Building A Growth Process With Growth Mindset
By: Ziad Ismail
Tags: Digital Marketing, Growth, Growth Hacking

Elements Of A Good Process

We use a selected process that I created which is an element of old-fashioned methodology, part Lean Startup, part my very own touches. there’s nobody right or perfect growth process. The important part is simply to own one, persist with it, and improve it over time.

I do believe every growth process should have some key elements:

1. how to line big goals against the areas that impact your growth the foremost

2. A structured thanks to continually come up with growth ideas and experiments

3. the way prioritize those experiments

4. some way to efficiently design those experiments

5. Analysis of ever experiment whether it succeeded or failed

6. Sharing of learnings across the team and implementing them into the experiment list.

Get those 6 things right and that I think you’re on the proper thanks to success.

Growth Team: Cross-Functional Teams

We have seen plenty of companies attempt to establish growth teams. The place to begin for that’s nearly always, “What should the structure for the expansion team be? Where should it board the org?” this is often approaching the matter backward.

The first step is defining the problems/areas that have the largest impact on Growth, and dealing your way backward to the team needed to execute effectively. once you try this and mix it with the expansion Process, you quickly realize that to execute effectively you would like a cross-functional team with a combination of eng, product, data, design, marketing, and sales skills. the combination will rely upon the matter area.

When we say cross-functional teams, these aren’t teams that have weekly rise meetings. These are teams that:

Sit together.

Share the identical metric/goal.

Are running the identical process.

Are rewarded with identical things.

Unfortunately, growth problems are typically thought of from a function-first perspective. after you consider it from a function-first perspective, the question changes from “What has the largest impact on growth?” to “What is that the most impactful thing I can do given the skill sets available to me in my function?” the foremost impactful areas either never emerge or are constrained on what will be solved because only 1 function is represented.

If you’re establishing a growth team, we’ve five tips:

Find One Problem — Find one problem that would help drive growth. Typically this can be a neglected area at the corporate (see above). Don’t try and own all of the growth. it’s too wide and broad and can spread the team thin.

Evolution, Not A Revolution — Respect the culture and principles that made corporate success to date. Evolve from those principles, don’t re-write them.

Expect Failure — Seek quick wins, but expect the team will fail early and infrequently. Give them enough time to figure through it.

Communicate The Wins — Use the experiment wins as a carrot to display how you’re approaching the issues. Change and resources gravitate towards those who have won.

Don’t Call It A Growth Team — Some have the perception that they do not have to worry about growth since there’s a team that owns that.

Some feel they don’t seem to be getting the credit they deserve because “everyone contributes to growth.” Or one among the numerous negative biases around the term penetrate. What to try and do instead? Don’t call them growth. Name the teams by the problems/missions they’re solving for — New User Experience, Lifecycle Team, etc.

You Need a Machine

Your machine must be scalable, somewhat predictable, and repeatable. It must be repeatable.

Machines produce something. In our case, they produce tactics. this is often the output. The inputs to the machine are the method that you simply drive to get and test all the tactics.

There are four goals of the process:

Rhythm: you would like momentum. To do this, you determine a daily cadence of experimentation to fight through failures, find the successes and find the momentum that keeps carrying you forward.

Learning: this can be probably the foremost important goal. It’s constant learning about your customer, product, and channels. Feed that into the method to make off that base of information. this can keep you moving forward towards success.

Autonomy: If you’ve got a growth team, it’s key to allow them to be autonomous. Individuals decide what to figure on to realize team goals. The team leader doesn’t provide specific directions.

Accountability: People on the expansion team don’t always should achieve success. they do not need to hit 100% success on experiments. But, the expectation is that they improve over time in terms of their knowledge of customers, products, and channels. Building a stronger base of data means you will have more successful experiments.

How to Set Goals

Before beginning, you initially have to know where you are going. a part of this is often setting goals. Balfour and his team use the Objective and Key Results (OKR) framework.

Using this framework, they first ask themselves an issue to create their objective. they require to grasp the one thing they will achieve which will drive the most important impact on the expansion curve. This needs them to require a step back and examine things before they dive into experiments. Once they need this, they form their qualitative statement.

After they need their statement, they set a time-frame, which is 30–90 days. Anything shorter than 30 days means they are not being aggressive enough. Over 90 days and they are biting off too big of a piece. It has to be something they feel they will make reasonable progress on in 30–90 days.

Once they need their objective and time-frame, they set three key results. These are quantitative measurements that indicate if they’re achieving an objective. The results are ordered by difficulty.

In KR1 (Key Result 1), Balfour and his team hit these about 90% of the time.

KR2 signals that they’re going above and beyond; they typically hit this about half the time.

If they hit KR3, it’s party time. These are rare, only hitting about 10% of the time, and demand a celebration. They’re typically hit about once a year. If they’re hit more often, their goals aren’t aggressive enough. If they are not hitting KR1 nearly anytime, then they’re too aggressive.

Once they figure all this out, they get to figure as quickly as they will.

The Cycle After OKR Is Set

Once the OKR is discovered, they go in this cycle:

Under each phase, you will see the names of documents they create. These documents help drive the method.

Backlog: this can be where all the ideas are dumped. This doc could be a spreadsheet and contains the experiment name, status, category (an area you’re trying to improve), metric, prediction, and a resource estimate of what quantity time it’ll take marketing, engineering, design, and anybody else. Anybody on the team can contribute ideas to the backlog, it is a public document within the corporate. This document allows them to empty their headspace and target the concept they’re currently executing.

Pipeline: this can be the list of experiments past, present, and future. All past experiments have their results documented. this permits new team members an opportunity to travel back and appear at every experiment to point out how they have to be compelled to where they’re today.

Experiment Docs: this can be the foremost important document out of the four. Every experiment gets one amongst these. This document forces the team to think through the important elements of the experiment. When browsing this document, they need to consider why they’re doing this experiment vs the others, what they expect from the experiment, how they go to style and implement the experiment, and record the learnings.

Playbooks: If an experiment is successful, they struggle to work out ways to systematize them. They’re step-by-step guides for things they need to repeat.

A Breakdown of Each Phase

Let’s elaborate on each introduces method.

1. Brainstorm

In this phase, concentrate on brainstorming on the inputs, not the outputs.

Let’s say your OKR is about improving an activation rate. Don’t sit there and take a look to work out the way to improve the activation rate. There are probably thousands of how to enhance it, and that specialize in this makes it difficult to return up with growth ideas. Instead, concentrate on breaking it down into very small pieces.

If the activation rate had three steps, you’d break down each and brainstorm ideas around each step. Keeping it focused on each step makes it easier to come back up with specific ideas about the way to improve the inputs, which ends up in improved output. Balfour and his team use four ways to get growth ideas (taken from the book Innovator’s Solution):

Observe: observe how others do it, both in your competitive and non-competitive space. If you have got the goal of optimizing your referral program, have a look at other companies' referral programs. Every member of your growth team should select a pair of programs they like, and therefore the team can rehearse each program. You’ll develop plenty of the latest ideas with this process. When seeing what other companies do, take it as inspiration, not a prescription. Take inspiration from them, and determine the way to apply it together with your product and audience.

Question: a standard exercise during this category is named “question brainstorming”. this is often an hour-long meeting that consists of nothing but questions. Team members write questions on notes, announce the question, and put it on the board. They ask as many questions as possible during the now period. This does two things. First, it helps reveal things they do not know. Second, good answers start with good questions. The questions allow members of the team to begin digging for answers. As they learn the answers to the questions, a lot of ideas on the way to match those answers tend to come out of this process.

Associate: there is a technique called smashing, where you are taking what you’re trying to boost and smash it with something completely unrelated. You learn from other processes and take a look at them to use them in your experiment.

Network: Find a network of fine growth people. head to conferences, attend meetups, chat with others on the phone, etc.

Once you’ve got capable of this process, you create the backlog doc.

2. Prioritize

This is where you prioritize what to first work on within the backlog.

Before we (humans) dive into a brand new idea, we tend to overestimate that probability of success. We inflate the impact of success. and that we underestimate the number of your time it’s visiting go for test and implement. Thanks to these realities, it is important to be brutally honest with three elements.

3. TEST

Once it’s all prioritized, it is time to form a Minimum Viable Test. it is the minimum thing you’ll do to induce data around your hypothesis. Outline the test within the experiment doc.

4. TEST

Not much to speak about here; just get the implementation done as quickly as possible. Don’t fall prey to analysis paralysis at this stage as it’ll kill your productivity and progress.

5. Analyze

Once a test is finished, it is time to research. this is often the foremost important step.

Answering the ‘why’ is essential. Why did it succeed, or why did it fail? Why were we close or way far from our hypothesis? Digging into why will facilitate your understanding of things about your customer, channel, and products. this can cause iterations and new ideas of experiments you must run next. Skipping this question means you’re blindly running experiments; you are not taking what you learned into the following experiment.

6. Systemize

Once you discover successful experiments, “productize” them with technology and engineering. If you cannot mate with technology and engineering, build into playbooks. As you hire and scale the team, you’ll be able to point them to the playbooks so that they know what is going on and may repeat with minimal effort.