Double-Digit Growth: How Great Companies Achieve It--No Matter What (Paperback)

~ (Author) "Which has grown faster since 1997: Intel or inflation?..." (more)
Key Phrases: base retention, money transfer business, adjacent growth, First Data, Card Issuing Services, Western Union (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

After Michael Treacy finished writing his bestseller, The Discipline of Market Leaders, he continued to track the companies profiled to answer one major question: how do market-leading companies foster growth? In Double-Digit Growth: How Great Companies Achieve It—No Matter What the MIT Management Professor addresses this problem with a five-part portfolio of management disciplines. He offers case studies of well-known and little-known companies that have achieved growth year after year based on this diversified approach.

His first three disciplines--"keep the growth you have already earned," "take business from your competitors," and "show up where the growth is going to happen"--may seem obvious, and even beyond the control of the average executive. But Treacy provides frameworks for applying each as business practice, not just wishful thinking. His fourth and fifth disciplines, "invade adjacent markets" and "invest in new lines of business," are perhaps the most controversial. Here, though, he is not advising rampant conglomeration. Rather, he stresses the need for acquisitions and expansions made based on reliable data predicting long-term growth with risk spread over diversified investments.

Treacy is not presenting a step-by-step formula for success. Through his quick, readable prose he offers instead a course in mental re-training for executives. A management team must construct tools for tracking and measuring its success against each of the five growth disciplines, and it must build a corporate culture that instills growth as a core goal. While he offers no guarantees, his arguments are compelling, and the nuanced management strategies he suggests seem a plausible base for attaining predictable growth. --Patrick O’Kelley --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Publishers Weekly

Growth, the lifeblood of industry, is the ability of a company to increase its revenues and profits by expanding its business-either by acquiring other companies, increasing its market share, or penetrating new or adjacent markets. While conventional business thinking has it that companies run through a lifecycle of rapid growth, maturity and decline, Treacy believes that double-digit growth is possible even for mature organizations. Take Harley-Davidson, which still exhibits double-digit growth after 100 years in the motorcycle business. However, many of Treacy's star companies (e.g. Wal-Mart, Home Depot, Starbucks, Paychex) are still relatively young, while many of the firms he derides for sluggish growth (AT&T, Proctor & Gamble, Revlon) are longstanding firms in mature industries. Treacy's "5 Disciplines" for growth-retain your customer base, gain market share, exploit your market position, penetrate adjacent markets, invest in new lines of business-are too simplistic to be of much practical use. What's valuable in this book are the narratives that describe how some companies have imaginatively achieved significant growth. For example, Treacy relates how Sony beat out Microsoft, Sega, and Nintendo for domination of the once-flat video game market by teaming up with video game developers, driving down the price of consoles, excelling at distribution, and convincing an untapped adult market that video games were not just for kids. Likewise, General Electric controls "customer churn" by creating "sticky" relationships with clients that make it hard for them to defect from GE. Treacy argues convincingly that there are opportunities for creative growth in even the most moribund industries, given the right combination of imagination, expertise and market discipline. Such advice should be helpful to might just be the shot in the arm corporate America needs.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Paperback: 240 pages
• Publisher: Portfolio Trade (December 28, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 159184066X
• ISBN-13: 978-1591840664
• Product Dimensions: 8.3 x 5.5 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (8 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #239,460 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great insights, a must for corporate "victims" everywhere., April 24, 2004

By	Michael Erisman (Seattle, WA) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Double-Digit Growth: How Great Companies Achieve It--No Matter What (Hardcover)

Michael Treacy sets out to show that growth, double digit growth at that, is possible in every economic environment. This is of course a creative possibility, but is often not acknowledged or even sought after by many in corporate America who are content to do the easy risk-avoidance strategies which ensure their ultimate demise. I liked this quote early in the book to set the tone: "Why do many managers preside over no-growth organizations without confronting the reality that accepting the status quo is the business equivalent of committing suicide?"

The highlights of the book are the way the ideas are laid out and then described in action with examples across several industries. Some of the tactics include; Spread the risk, Take small bites, Balance your strategies, and Commit to superior value. One key according to Treacy is to accept that growth is a choice. He describes managers talking about growth difficulties as "a little like listening to an addict in denial. Don't they understand that growth is a choice - a choice that lies entirely within their power and no one else's?" (Page 17).

Treacy covers 5 disciplines; Improving customer base retention; Market share gain; Market positioning; Penetrating adjacent markets; New lines of business. While these are certainly solid examples of the ways to approach growth, the real depth in the book is around understanding consumer behavior. He points out the reality behind why most "customer retention" strategies don't work, and how to increase "switching costs" of your products and services. Making your products and services "sticky" is a key to growth working well, by retaining current customers while attracting new ones.

While the information and theories here are certainly not the final word on growth, this book should be required reading for all the corporate "victims" blaming their woes on things outside their control. It is clear that countless opportunities exist within every market niche and through every economic trend to facilitate growth. Many companies do in fact continue to grow, and they are usually ones who are committed to it. The companies that do not grow are usually gone in time. The section on Corning, caught in the euphoria of the late 90's telecom boom, was a great example of how even market leaders fail to get ahead of the indicators and lose as a result.

Overall, a great read, with some good insights. I would have liked to see a bit more focus on the inspirational factors that great leaders bring to align their employees to deliver when the employees themselves may not see the way. That is obviously a huge key to executing a strategy, and was not covered as in depth as it could have been here. Otherwise, a good look at how to achieve growth and will likely cause many light bulbs to go on while reading.

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Low Inflation Makes Revenue Growth Harder to Accomplish, February 9, 2004

By	Professor Donald Mitchell "Jesus Makes Me a P... (Boston) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

This review is from: Double-Digit Growth: How Great Companies Achieve It--No Matter What (Hardcover)

During the times when inflation and GNP growth in the United States were higher, investors gradually expanded their expectations of what "growth" meant. During the great bull market of the 1960s, a company that grew revenues by 10 percent a year was considered a great growth firm. Soon, that target was being set north of 15 percent. Exciting breakthroughs in technology meant that many markets were actually growing faster than that, so those who were growing market share were expanding at enormous rates (remember Cisco in the 1990s?).

Since then, inflation has declined to almost nothing, GDP has been stagnant during the Bush administration (with a recent up tick), and the dollar has been plummeting (making overseas revenues worth much less). That's a tougher environment to grow in than even the 1960s. So Double-Digit Growth is talking about a difficult target for those who are not in the highest growth industries. In appreciation of that point, Michael Treacy (coauthor of The Discipline of Market Leaders) says that companies should measure their growth in terms of total gross profits. So if you are expanding your value-added enough, you may be able to have double-digit growth while having less than double-digit revenue growth. That said, he argues that ANY company can have double-digit growth. I assume that he means it is POSSIBLE. Based on the track record of the last three years, most would agree that it?s IMPROBABLE though if we look at time frames of five years or more.

As with The Discipline of Market Leaders, Mr. Treacy looks at a few successful companies that have met his targets in the past (Johnson Controls, Mohawk Industries, Paychex, Biomet, Oshkosh Truck and Dell) and extrapolates what they did into a few simple lessons. The strategic lessons are:

1) Spread your risk by pursuing many growth initiatives

2) Take on small growth challenges so you don't become overwhelmed by the size of the task

3) Use a variety of strategies involving organic growth and acquisitions, as appropriate to grow

4) Be committed to providing superior value

5) Develop your management to handle growth opportunities before tackling more opportunities

6) Make growth a central focus of your management processes (using Balanced Scorecard-like measures).

To implement these six strategic perspectives, he counsels that each company should focus on five management disciplines:

a) Reduce customer turnover

b) Take business from competitors

c) Emphasize those areas in your industry that are growing fastest

d) Invade adjacent markets where you can bring important advantages to bear

e) Invest in new lines of business

The heart of the book is devoted to these five disciplines. Each receives a chapter that talks about the difficulties involved and how to over come those difficulties. I thought that the book's advice was most practical and interesting when it talked about the disciplines.

If I look back to when I was first learning about strategy, I think that every article or book I read talked about the last four disciplines . . . but omitted the first. In fact, the best chapter in the book is on the first discipline, especially in debunking those who advocate that you can build loyalty in customers with any method other than making your value proposition be terrific.

Another excellent part of the book comes in the case history of First Data which used these disciplines to improve its situation. Presumably First Data was a consulting client of Mr. Treacy's.

I was pleased to see that Mr. Treacy noted that many of his champion growers frequently changed business models in positive ways (especially Paychex and Dell). Double-Digit Growth is rare book in noting and describing such management excellence. In doing so, the book's only weaknesses were that few examples of continuing business model innovation were included and not enough attention was paid to describing the key elements of this new and important management discipline. I hope in future books that Mr. Treacy will place more emphasis on the best practices in this area.

The book's perspective is that of the strategist and marketing executive, so those who come from other perspectives will probably gain the most from this book. Double-Digit Growth will give other executives a chance to understand what they should be focusing on as they meld their talents together with others in the organization.

If you are, however, a veteran strategist or marketing executive, you may get little benefit except from reading whichever company cases in the book (listed above) you have not read or heard about before.

As I finished the book, I wondered about how companies can make it more exciting to work on customer retention. Perhaps Raving Fans! has it right in that regard.

If you are not in a high growth market, though, I would still rate your chances of double-digit growth in revenues or gross profits to be slim . . . unless you become a master of continuing business model innovation.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Finally some good thinking after years of gloom n doom, October 14, 2003

By	M. McDonald (Chicago, IL United States) - See all my reviews (TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Double-Digit Growth: How Great Companies Achieve It--No Matter What (Hardcover)

Double-digit growth looks at an issue that is finally regaining importance. After years of cutting costs and getting rightsized we are not talking about making companies grow. Hurrah. Treacy does a good job in pointing out how really few companies consistently grow and the practices that they use to create this truely virtuous cycle.

He provides five disciplines:

1) Keep the growth you already have
2) Take business away from your competitiors
3) Show up where the growth is going to happen
4) Invade adjacent markets
5) Invest in new lines of business

The disciplines and their explaination are make in lively action oriented prose with actionable advice. This is a powerful book written about a powerful subject. I have been dismayed by the quality if business book ideas over the past three years and now with this book and some others, ideas and interest in them seem to be getting off the ground.

Read this book, if nothing more than to check yourself and your company against these disciplines. Look at what you are doing and how you are positioning yourself for growth. I think that you will be surprised at what you uncover.