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When I think of Thomas Edison ruling out 9,999 ways to get a light bulb to work before arriving at the 10,000th one that did, I am reminded of the expression that genius is 1 percent inspiration and 99 percent perspiration.
The same concept applies to business strategy--the idea of what a company should do to achieve rapid growth is the 1 percent. It's the 99 percent--dubbed strategy execution--that determines whether you achieve your ambitious growth goals.
In my 2019 book,
Scaling Your Startup, I wrote about the Seven Scaling Levers--such as building growth trajectories, sustaining culture, and redefining job functions.
Until February 9, when I interviewed Mahesh Rajasekharan, CEO of Rockford, Illinois-based Cleo Communications--a supply chain software as a service provider that counts Walmart and Amazon among its customers--I had not seen such a comprehensive example of another key scaling lever: holding people accountable.