A fine-grained view of the sources of growth

In this especially lively as well as informative video, the authors of The Granularity of Growth explain why the best strategies begin with a precise understanding of market and product opportunities.

Companies need to look beyond averages when making decisions about when and where to compete. McKinsey’s Sven Smit and S. Patrick Viguerie, along with Alchemy Growth Partners’ Mehrdad Baghai, discuss “the granularity of growth.”

To watch this turbocharged conversation, please click here.

You may also wish to check out their book, The Granularity of Growth: How to Identify the Sources of Growth and Drive Enduring Company Performance, published by John S. Wiley (2008)

Mehrdad Baghai is the co-author with James Quigley of a more recent book, As One, published by Portfolio/Penguin Group (2011).

When Adversity Strikes, What Do You Do?

Paul G. Stolz

Here is an excerpt from an article written by Dr. Paul G. Stoltz for the Harvard Business Review blog. To read the complete article, check out other articles and resources, and/or sign up for a free subscription to Harvard Business Review’s Daily Alerts, please click here.

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“Hot” and “timeless.” Those are the words last weekend’s International Herald Tribune used to describe Greek statues. The same two words could be used to describe that other thing that makes the big difference for you — for any leader, team, or enterprise — resilience. Resilience is suddenly everywhere. And, by the end of this blog, it can upgrade the lens through which you view and lead both those around you and your life.

Flying London to San Francisco, I found the words “resilient,” or “resilience” 13 times. And I was hardly trying. RESILIENT. The word stares down at you from the giant corporate ad board as you clear security at Heathrow.  Not a bad theme for travel these days.

In the stores, I found “resilient” or “resilience” on woman’s clothing labels, kid’s toy packaging, sports gear, even a perfume bottle. While scouring five different publications on the flight, I found it describing everything from banished refugees, sport teams, financial markets and products, to leaders, children, communities, even drug lords and the Taliban. It’s as if “resilient” has morphed from an adjective to the defining virtue.

So yes. Resilience is hot.

It’s also timeless. All our core stories are about what happens when human beings and adversity collide. From those moments tragedies unravel and greatness is spawned. Adversity both destroys and elevates. It both strangles and sparks life.

What is your relationship with adversity? What role has it played in becoming who you are, in forging your essential character and mindset? How has it influenced your optimism, energy, opportunities, relationships, health, performance, capacity, and leaps of faith? Can you think of any force that has been more profoundly formative?

Here’s just one relevant example as you ponder the role resiliency plays for yourself and your people. We at PEAK measured the resilience of 1,600 people in the UK  [click here]  to see how it stacked up against these factors: happiness, quality of life, exercise, diet, energy, optimism, engagement at work, sick days, and a broad range of health factors. Resilience was statistically significant in predicting not one or two, but all of these factors.

Through my past three decades of research on the subject, I’ve learned something shockingly simple: It comes down to one of two things. Over the course of your years, either adversity consumes you, or you consume it. Unfortunately, being consumed by adversity is far more common than truly consuming it.

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To read the complete article, check out other articles and resources, and/or sign up for a free subscription to Harvard Business Review’s Daily Alerts, please click here.

Dr. Paul G. Stoltz is CEO of PEAK Learning, Inc., Chairman of the Global Resilience Institute, and the originator of the Adversity Quotient (AQ) theory and method, currently used within Harvard Business School’s Executive Education program. He is the author of Adversity Quotient: Turning Obstacles into Opportunities, published by John S. Wiley (1999).