The 3 Main Drivers For Successful Growth Teams
How to optimize for speed, scalability, and autonomy.
What do companies like Facebook, Airbnb, Boston Consulting Group, and fast-growing start-ups have in common? They have recognized that classic silo organizations are per se incapable of generating scalable growth systematically and have therefore installed dedicated cross-functional growth teams.
Classic marketing units often only cover the upper part of a funnel and focus on reach and the brand to be placed. They act autonomously from product management and are often committed to hard metrics to measure success to a limited extent.
But how do growth teams work?
- They systematically evaluate growth drivers along the entire funnel.
- They work on an interdisciplinary basis.
- They work agile, test, and iterate.
- They work data-driven.
- They focus exclusively on the user.
- They work with maximum autonomy.
What is the difference between Growth Hacking?
Growth Hacking suggests that there is an easy and quick way to grow. Work on adjusting a few screws will bring a big breakthrough.
What a misconception!
As so often in life, there are no shortcuts — only a holistic approach anchored incorporate values with a lived culture of error and trustworthy leadership will lead to success.
What I will cover in this article:
Growth Ops
The only thing start-ups have even less than money is time. That’s why the organization has to be designed for maximum execution speed.
To achieve this, growth squads must be able to act autonomously, purposefully, and systematically:
- Growth Squads must be able to make their own decisions on how to execute sprints according to the Growth Design Thinking process. Dependencies and release loops make this impossible.
- They have to work according to a framework that allows the prioritization of tests and hypotheses and pays off on a central Northstar metric (subscribe to my newsletter to not miss upcoming posts related to growth metrics).
- All necessary resources and skills must be dedicated to the Growth Squad.
- Growth Squads organize their work independently using agile methods such as Kanban or SCRUM.
Mastering complexity with the help of kanban boards
Kanban boards help you to visualize and coordinate several, parallel running tests. They are very suitable for communicating with different stakeholders and keeping the focus. They follow these paradigms:
- The number of tests “In preparation” is limited in order to increase the implementation speed and keep the focus.
- Tests move through the board from the left column one column to the right.
- Tests reach the “Done” state if the test was significant or is aborted. Following the Growth Design Thinking process, the test can be adjusted and repeated. In this article, you can find more related information.
Growth Squads
- Growth Squads are autonomous, cross-functional teams.
- They combine all necessary skills and dedicated resources
- They focus on a Northstar metric.
- They work in an agile manner and continuously develop their working methodology.
Functions within a Growth Squad
Growth Owner
- Prioritizes the Growth Backlog
- Responsible for the achievement of objectives
- Is typically a performance marketer with T-Shape profile
- Executes campaign tests
UX Designer
- Controls Design Thinking process
- Owns personas
- Operates qualitative user research and user testing
UI designer
- Ensures CI and design consistency
- Designs in cooperation with UX Designer Landing Pages
- Creates advertising material and visual content for campaign testing
Copywriter
- Ensures conversion and customer-journey-adapted communication
- Supports test documentation and retrospective
Analyst
- Responsible for reporting and dashboards
- Performs A/B tests and monitors the significance of tests
- Prepares cohort, CAC and CLV analyses
- Supports data management and tracking requirements definition
Full-stack developer
- Implements designs and requirements
- Ensures functional quality
- Implements tracking and data analysis requirements
The growth organization shown is a target organization. Especially in startups, there are rarely so many resources. Instead of several independent squads specializing in individual steps of the funnel, a single one can focus on a part of the funnel for each quarter using the OKR method and optimize it to a target value (stay tuned for further articles related to OKRs subscribing to my newsletter).
For example, if there’s a tightly managed design system in place, the UX and UI designer functions can be combined. In addition, resources can be shared across squads as long as the independence of the individual squads is maintained.
Structure of a Growth Squad
In more mature growth organizations with several dedicated growth squads, redundancies arise. However, these are not solved hierarchically as in traditional organizations, but via networks:
- The same functions are combined in a chapter (with a chapter lead): A design chapter can, for example, jointly develop the design system further and agree on uniform tools and processes.
- Several squads are grouped in a tribe. A tribe can then stand for a product (web + mobile app) or different brands within an organization.
- Cross-tribe technical topics are discussed in a Guild, such as tracking, A/B testing, or performance marketing news.
Growth Culture
Just because you prescribe growth, creativity and innovation do not mean that teams are able to implement them.
Google has conducted a study of 180 teams using 250 different characteristics to find out what makes for effective teams. It identified five essential values that shape the culture of over-performing teams:
- Psychological Security
- Reliability
- Transparency
- Influence
- Meaning
Psychological safety is considered the most important prerequisite in the study. Only when team members are allowed to openly express their opinions, contribute new ideas — no matter how unusual — and make mistakes, will a growth team be able to deliver its full performance.
As diverse teams generate the best ideas, it is important that each team member is open to other perspectives and cultures. A good portion of craziness in the team helps to overcome private barriers and establish a deeper relationship. If you share private experiences and problems, you show yourself vulnerable and can build trust.
Those who have unrestricted trust in their team members know that they can rely on them in an emergency and that they will receive support when help is needed.
Reliability is essential so that each individual can carry out his or her tasks and can rely on the commitment of his or her team members. This is not only about meeting deadlines, but also about pro-actively communicating blockers and delivering tasks in high quality.
Transparency is the key to ensuring that each member understands and is able to perform his or her role in the team:
- What is the expectation for the specific position/role?
- To what extent and with which tools can he or she fulfill this expectation
- Which framework and Northstar does the team work to?
Efficient, clear communication and documentation are essential to answer these questions:
- How and where are new ideas entered into the backlog?
- How are blockers addressed and escalated?
- How are internal processes optimized by means of retro perspectives?
- How are test learnings documented?
- How are analyses and data made accessible to everyone?
The feeling that the result of his work has an impact on the results of the team and the whole company is essential. It gives recognition and appreciation. Therefore it’s the main driver for each individual contribution.
It is therefore important that growth teams can make decisions autonomously and independently. It increases the feeling of holding the reins and one’s own destiny in hand. The absence of self-determination and influence is the main driver of mental illness such as anxiety disorders, burn-out, and depression.
The meaning or sense of activity is closely linked to the exertion of influence. This may concern either the activity itself or the result of it. This can be very different on a personal level but contributes strongly to identification with the task and intrinsic motivation.
The manager’s openness to different personal goals such as
- personal development,
- financial security, or
- support for the family
allows for individual encouragement and support.
In any case, it is important to define a clear mission or “why” that arises from the original problem that your start-up wants to solve.
Conclusion
To me, Growth is not at all another buzzword. It’s a new way, that thinks Growth on an organizational, operational, but also a personal level.
It leverages the personal motivation and contribution to achieve outstanding growth objectives on an organizational level.
Please share your thoughts and learnings. I am happy to hear your story.
