Growth is broken.

An excerpt from Listening for Growth, available February 7, 2023.

Founders. Startups. Designers. Leaders. All want the same thing: Growth.

Exceptional growth. Rapid growth. Only recently, however, in the age of lean startups and growth hacks, have we begun to think that there might be a formula for achieving it.

And yet, the failure rate for startups is unprecedented. Our world is littered with broken businesses and burnt out entrepreneurs. Growth—in all of the ways that we’ve come to define it in startup-land—is broken. Growth of the company. Growth of the entrepreneur. Growth of the product. Growth of the performance. It’s broken. All of it.

Most of us know this. In spite of our data and algorithms and A/B tests and zero to one and good to great, we are surrounded by burnt out founders, failed startups and discarded products. Our goals are dysmorphic. Our hacks don’t hack it. Our data is impenetrable. Our lean is too heavy. Our experiments fail more often than not. Our tech heroes look like villains. Our tricks of the trade feel like—well—tricks.?

Now, whether you are an entrepreneur, a digital executive, or simply someone interested in startups, you’re probably on board with the idea that being data-driven is a good thing. That it is essential for growth. And that growth correlates to success. Most of us have been living in that analytics-steeped, continuously optimized world for some time. Test and learn, hack the growth, tweak the algorithm, and repeat—these have been our mantras at least since Eric Ries introduced us to The Lean Startup in 2011. It’s the Google way. The Amazon way. The “right” way.

We’ve immersed ourselves in the “analytics revolution” to such an extent that conventional wisdom accepts this approach as the?best method for driving entrepreneurial growth. And why not? It seems reasonable that if we start with an idea, keep testing those hypotheses, and out-hustle or out-charm the competition, we’ll find our way to the unicorn’s path.

But what if we’re wrong?

Seriously—what if? What if I told you that path leads to nowhere? Or that it sometimes even leads backward? If our twenty-first century hacks, our algorithms, our analytics, and our Lean Canvases are so good, why don’t they seem to, well, work?

Why isn’t every entrepreneur living their best life? Why do so many founders and entrepreneurs burn out? Why isn’t every product fitting its market? Why isn’t every design a winner? Why is growth so hard to sustain? And why does it still, always, feel like such a grind? And perhaps most importantly, if the accepted tenets of startup success are so effective, why do most startups fail?

The reality is that even the smartest, most driven people in the world, using all the latest “tricks” and spending massive sums of money, make things that—most of the time—fail. And that’s because what we imagine to be solutions are frequently at the source of our problems.

According to a 2018 PwC study, CEO turnover rates had reached an all-time high while, according to a 2022 Wall Street Journal report, CMO tenure was at an all-time low. In 2021, HRMorning reported that 66 percent of managers suffer from burnout. The Small Business Administration estimates that the failure rate of startups in 2019 was around 90 percent. Around 20 percent fail in the first year, 30 percent in the second, 50 percent by year five, and 70 percent before a decade is out. And if you believe Quora, there are over one million tech startups born each year. That’s a lot of failure.

And for those very few that do appear to succeed, it’s fair to wonder: How many founders feel like their work has real, lasting value? How many created products or services that would endure into the future? How many sustained their financial performance and nourished their founder? I suspect that very few would respond in the affirmative. Companies like Loon, ScaleFactor, Munchery, Jaw- bone, and Rdio each took in over $100 million in funding and then, one day, not so long after they were born—poof—they were gone. There are hundreds more that took in less money, sold or merged, and then regressed into nothing. What kind of value is that?

I know the pain of seeing seemingly great ideas fail. I founded and exited three startups. But I never ceased to wonder why all my big, bold, can’t-fail ideas rarely turned out the way I’d hoped and planned. Throughout my career, I became more practiced and fluent in UX and product design, performance marketing, research and analytics. I like to believe that I also became a more empathetic leader and a more data- driven operator. I had every advantage at my disposal—software, resources, insights, teamwork, and ambition. So why did growth feel harder and harder? Why was the baseline always hyperactivity? Why was the steady state always unsteady? Why was I never testing and learning my way to happier, healthier growth?

I’m not saying it hasn't been an exciting ride. But even when I was flying high, failure was waiting around the corner. When you are winning, you just have more to lose. And in spite of doing what I thought were the “right” things every single day, my sense of friction and uncertainty only increased. How is it that I climbed this massive mountain, only to arrive at the top out of shape, dismissive of the view, and terrified of the trip back down?

Clearly, we need a better way to chart the ascent.?

The more I traced these struggles back, the more I realized that the solutions all came down to the same thing. And testing and learning or hacking our way through was not it. Software and algorithms were not the answers either. Instead, I came to see that there is?one singular skill which, if deployed properly, could resolve all of these issues—for startups but also for any company interested in bigger, bolder, healthier growth. It’s a skill everyone possesses to some degree, and yet it’s also a skill that has atrophied in the face of increasing noise. It’s a skill in dire need of resurrection.

That skill is listening.

Stick with me here. I know I might be sounding self-helpy. But I assure you that this book is ultimately nothing if not practical. I also know it feels uncomfortable and illogical to begin, not with solutions or plans or ideas, but rather with the vagaries of “listening.” But that is precisely where healthy growth is born. When we talk about growth we tend to talk about the top line and the gaudy metrics. Meanwhile, we obscure what’s beneath the surface—the mar- gins, the sustainability, and most significantly, the humans. Growth can seem binary—a trade-off between the top line and those aspects that offer lasting value. That’s not the case with healthy growth. Healthy growth is equitable. It is sustainable. And at its best, it nourishes the entrepreneur and the startup equally. That kind of growth is rare—but completely possible.

You may be thinking that you already have experienced exceptional entrepreneurial growth, so you don’t need a new approach at all. It’s true that many startups can secure funding. Many can increase their sales. Some can be lauded as the “hot new thing.” Some can even achieve frothy exits. But those are not the same as healthy growth. Rarely do those events yield more sustainable businesses or more fulfilled founders. To the contrary, they frequently end in regression or failure.

For over twenty-five years as a founder of startups, through the sprints and stumbles, I’ve become most convinced of this one thing: healthy growth is achievable for any founder and at any organization, but only to the extent that we listen. Period.

You can outwork, out-think, out-hustle, and out-charm the competition, but if you don’t listen, at some point either you or your startup will buckle. In order to grow healthy, we must truly hear what we desire as human founders, what our businesses fundamentally desire, and what problems stand in between those desires and the best possible outcomes.

Next week: When I say "listening" what do I really mean?