All Articles
In Chapter 2 of Rhythm: How to Achieve Breakthrough Execution and Accelerate Growth, author Patrick Thean dives deeper into “winning moves” – the small number of big bets that will drive most of your revenue growth. These are the pivots, new offerings, or business models that, through focused execution, could potentially double your company’s revenue in just 3-5 years. It is a section of your 3-year business plan focused on growth. This chapter provides practical advice for uncovering and prioritizing your next winning moves.
What Makes a Winning Move?
Winning moves share two defining characteristics:
1. High Revenue Impact
A winning move is not about incrementally tweaking your existing business. It represents a potential step change in growth. Properly sequenced and executed winning moves can rapidly accelerate your revenue curve. As Thean writes: “Winning moves drive revenue growth. Specifically, winning moves should double your revenue – 2X your business – in three to five years.”
2. Leverage Existing Assets
Winning moves rely on capabilities, infrastructure, and know-how you already possess. They do not require massive outside investment or acquisitions to launch. Force-fitting moves requiring large capital infusions risk overextension. Thean summarizes it well: “They are your company’s leading indicator for future revenue growth and financial health. Conversely, the lack of winning moves is the leading indicator that you will hit the growth wall.”
Where Do You Uncover Winning Moves?
Winning moves rarely emerge fully formed overnight. More often, they begin as seeds of ideas that, when cultivated, can blossom into transformative growth opportunities.
Thean suggests looking for potential winning moves by analyzing:
Customer Needs
- What customer problems still need to be solved because competitors deem solving them too difficult or resource-intensive?
- How could we make customers’ lives dramatically easier?
Customer Frustrations
- What imperfect solutions or pain points are customers forced to tolerate from us and our competitors?
- How could we eliminate one of those frustrations?
Existing Assets
- Do we already possess capabilities, data, or technology that could be monetized in new ways?
- Could an existing capability be evolved or expanded into an adjacent space?
Asking these questions across your leadership team may uncover winning moves already latent within your business.
Pressure Testing Winning Moves
Not every idea or brainstorm translates into a winning move. Once you generate candidate moves, you need a process to pressure-test them objectively. Patrick Thean recommends assessing each potential move on two dimensions:
Revenue Impact
- On a scale of 1-10, how much could this move increase revenue over the next 3-5 years if successfully executed?
Ease of Implementation
- Given our current assets and capabilities on a scale of 1-10, how easily could we deploy this move?
By scoring each move on these two axes, you can quickly prioritize those with the optimal mix of high revenue impact and low complexity. Thean refers to moves with maximum revenue potential but greater implementation difficulty as “moat moves” – expensive but able to create a defensible competitive advantage if you can afford the investment.
Avoiding Resource Traps
Two common traps slow companies down when it comes to resourcing winning moves:
- Too Many Moves – Attempting to pursue too many capital-intensive moves simultaneously spreads your team and budget too thin. Prioritize ruthlessly.
- Losing Moves – Investing in “losing moves” with low revenue impact simply because they sound interesting. Quantify impact.
Ask whether a move will measurably move the revenue needle and leverage existing assets. If not, it likely doesn’t deserve to be a priority focus.
Key Takeaways on Winning Moves to Double Your Revenue
The key lessons from this chapter include:
- Developing winning moves is crucial for sustaining growth over time. Without them, you risk declining.
- Methodically ask key questions to uncover latent winning moves within your business.
- Prioritize your moves objectively based on revenue impact vs. implementation ease.
- Avoid spreading yourself thin across too many moves or losing moves with low impact.
- Keep exploring moves – you need a continuous pipeline to sustain constant growth and predictable results.
Companies can’t afford to stand still in today's disruptive business environment. Rhythm: How to Achieve Breakthrough Execution and Accelerate Growth Chapter 2 provides a blueprint for continuously evolving strategy through well-defined winning moves.
To Learn More About “Winning Moves" You Can Incorporate Read Through These Additional Resources:
How to Grow Your Business: Add a Winning Move to Your Business Plan
Create 3 Year Strategic Plans with Revenue Growth
Mastering the Rockefeller Habits One-Page Strategic Plan (OPSP)
Revenue Growth Goals: Use the Rhythm of Work to Achieve Them