organization or in your client’s organization, thinking now, in these three gaps, could you list for every gap at least five to ten opportunities just right now? It can be small things, very small things. Don’t think about size or scope at all. Let’s spend three minutes on that.

This exercise usually goes two ways. It’s either extremely easy or extremely difficult. It’s extremely difficult if you actually don’t know these things. If you know them, if you have good descriptions, it’s extremely easy. That’s really what it is. I really try to avoid, as much as possible, using military jargon or thinking about business as warfare, because I don’t think it’s the most appropriate mental model. But the thing is, there’s some useful ways of thinking in warfare that apply to business as well. That’s why I like quoting Sun Tzu. In his The Art of War, he clearly writes that if you don’t know yourself and you don’t know your enemy, you will lose every battle. He also says, if you know yourself, but don’t know the enemy, for every battle you win, you will lose one. It’s not enough to know just a little bit. You must know about yourself and about the opponent.

The way I translate it to business is, don’t focus on the competition or on crushing them, or whatever. Instead, relentlessly focus on the customers. Or whoever if you don’t have customers, you serve, and yourself. You cannot ignore yourself in the process. You must focus both on the customer and yourself. That’s why it’s broken down in these elements. You really need to understand your own organization.

Why do you exist? I’m not talking philosophically. I’m talking about what is your value chain. Who are your suppliers? What are your key activities? How do you actually create these things that you’re delivering? And then also deeply, richly understanding your value propositions. It’s not just products and services. It’s bundles. What promise, what experience comes with these specific sets of products and services? It’s important to know that. When you have that clearly written in bullet points, in documents, in a written form, then it’s easy. You know yourself.

The problem is, if you stop there, and you start hiring an army of sales force, then they will just use that and they will think in a way. “Okay, these are the things we have. We need to find new customers for it.” That’s not necessarily the worst thing in life. We are evolving the ways we run our businesses, but we have come to understand it’s not the best way. Extending that thinking, we really need to understand our customers. We really, deeply need to understand them. Different methods of understanding our customers have emerged.

Link startup. Customer development. Design thinking. Pick your choice. Many, many of them. They’re not the only ones, the ones I said. They’re probably the most modern ones, but they’re far from the only ones. The thing is, we need to understand our customers demographically, psychographically, on a different level. Like jobs to be done. Behaviors. Anxieties. Desires Pick your words. When I’m talking about demographics, that’s the standard stuff, like age, geography, income, gender, etcetera. All of these things are valuable, but they must be together. It’s not enough just to have demographics. It’s not enough just to have psychographics. It’s even not enough to have jobs to be done. It needs to exist.

Then, the final thing. Understanding these customers, the position is yours and yours only. You have the agency to decide what you want to focus on. That is something people often misunderstand. They feel that they are the victim. You are not the victim. You’re picking your own business to be in. And I’ll come to that mistake a bit later, if you feel, “Yeah, Bruno, but I’m working in a large organization. I don’t get to sit at the big boy’s table. I don’t get a say in the decision, what markets are we going to focus on?” I’ll come to that a little bit later.

Back to this. It’s very difficult, this exercise, if you don’t understand your business, your value propositions, who are you serving, and who are you actually wanting to serve? What is your target position. The more you invest in explaining, describing, and understanding that, because some things, you just need to describe it. But then, you realize, “Hey…we don’t really know that.” Then you need to invest a little bit more.

The more you are aware of that, the easier it will be to see new possibilities, new opportunities, and start thinking, “Which ones do we want to exploit? Which ones do we want to turn into projects, into ideas, into investments, etcetera?” That’s what makes this exercise difficult or easy and that’s why I always recommend, let’s understand a bit better who we are and a bit better who we want to serve. Once we are done with that, it starts flowing much easier.

I mentioned a common problem, which is when people feel trapped. This is more common in large organizations. But it might happen in small ones as well, depending on how defined the market is. One common objection I hear is, “The corporate (or business unit) has decided a market we are in. Now, I measured on growth, I measured on new revenue, but I cannot now come and define a completely new market and say that we are changing industry, we are changing the position, etcetera. What should I do? How can we grow? How can we really see differently, think differently, like you’re talking about?”

I’m almost inclined to say, “Easy!” but it’s a bit patronizing. So I said, “Easy!” but I started explaining. Think of it as a strategic funnel. The corporate, the top, business unit or whatever, they decide, and they must answer the three strategic questions that Porter talks about and that I said in the beginning. What’s our unique and valuable position? What are our activities that are backing that and that are aligned and unique in the organization? And what are we focusing on? And we are deciding not to focus on. So, they must answer those questions. Their answers are input to you. Think about it. You must answer the same few questions, but you are using those answers from the corporate level as constraints to where you can seek answers. And you might be constraining someone who is reporting to you. Your way of answering those questions, you will say “Okay,” if you are a division director, then you will say to your sections heads, “Okay guys, this is our position. There are our activities that are most important. These are the things that we will focus on. These are the things that we will not do. Please, find ways to make these successful.” Then they need to answer those questions again, but with a specific set of boundaries. So you’re applying it that way. That is what I call “strategic funnel.”

Let me show you an illustration. Why not? The broader the funnel is, the broader the scope is. At the corporate level, at the headquarters, so it’s basically corporate level is the office that controls all the businesses. They might decide the position for every business unit. They might say, “Okay, you focus on investment banking. Okay, you focus on high-speed cars. Okay, you focus on the position of low-fare flights.” They define the position. They define unique activities. They define what’s in and what’s out.

On the next level, the business unit or support unit shares services, they can use that as input to formulate, again, their own strategic position and look for all these growth opportunities. Again, it just starts narrowing down. What I like to say is that boundaries are a blessing in disguise. When someone gives you boundaries and they’re clear, you’re aware of them, don’t hate them. People say, “I need to break, I need to find ways to cross boundaries.” Yes, there is a time and place for that. But first, embrace them. Enjoy them. Because when there is a boundary, that can trigger creativity. How can we deliver? How can we come up with something despite these boundaries? Humans – we, humans, like I’m not a human? – We, humans, are insanely creative, especially the times where we need to overcome really difficult challenges, really difficult environments, really difficult life situations. Why not use that? Embrace the boundaries and use them as the springboard to come up with new growth opportunities. Then you need to discuss which ones are to be exploited.

Before I start closing, there have been some comments in Q&A, so I’ll take a look at them right now, address them, and then we will slowly close.

Let me start with the top one. “SWOT approach can help us turning possibilities into opportunities.” SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats) is a valid frame. The challenge I have with it is the way it frames weaknesses, strengths, opportunities, and threats, or in this case, more opportunities than threats. The thing is, it’s extremely relative, which is not bad. The finishing of innovation is relative when we talk about value, and when we talk about something being new. The problem with this as an analytic tool is that something that is a strength in one scenario might be weakness in another scenario. That’s why I find useful, for example, the strategy gap that we have been talking about, because gap is not necessarily weakness or opportunity, but might be turned into one.

Usually when we talk about SWOT, I really like a strategic triangle which talks about aims, capabilities and – what was the third one – I think it was abilities, but I will need to check. So SWOT is not the worst tool, but it’s neither the best tool. It’s something that’s good to think about, but it’s also important to be aware of the downsides of the tool. It’s better than not thinking at all!

Let’s go to the next one. “This funnel, the strategic funnel, is used for customer segmentation, isn’t it?” That is one way to use the funnel as well, that is true. Customer segmentation is part art, part science. Usually companies want to segment because they’re hoping in the way they segment, they might discover new opportunities that we are talking about. Definitely, segmentation is one way to think about it and use it. It’s not the only way, though, and that’s important to remember. Segmentation has come a really long way. That was what I was talking about: demographics, psychographics, jobs to be done, etcetera, because when we find new ways to slice and dice our customers, we might be uncovering some needs that we have not been serving appropriately, and some new growth opportunities that might turn out to be profitable.

Let’s see if anything else…no, I don’t think so. Thank you for great questions and comments.

When wrapping up, what I want to address is that in these three gaps, I’ve been giving a lot of love to value gap. Value gap is something I like to talk a lot about because it’s something that’s easy to focus on, and it’s very rewarding. When you cross that value gap, it’s very rewarding. You see it on your financial reports, but you also see it immediately from your customers. The response time is very quick. It’s serves as both to keep the fire and to demonstrate it. Hey, we are actually growing. We are actually innovating. And it’s not as scary and as difficult as it seems!

That’s why I like to give it a lot of love, and like to talk and focus on it. But the thing is, the secret, the reality is, that addressing these three gaps concurrently, meaning at the same time with appropriate intensity, that is the real secret to strategic trust, to strategic growth. To unstoppable growth. To unstoppable innovation. It’s important to think about this big picture but I’m acting small – acting on the specific gaps, filling them in. None of these gaps by themselves are the endgame. There is no endgame, in a sense, but confusing these small gaps, filling the small gaps with, “We are done! We are done growing. It’s been fun, but we are done now,” is a mistake. This is a never-ending thing. Perfection is something that we strive for but never attain, and that’s not supposed to sound pessimistic, It’s just a reality. The same thing is here. These gaps, as we fill them, new ones pop out, but we should not go out as getting depressed, like, “Oh no, this is never-ending.” Quite the contrary. To be joyful. To be like, “This is great! Another thing that we can do better. Another thing that we can improve. Another growth opportunity.

That’s important. So that’s why I say that seeing growth opportunities hidden in plain sight is about seeing and thinking and feeling about them differently. It’s not rocket science. Quite the contrary: anyone can do it, regardless, or despite their capabilities, their knowledge, their expertise, their experience. Anyone can do them. Even a small child. They might even be better at some things than us adults. The thing is, it’s important to maintain this mind and maintain this discipline. That is a personal challenge that’s always difficult to each and every individual. But it’s something that, hopefully, now when you are able to see and think differently, you can maintain your own flame and challenge your own peers, and help them see differently so that you together can grow.

And remember, the strategy from new ways of thinking, they are applicable at every level. Improvement is improvement. Innovation is innovation. Growth is growth. There are no differences at what level it happens. Together, they create something big. Some new momentum. You don’t always need to go for the home runs. You don’t need always to go for the biggest bang. It’s all the small things that do create a big bang in the end.

That was it for today. Thank you very much for joining me. Have a great day, and may you be more successful innovating and growing.

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Copyright © 2020, Bruno Pešec. All rights reserved.