- Identify your North Star Metric (NSM).
- Analyze your growth model.
- Set objectives.
- Build a pool of ideas to test.
- Prioritize ideas to test.
- Test ideas.
- Analyze your tests.
- Systematize what works.
©Shutterstock/alphaspiritAssume that, as a business, you’ve already identified your North Star Metric. It follows, then, that whoever will lead growth understands and agrees with it. (So Step 1 is taken care of.) The person’s first critical job is to understand and build out a model for your product to grow. (That’s Step 2.) This doesn’t have to be a complicated model, but it should contain the key growth levers and be able to show how pulling those levers will help your company grow.
After they’ve identified a growth model, the next key function in this role is to choose which part of the growth model the company should focus on. (This is Step 3, setting objectives.)
Given that much of the growth model in many cases encompasses the actual product experience in many cases, the growth lead tends to be a product person. This makes sense, because making the product experience itself more valuable is tightly correlated to understanding user motivations.
What isn’t obvious here is that, along with the focus on whatever part of the growth model is being prioritized, there will also always be the need to test (and scale) new customer acquisition channels. No channel retains its efficiency forever, however. Growth leads are always looking ahead to find the next best channel, so as to not get caught flat-footed and stall growth.All other steps in the growth process focus on building a testing program. So the third key job entails not only the regular work of managing the testing process but also engaging cross-functional teams to participate in the program and creating a culture of learning company wide, if it is to be truly successful.
It’s helpful if you have had some project (or product) management experience as the process is much the same with managing scope, resources, and time as part of your regular sprints.
All these skills need to be learned, and there is no question that it takes hard work to develop mastery across the spread of knowledge you'd need to acquire in order to become truly proficient at growth.You should not be hiring for growth until you have achieved product-market fit. After your product has had some organic growth as a function of achieving product-market fit, hire your first growth person to take a systematic approach designed to build on that natural growth.