Focus resources on high-impact business mechanisms where small improvements generate disproportionate results across the entire customer journey.
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In simple terms, a growth lever is any action or strategy that can dramatically boost a company’s growth when applied. Think of a lever in the physical sense – a small move can lift a heavy object; likewise, the right business lever can produce outsized growth from relatively little effort . A growth lever could be something like improving a sales funnel or streamlining customer onboarding – a focused change that leads to significantly more revenue or users. In everyday language, it’s the high-impact move you can make to quickly accelerate your company’s success.
Growth levers matter because they guide resource allocation in environments where everything seems important but not everything drives results. Most organisations spread effort across dozens of initiatives attending conferences, updating websites, launching email campaigns, tweaking product features without strategic prioritisation. Lever thinking forces clarity: which single improvement would most accelerate growth? This focus prevents the common failure mode of doing many things adequately rather than a few things excellently. For B2B contexts especially, where resources are perpetually constrained, identifying and exploiting the right lever can generate 2-3x returns compared to unfocused activity. The financial impact is substantial: improving a true lever (say, reducing customer churn from 15% to 10%) affects every subsequent year's revenue, compounding gains, whilst improving a non-lever (say, adding a minor product feature) generates minimal lasting impact. Lever thinking also accelerates experimentation: rather than testing random tactics, you design experiments specifically targeting your identified levers, ensuring even failed tests generate insights about core growth mechanisms. Research shows high-growth companies consistently demonstrate lever discipline they identify their primary growth constraint, invest heavily to address it, then move to the next constraint, whilst slower-growing competitors pursue scattered initiatives. Organisations that systematically identify, prioritise, and pull growth levers report 30-50% efficiency improvements in growth spending.
Applying the concept of growth levers in your marketing or growth workflow involves a few key steps: identify potential levers, prioritise the most promising ones, and take action to execute changes. It’s both an analytical and creative process, combining data insights with strategic thinking. Here’s how to put growth levers to work:
Start by mapping the buyer journey and reviewing data for bottlenecks or missed opportunities. Combine quantitative clues conversion drops, churn spikes with qualitative feedback from customers and front-line staff. List three to five candidate levers that, if improved, could unlock significant growth.
Score each candidate for impact, confidence, and effort. Choose one or two with the greatest expected return for the resources available. This focus prevents dilution and ensures the team’s energy targets the most promising levers first.
Build a clear plan: what will change, who owns it, and which metric will prove success. Run small experiments around the chosen lever, measure results, and iterate quickly. Document learnings so the knowledge compounds even if an experiment fails.
When a lever delivers, bake the change into routine processes and dashboards. Move to the next priority lever and restart the loop. Over time, successive lever pulls create a step-change in the firm’s growth trajectory.
The cockpit that sits above your four growth engines. Individual teams can excel at their own metrics, but without orchestration they're musicians playing different songs. This is where everything comes together and where improvements in one engine amplify gains in another.
The wrong tools create friction. The right ones multiply your output without adding complexity. These are the tools I recommend for growth teams that move fast.
Small improvements multiply. A 10% gain across twelve metrics doesn't add up to 120% - it compounds to 3x growth. This is the mathematical engine behind systematic growth.
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Four decisions that shape everything else. When growth feels harder than it should, the problem is usually here. Get these right and execution becomes much easier.
Without rhythm, effort becomes scattered and progress invisible. A consistent operating cadence keeps your team aligned and your growth system continuously improving.
Mike Michalowicz
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A decision tool for prioritising growth work. Diagnose where to act, then pick a small change that unlocks progress now.
Deep channel expertise doubles revenue but still hits a ceiling. Mastering one engine isn't enough. See why system thinking beats specialisation.
Small improvements across 12 metrics multiply into exponential growth. Learn how engines connect, why improvements compound, and where leverage lives.
Measure which marketing activities drive desired outcomes to allocate budget toward channels that actually generate revenue instead of vanity metrics.
Focus your entire organisation on the single metric that best predicts success at your current growth stage, avoiding distraction and misalignment.
Maintain an unchanged version in experiments to isolate the impact of your changes and prove causation rather than correlation with external factors.
Measure the month-over-month growth in qualified leads to predict future revenue and catch pipeline problems before they impact revenue three months later.
Determine whether experiment results reflect real differences or random chance to avoid making expensive decisions based on noise instead of signal.
Identify what you do better or differently that competitors can't easily copy to defend margins and win customers consistently over time.
Cultivate belief that skills and results improve through deliberate effort, treating setbacks as learning opportunities rather than fixed limitations.
Drive acquisition and expansion through product experience where users discover value before sales conversations and upgrade based on usage.
Focus resources on high-impact business mechanisms where small improvements generate disproportionate results across the entire customer journey.
Automate multi-touch email campaigns that adapt based on recipient behaviour to nurture leads consistently without manual follow-up from reps or marketers.
Turn satisfied customers into active promoters who systematically bring qualified prospects into your pipeline at near-zero acquisition cost.
Clear mental clutter by transferring all thoughts, tasks, and ideas onto paper or screen, creating space for focused work.
Interpret experiment results to understand the probability that observed differences occurred by chance rather than because your changes actually work.
Build self-reinforcing systems across demand generation, funnel conversion, sales pipeline, and customer value that create continuous momentum.
Scale through partner relationships where other companies distribute your product to their customers in exchange for commissions or reciprocal value.
Assign full conversion credit to the final touchpoint before purchase to identify which channels close deals but miss earlier influences that started journeys.
Define events that start automation workflows so the right message reaches people at the right moment based on their actual behaviour not arbitrary timing.
Deploy fast, low-cost experiments to discover scalable acquisition and retention tactics, learning through iteration rather than big bets.
Measure the percentage of customers who stop paying to identify retention problems and calculate the true cost of growth in subscription businesses.
Organise the tools that capture leads, nurture prospects, and measure performance to automate repetitive work and connect customer data across systems.