How to achieve sustainable hyper growth: Learn, unlearn, and re-learn
Don’t accept failure, but don’t fear it either
1. People first
People are the most critical element in any organization, and they tend to gravitate towards areas of work that involve the best use of their own superpowers.
There needs to be a culture where teammates are encouraged to pick and choose the problems they want to solve; senior leaders can make a huge positive impact by looking out for potential superpowers in teammates which they can hone by taking on projects and tasks which help bring their potential to practice.
Our team operates with a culture of autonomy where problem-solving is at the heart of everything we do, regardless of what departments/functions teammates belong to. One team, one mission.
When the people in a company are intrinsically motivated like at Dastgyr, I feel there’s an endless sense of exciting urgency to move faster than yesterday, solve more problems than yesterday, create more impact than yesterday. 1% day-on-day growth till eternity.
2. Clarity of goals and open channels of communication
Significantly high levels of performance and intrinsic motivation are experienced by doing simple things like making sure each teammate knows the impact their input would have in the larger scheme of things. Each teammate should be empowered with knowledge of what their contribution results in, and what it can potentially help accomplish.
As a team, witnessing efforts transform into measurable results is one of the most exciting things about the journey.
Some of the most crucial operational challenges we’ve faced at Dastgyr were solved by teammates who joined in the commercials function by observing a challenge, communicating a potential solution, forming a cross-functional team, deep-dived into the problem, and solving it. Always linking growth goals with the overall business goals.
Teams repeating mistakes another part of the company has already made is a surefire way to slow down growth. That’s why success comes down to experimenting fast, failing fast, documenting learnings, communicating learnings, measuring impact, rapid course correction, moving at high velocity, and over-communicating very very effectively to make sure the same mistakes are not repeated.
3. Take guidance from those you aim to please (customers)
You need to challenge and change traditionally accepted behaviors, not just conform to them. Keep asking why something is the way it is in the market, then find a better way to do that, with fewer resources and more impact.
But how are you supposed to find what exactly is the ‘better way’?
Well, when in doubt, I always think cross-functional teams should talk to customers together. Oftentimes, customers will not know the solution to their biggest problems, but what they say will point you in the right direction on what to build. I know this is a decades-old practice, but it still holds true and is worth reminding yourself of often.
The way we handle it, the entire team talks to the customers and then meets up for joint coffee breaks and feedback sessions on a weekly basis. These conversations are incredibly insightful as it allows us to understand the changes we need to make in terms of every single element of the company; demand generation, operations, UI/UX, commercial decision-making — i.e. everything.
We also always end these meetings with customers on a promise to give it our best, which creates extra incentive to follow through and find the best solution.
4. Constantly seek advice; it’s massively underrated
This one is short and simple. You should intentionally keep one day in the week to talk to otherstartups, mentors, andfounders.
Sometimes people from an entirely different industry have figured out a solution that might be incredibly useful for you with some minor tweaking. Miracles can happen through communication in unexpected places — so make time for it.
5. Have a high tolerance for failure
The famous phrase “you win some, you learn some” is one to live by. Some of the greatest moments of repeatable growth often stem directly from the learnings of our greatest failures. This doesn’t mean you should ‘accept’ failure, but you need to learn not to fear it either.
You will fail. Embrace it. Learn to fail smart and fast. Soon, the familiar road to recovery will lead to unimaginable success.
In the very early days, we were struggling with demand generation as we entered uncharted territory. The entire team (10 people) used to get on a call and dissect every probable root cause and lock an execution plan to solve it. With almost 20 failed experiments, wefinallydeveloped a scalable playbook.
As they say, “You are not defeated when you lose. You are defeated when you quit.”
Our learnings
So to sum up, based on my and my team’s experience, these are the critical elements you need to focus on to maintain a startup’s continual growth:
All of this especially holds true in the B2B space, where there are fewer players and presumably less space for out-of-the-box thinking, but that’s exactly where someone who employs a new, more effective strategy wins!
Story byYahya Humayun
Yahya works on sustainable growth at Dastgyr, a B2B e-commerce marketplace that connects retailers with manufacturers and suppliers for proc(show all)Yahya works on sustainable growth at Dastgyr, a B2B e-commerce marketplace that connects retailers with manufacturers and suppliers for procurement and access to credit.
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