Rapid Growth, Done Right

Rapid Growth, Done Right Plot Summary

Introduction

The conference room fell silent as Sarah, the newly appointed CTO of a mid-sized tech company, finished presenting her vision for digital transformation. Instead of the enthusiastic response she had expected, she was met with blank stares from the marketing team and confused glances from the finance department. Despite her technical brilliance, her message wasn't getting through. The creative team felt her approach was too rigid, while the business analysts worried about implementation costs. This communication gap was slowly suffocating innovation within the company. This scene plays out in organizations everywhere, where technical, creative, and business minds struggle to understand each other. Val Wright's expertise reveals that companies experiencing meteoric growth share one critical trait: they master the symbiotic relationship between these three different mindsets. Through stories of successes and failures at organizations like Amazon, Microsoft, and Starbucks, alongside insights from leaders who transformed their businesses, this book provides a practical framework for creating environments where innovation thrives. By learning how to lead, influence, and communicate across diverse thinking styles, readers will discover how to accelerate growth while avoiding the pitfalls that cause promising initiatives to stall.

Chapter 1: Building Your Personal Power of Influence

When Michael joined a Fortune 500 technology company as a division head, he was eager to implement his innovative ideas for product development. With a stellar track record from his previous company, he felt confident his proposals would be quickly embraced. Yet six months in, none of his initiatives had gained traction. During a leadership retreat, a colleague pulled him aside and said, "Your ideas are brilliant, but you're not connecting with the right people. It's not just what you know, but who supports you that matters here." Michael had failed to recognize that influence was the missing component in his strategy. He had invested all his energy in perfecting his proposals but neglected to build relationships with key decision-makers and their trusted advisors. In Wright's framework, these critical connections are part of an "influence bullseye" with three concentric rings: power influencers at the center, their trusted amplifiers in the middle ring, and daily partners in the outer ring. At Microsoft, when the dual-screen tablet (code-named Courier) was created in 2010, it never made it to production despite being ahead of its time. The reason wasn't technical feasibility but lack of executive support. Steve Ballmer, CEO at the time, was concerned about how it would impact the existing Windows operating system. With chairman Bill Gates's backing, the prototype was cancelled, even though it preceded Apple's iPad. Nine years later, Microsoft would launch Surface NEO, a similar dual-screen tablet that echoed the original Courier design. Wright shares how one retail executive increased his stock price by 37% in the first three months after taking the helm because he had methodically built relationships with board members before accepting the position. This wasn't manipulation but strategic relationship building that enabled faster decision-making and alignment when critical changes needed implementation. The most powerful question you can ask to build connections is simply to ask for advice, not favors. This creates reciprocity and opens dialogue channels that mere networking events cannot achieve. Magnetic leaders—those who naturally attract talent and opportunities—understand this principle intuitively, building networks that continue to deliver value even during organizational upheaval. Whether you're presenting groundbreaking technology or suggesting organizational restructuring, your personal influence determines whether your ideas will flourish or wither. By mapping your influence bullseye and deliberately nurturing relationships with key stakeholders and their trusted advisors, you create the foundation that allows innovation to take root and grow organically throughout the organization.

Chapter 2: Creating the Innovation Trifecta Among Teams

When Otto Berkes, co-founder of Xbox and former CTO at HBO, was tasked with transforming HBO's traditional cable service into a digital streaming platform, he faced a classic innovation challenge. The technical team understood the streaming architecture needed, the creative team grasped the user experience requirements, but the business team worried about cannibalizing their lucrative cable subscriptions. These three mindsets—technical, creative, and business—were operating in isolation, speaking different languages and prioritizing different outcomes. Berkes recognized this disconnect and implemented what Wright calls the "Innovation Trifecta"—a deliberate effort to create symbiotic relationships between these three distinct perspectives. Rather than allowing each group to work in their silo, he created mixed teams and established a shared vocabulary that bridged their different worldviews. Engineers began thinking about user experience, creatives learned about technical constraints, and business analysts gained appreciation for both technical possibilities and creative vision. The results spoke for themselves when HBO GO launched, providing a digital platform that not only preserved HBO's premium content experience but eventually evolved into HBO Max, positioning the company to compete in the streaming wars. This transformation didn't happen by chance but through deliberate translation efforts between these three essential perspectives. At Farmers Insurance, a similar breakthrough occurred when both the Chief Information Officer and Chief Marketing Officer presented together at a technology conference, demonstrating the power of unified technical and creative thinking. They finished each other's sentences and shared candidly about their successful digital transformation journey that crossed both marketing and technology strategies, resulting in significant business impact. The Innovation Trifecta works because it addresses a fundamental challenge in organizations: companies that lean too heavily on technical expertise often lack creativity; those dominated by creative minds may struggle with profitability; and businesses focused solely on financial metrics might miss opportunities to delight customers and drive exponential growth through innovation. This trilingual capability—speaking fluently across technical, creative, and business domains—isn't just a nice-to-have skill but essential for leaders driving rapid growth. Wright provides a Trilingual Executive Assessment tool that measures capabilities like goal-setting, feedback provision, and empathic understanding across these domains. By strengthening these skills, executives can bridge divides that typically hamper innovation and create environments where breakthrough ideas flourish naturally. The key insight is that innovation doesn't emerge from genius working in isolation but from the intersection of diverse thinking styles working in harmony. When these perspectives align, companies create products and services that are technically feasible, creatively desirable, and financially viable—the perfect formula for sustainable growth in competitive markets.

Chapter 3: Communicating Effectively Across Technical and Creative Minds

During a crucial executive meeting at a global technology company, the Chief Technology Officer was presenting strategic options that required immediate decisions and support. Despite the stunning sunset visible through the conference room windows, the content should have held everyone's attention. Yet within ten minutes, the executive team's eyes had glazed over. The CTO had lost his audience not because his information lacked importance, but because he failed to translate his technical insights into language that resonated with the diverse thinking styles around the table. This communication breakdown occurs daily in organizations worldwide. Technical experts speak in acronyms and specifications, creative teams talk about user experiences and emotional connections, while business minds focus on metrics and market share. Each group believes they're communicating clearly, yet they might as well be speaking different languages. Julie Bernard, Chief Marketing Officer at Verve, developed two brilliantly simple approaches to bridge these divides. First, she implemented a daily 15-minute phone call with her Chief Information Officer. These brief check-ins ensured alignment, surfaced obstacles, and built mutual understanding. Second, she created the "Three Email Rule" which stipulates that after three emails on a topic, team members must speak face-to-face or by phone to resolve the issue. This prevents the endless, often increasingly negative email chains that plague organizations and fracture relationships between technical and creative departments. When a European technology consulting firm acquired a medical services company from the British government, they discovered too late how profound these communication gaps could be. Technical consultants couldn't comprehend the medical experts' priorities, and medical staff couldn't articulate their needs in terms engineers understood. What should have been a transformative merger became a painful clash of cultures that distracted from business goals and ultimately limited growth. To overcome these barriers, Wright introduces the concept of "feedback defrosting"—techniques for unfreezing communication channels when technical, creative, and business teams stop giving each other essential feedback. Using the POP (Process, Organizational, Personal) Feedback Guide, leaders can deconstruct exactly what's broken in relationships and address specific issues rather than allowing silent frustration to build. The most insidious threat to cross-functional communication is what Wright calls "the leadership insulation layer." Like the Volkswagen emissions scandal or Wells Fargo's fraudulent accounts crisis, organizational problems often persist because information gets filtered or blocked before reaching those who could address it. Creating mechanisms for unfiltered feedback and regularly deconstructing both successes and failures helps prevent this insulation from forming. Effective communication across different thinking styles isn't just about clarity—it's about creating the conditions where innovation can flourish. When technical, creative, and business minds truly understand each other, they build on each other's ideas, challenge assumptions constructively, and move rapidly from concept to execution with aligned purpose and shared language.

Chapter 4: Generating Quality Ideas Through Diverse Environments

The Xbox team faced a pivotal moment in 2007. Nintendo's Wii had become the must-have gaming console, while Xbox was struggling with hardware failures that led to a $1 billion write-off. Microsoft executives questioned whether the division should be shut down entirely. Don Mattrick, newly appointed as Xbox CEO, knew radical innovation was needed to save the platform, but traditional conference room brainstorming sessions weren't producing breakthrough ideas. Instead of another corporate meeting, Mattrick and his team created what became known as "the.best.offsite.ever"—an innovation experience deliberately designed to break Microsoft's cultural norms. They selected a collection of cabins in Leavenworth, a small village north of Seattle with no internet connection. They banned spreadsheets, financial analysis, and PowerPoint presentations. Instead, they provided artistic tools, LEGO blocks, and Play-Doh. Most importantly, they carefully curated attendees based on diverse perspectives rather than organizational hierarchy, bringing together technical, creative, and business minds from around the world. Before the event, attendees received materials about their target customers—people unlike the hardcore gamers Xbox traditionally served. On the bus ride to the location, they watched videos showing how these potential customers spent their leisure time. During the event, small groups generated ideas and presented them science-fair style, where others could only add to concepts, not critique them. A thumbs-up/thumbs-down voting session narrowed ideas to the top five for executive review. One powerful idea emerged: controlling Xbox with voice commands and hand gestures. This concept eventually became the Kinect Camera, which sold 10 million devices in three months after its 2010 launch, earning a place in The Guinness Book of World Records as the fastest-selling consumer electronics device of all time. At Belkin International, CIO Lance Ralls applied similar principles when bringing his global IT team together. Rather than conducting a standard offsite focused on updates and announcements, he implemented a Rapid Idea Generator exercise. Within hours, the team had created over ten ideas to increase sales, reduce costs, and improve service quality. Team members who had been considering other job opportunities recommitted to the company, feeling energized by the collaborative innovation process. This approach works because innovation rarely happens in conventional settings. Nobel Prize winner Daniel Kahneman has demonstrated that our brains process information differently when we're in unfamiliar environments—we become more creative, more receptive to new connections, and less constrained by habitual thinking patterns. The lesson is clear: physical environment dramatically impacts idea quality. Mundane conference rooms produce mundane ideas. Unexpected locations, diverse participants, and experiential learning techniques unlock breakthrough thinking. By designing deliberate innovation experiences that bring together different perspectives in stimulating environments, organizations can systematically generate the kind of transformative ideas that drive rapid growth and market leadership.

Chapter 5: Navigating Leadership Challenges During Rapid Growth

When Jennifer Hyman founded clothing-rental company Rent the Runway in 2009, she had a visionary concept: everyone could have a "closet in the cloud" where they could virtually pull from an endless fashion collection. However, she quickly realized this idea was too radical for the fashion industry to immediately embrace. Instead of pushing her complete vision, she strategically positioned the company as offering dress rentals for special occasions—a concept consumers could easily understand, similar to men renting tuxedos. This strategic compromise allowed the company to establish itself while gradually introducing consumers to the broader concept. A decade later, Hyman and co-founder Jennifer Fleiss secured $125 million in funding, valuing the company at $1 billion. The funding enabled expansion into children's clothing, homewares, and warehouse operations—gradually realizing Hyman's original vision of a virtual closet in the cloud. However, rapid growth brought significant challenges. As the company expanded its offerings, operational issues emerged—deliveries were delayed, unfulfilled, or made in error. Rather than hiding these problems, Hyman demonstrated remarkable leadership transparency. She maintained a dedicated Twitter support account with 24-hour response times and sent candid emails to all customers explaining the challenges: "We are implementing significant changes to our operation. These changes will greatly improve your experience... However, in the short term as we implement these changes, some of you are experiencing delays in shipments... We are working around the clock (myself included!) to implement these operational transformations." Hyman's genius lay not just in her original vision but in navigating the complexities of scaling. She knew when to partially compromise her vision to gain market traction, when to accelerate growth after establishing credibility, and how to maintain customer trust during inevitable growing pains. For executives leading technical teams, similar balancing acts are required. Mark Essayian, president of IT services company KME Systems, built his company around a refreshingly direct value proposition: "We give a damn." When marketing consultants advised him to tone down this blunt language, he refused, recognizing that authenticity would attract the right customers and signal his company's genuine commitment to service. "You know what? We give a damn. That is what is going on our website because it is true," he insisted. "Have I lost a customer or a prospect over it? Maybe, but I view it as self-selecting. They're not going to be a good fit for us." This candid approach extended to how he led his team. Rather than forcing technical experts into management roles they weren't suited for, he separated technical brilliance from people management. At Rare Games Studio, Wright observed an art director enthusiastically discussing character design while physically slumping at the sight of performance reviews and budget documents on his desk. The solution wasn't pressuring him to become a better manager but recognizing his genius lay elsewhere and appointing someone who enjoyed the people-management aspects of leadership. The leadership insight is profound: rapid growth requires leaders who know when to compromise and when to stand firm, when to be transparent about challenges and how to structure organizations that let people's genius shine. By balancing these tensions rather than forcing false choices, leaders create environments where both innovation and execution can flourish simultaneously.

Chapter 6: Learning from Failure and Translating It to Success

"I am on the plane on the way back from the 100K opportunities fair and forum in Phoenix and I am struck with several emotions..." began an emotional letter written by John Phillips, then SVP of talent at Starbucks. He had just witnessed something transformative—young people from disadvantaged backgrounds being hired on the spot by Starbucks store managers, their faces lighting up with hope and possibility. What started as a Starbucks initiative to help America's unemployed youth grew into a coalition of companies that initially aimed to provide 100,000 jobs and is now on track to reach 1 million jobs by 2021. Phillips saw beyond conventional recruiting wisdom. "In the recruiting world we are trained to say no. A lot. Like 99 percent of the time," he wrote. "But what if my no came with encouragement. What if 'no you didn't get the job' came with coaching on how to nail it next time." By reframing rejection as an opportunity for growth, Phillips transformed not just his approach to talent acquisition but how an entire segment of the population could access economic opportunity. This willingness to learn from disappointment and transform it into success is a hallmark of leaders who drive rapid growth. Val Wright herself shares personal examples: "I was mortified when Cadbury didn't hire me on their management training scheme because I failed their entry test. But I went on to join House of Fraser's management training scheme, which supported my business and finance degree at night school, and I went on to lead a team of 25 at the age of 21." The book includes anonymous accounts from executives who experienced career setbacks but gained invaluable wisdom. One division president improved financial performance significantly but was still asked to leave after 18 months. The candid retrospective revealed the real issue: "I placed my focus on delivering results and having been placed as a 'change agent', I set to work identifying opportunities and changes in process strategy and team skill set that needed addressing." What he missed were the long-standing personal relationships between his leadership team and the CEO. "I was like a sheepdog in a field trying to shepherd the team in a new direction, but in fact they dug in and got even closer together, following the previous sheepdog. My bark had no bite." The lesson? "I didn't initiate setting the ground rules with my new boss... I mistakenly took my appointment to the role as a sign of unwavering support from my CEO. I didn't test or verify this." Another executive shared how being fired led to his greatest growth: "I needed to have thought through five executive chess moves ahead. Had I done so, I would have predicted that this had a high probability of happening. I didn't work on my External Personal Stock Valuation, as I was heads down saving the company millions and delighting our customers with new services. I put the company and shareholders far too far ahead of my personal equitable rewards for the impact I was making." These stories highlight a counterintuitive truth about rapid growth: the very leaders who succeed at creating it often experience setbacks along the way. What distinguishes them is not an absence of failure but their ability to extract wisdom from disappointment and apply it to future endeavors. By transforming personal and professional setbacks into strategic insights, these leaders develop the resilience and wisdom needed to navigate the unpredictable terrain of accelerated growth.

Chapter 7: Implementing Structures That Support Sustainable Growth

At midnight, three weeks before a crucial product launch, the marketing team was still waiting for final approval from the technology team, while the finance department raised last-minute questions about pricing. The project—already delayed twice—was at risk again, not because of technical challenges but because the company lacked a coherent decision-making structure. When the CMO finally received a green light the next morning, it was too late to implement the full marketing plan, resulting in a lackluster launch that fell well short of revenue targets. This scenario plays out repeatedly in organizations where growth outpaces governance. Wright observed this pattern while working with a global technology firm where quarterly goals weren't finalized until the first quarter was nearly over. Sales teams operated without clear targets, strategic initiatives languished without accountability, and vague collaboration agreements between departments went unimplemented. The solution isn't more meetings or complex tracking systems. Instead, Wright introduces the Rapid Growth Rhythm—a framework that synchronizes planning, execution, and accountability. Unlike traditional approaches that focus on administrative processes, this system ensures alignment at every level of the organization. The rhythm begins with a three-year leapfrog strategy that informs annual priorities, which cascade into shared objectives and individual goals, all reinforced by regular feedback and accountability. One retail organization Wright worked with never communicated sales targets to their teams until 12 weeks into the new fiscal year—effectively leaving their revenue-generating staff directionless for a quarter of the year. By adjusting their planning cycle, they ensured sales teams knew their expectations from day one, dramatically improving performance. Matt Carpenter, CEO of Silvercar (an Audi company), implemented another structural innovation. He asked a question that transformed how his executive team thought about progress: "Did you make more than a week's progress last week?" This simple inquiry focused everyone on acceleration rather than merely staying busy. For team performance, Wright advocates the Triple P Assessment—a tool that evaluates Performance (goals and metrics), Pace (speed of movement), and Progress (rate of innovation) across creative, technical, and business functions. This reveals whether all parts of the organization are moving at the same velocity or if certain elements are creating bottlenecks. Perhaps most counterintuitively, Wright challenges the notion that leaders should treat everyone equally. "Your job as a leader is not to be fair," she asserts. "Unfairly allocate your time among your team, spending more time with your newest and highest-performing people. Unfairly treat your promotion budget as a pot to be unevenly distributed, rewarding your most successful team members." This principle, while uncomfortable for many leaders, ensures resources flow to areas with the highest growth potential. The 50% rule provides another structural guideline: when you have an open position on your immediate team, spend half your time hiring for that role. Nothing inhibits growth more than operating with key positions unfilled, yet many leaders prioritize immediate deliverables over building the team needed for sustainable success. These structural approaches—from synchronized planning cycles to deliberate resource allocation—create the foundation that allows growth to accelerate without the chaos that typically accompanies rapid expansion. By implementing these frameworks, organizations can maintain momentum while avoiding the coordination failures that derail promising growth trajectories.

Summary

Throughout Val Wright's exploration of rapid growth leadership, one truth emerges consistently: the most successful companies thrive at the intersection where technical brilliance, creative vision, and business acumen converge. This Innovation Trifecta isn't accidental but deliberately cultivated through leadership practices that bridge diverse thinking styles. Whether it's Xbox creating the revolutionary Kinect camera, Amazon disrupting retail, or Rent the Runway transforming how we access fashion, these success stories share a common foundation in leaders who can translate across technical, creative, and business languages. The journey toward sustainable growth begins with honest self-assessment. Are you building relationships with the right power influencers? Have you structured your organization to let genius flourish rather than forcing technical experts into management roles they aren't suited for? Are you learning from setbacks and creating decision-making processes that accelerate rather than impede progress? The answers to these questions determine whether your growth will be momentary or transformative. By focusing on influence rather than authority, communication rather than mandates, and adaptability rather than rigid planning, leaders can create environments where innovation becomes not just possible but inevitable. In this rapidly changing world, the greatest competitive advantage isn't technology or capital but the ability to harmonize diverse perspectives into a unified force for growth.

About Author

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Val Wright

Val is a recognized global leadership and innovation expert who is known as growth accelerator by top executives at Fortune 1000 companies including Microsoft, Amazon, LinkedIn, The Financial Times and PopCap Games.Val’s books include: Thoughtfully Ruthless: The Key to Exponential Growth, Wiley, and Rapid Growth, Done Right. Lead, Influence and Innovate for Success, Kogan Page and Words That Work: Communicate Your Purpose, Your Performance, and Your Profit, Kogan Page January 2022. She is a regular contributor on CNBC, BBC News, Fox Business News, Inc. Magazine, Business Insider, Fast Company, Bloomberg, Reuters, LA Times, MSN, and Today.

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