Why Leaders Must Grow or Die

As I’ve noted before, the rapidly changing business environment is deeply competitive and unforgiving. What is tried-and-true today may be obsolete tomorrow. What is innovative this week may be passé the next. To effectively serve in a leadership capacity, you owe it to all of your stakeholders to use every tool in your arsenal to remain competitive, to thrive in the face of adversity, and to deliver high performance in an enduring and integrity-laden way. You simply must commit to meet the challenges of today’s marketplace. To fulfill that commitment, you need an adaptive leadership approach that is resilient in the face of change. As businesses strive to meet customer needs faster, better, and more completely than their competitors – the landscape unravels before leaders in a Darwinian way. You either adapt and prevail, or you cease to exist, crushed under the heft of sub-par performance. In today’s corporate arena, you grow or die.

Since the demands of the marketplace require agility, and an adaptive approach focused on advancing in a dynamic environment — you must deftly engineer the notion of perpetual growth into your organizational DNA.  You should challenge every member of the company to grow in a fashion that best serves both the person and the organization. This is a best-practice because contributors who nimbly adapt and grow are best suited to juggle the changes encountered in the workplace, the marketplace, and the world at large. In my experience, personal growth ultimately translates into higher performance for the enterprise.

Given the choice of growth or death, growth surely beats the grim alternative.

The best way to ensure meaningful growth at every level of the organization is to make sure there are ample opportunities to learn. Growing requires learning — learning new ways to leverage experience, mastering innovative skills, and reading the advice of people with valuable expertise. You really have no choice. Everyone around you, including your competitors, is striving to attain the necessary knowledge to advance and survive – if you do not, you are at risk. Given the choice of growth or death, growth surely beats the grim alternative.

As you’re championing this growth, it’s important that your commitment to individual and organizational learning imperatives be executed in a disciplined way. The rallying call-to-action should be visibly aligned with your strategy and should meaningfully support your goals. For example, if you are a technology company focused on innovation, learning opportunities should foster development in areas that facilitate innovation. If you’re a consulting firm whose goals require operational excellence — then that should be part of the development focus. Of course, some learning opportunities are universally useful and those should not be ignored either. Most organizations can benefit from programs with a broad focus on helping people develop personal insights that will enable them to be better contributors. And leaders will always benefit from management training and leadership development work. But as you’re emphasizing learning, it is critical to infuse the larger organizational learning opportunities with initiatives that support the management and strategic agenda.

To cultivate growth in a meaningful way, it has to start at the top.

Once you’re committed to the dual essentials of learning and growth, and you’ve aligned your initiatives with your strategy — it is not enough to say the words. Be wary of paying the idea lip service and not following through. Gandhi famously said that you have to “be the change” you want to see in the world. To cultivate growth in a meaningful way, it has to start at the top. While it is important to declare your intentions, you also have to “walk the talk” in every moment. There are two crucial components to demonstrating your commitment to creating a culture of learning:

At the Individual Level. 

A quality learning culture in any organization needs to be led by people who are visibly learning and growing. It is essential that you personally model the behavior. People should be able to perceive your efforts plainly and easily. For example, my office is lined with books from floor to ceiling. It is no accident. I love to read, I hunger to learn, and I enjoy sharing and encouraging that enthusiasm with my friends, family, and colleagues. If we’ve spent any meaningful time together, chances are I’ve handed you a book (or two). In this way, I hope to convey that I am truly invested in learning and personal growth as I endeavor to be the change that I want to see in the world.

At the Group Level.

The idea of growth extends beyond the individual and becomes even more important when you are pursuing this notion in order to move an entire organization forward. Then, it becomes about creating a community that is distinctly learning and growing together. People should feel like they are part of a culture that is focused on learning and that the environment in which they work clearly encourages growth. To cultivate this community it is most necessary that your leadership standards both celebrate learning and demand it.

Ideally, there should be a push/pull dynamic in play. The principle works like this: Pull – Celebrate learning so that people are inspired to pursue it and want to do it. Push – Make the expectation clear. Leaders must expressly articulate that they expect members of their organization to be developing. When deployed effectively, the dynamic works harmoniously, creating a tandem push & pull in which people are challenged to learn, they increase their ability to contribute, and they are celebrated for doing so. Everybody wins. And everybody gets better.

This kind of continuous improvement is good business on two levels. A company that embraces learning in a quality way is better positioned to meet the fierce demands for growth while visibly demonstrating that they value their employees. In my experience, the most high-performing leaders know that the key to enduring success begins and ends with people who are learning and growing. It is all about the people. You get the right people "on the bus." Then, you invest in the growth and development of those right people. Give them the tools and energy to do their jobs with distinction and they will do the same for you and your company. And, you will have profoundly improved your potential to thrive and grow in the endlessly dynamic marketplace.

Douglas R. Conant is a New York Times bestselling author and keynote speaker with over 40 years of leadership experience at world-class global companies. He is Founder and CEO of ConantLeadership -- a mission-driven community of leaders and learners who are championing leadership that works in the 21st century. Doug is also Former CEO of Campbell Soup Company, Chairman of the Kellogg Executive Leadership Institute (KELI) at Northwestern University, Chairman of CECP, and Former Chairman of Avon Products.  Doug was named a Top Thought Leader in Trust for 2014, 2015, and 2016 by Trust Across America, a Top 100 Leadership Speaker by Inc. Magazine, a Top 30 Leadership Professional  by Global Gurus, and a Leader to Watch in 2015 by the American Management Association. Join the leadership conversation by tweeting Doug at @DougConant or connecting with him on Facebook and LinkedIn.