6 Levers of Growth: A Smarter Approach to Business Development

Growing a business isn’t just about working harder but making the right moves at the right time. Just like people, companies go through different stages of development. Skipping steps or rushing ahead can lead to chaos instead of success.

That’s where the Six Levers of Growth framework comes in. These levers help businesses scale smoothly by focusing on key areas like revenue models, marketing, business processes, team structure, and automation. When used correctly, they create a strong foundation for sustainable growth.

In this article, we’ll break down each lever and show you how to apply them to your business.

Why Growth Needs a Systematic Approach

The Adizes model explains that every company moves through 10 stages, from ‘Courtship’ and ‘Infancy’ to ‘Prime’ and eventually ‘Bureaucracy’ or even ‘Death.’ These stages reflect how a business matures, adapts, and either thrives or declines.

Many companies try to skip steps, jumping straight to automation, scaling, or process optimization without a strong foundation. But just like a child can’t become an adult overnight, a company can’t leap from ‘Infancy’ to ‘Prime’ without going through critical growth phases.

The Six Levers of Growth ensure businesses transition through these stages in the right order, avoiding costly mistakes and setting themselves up for long-term success.

Now, let’s break down each lever and how it contributes to sustainable growth. 

Is Skipping Stages a Problem?

Many companies rush into digital transformation to keep up with trends, but without proper preparation, this often leads to chaos instead of progress.

Take automation, for example. If a company’s data is already a mess before implementing a CRM system, that chaos won’t magically disappear after integration. Employees who weren’t entering data before won’t suddenly start just because a new system is in place.

Without analysis and preparation, a business can’t build a solid, functional model. Improvisation often does more harm than good. Growth needs consistency — it helps prevent costly mistakes and keeps the company on track.

Now, let’s break down each lever and how it contributes to sustainable growth.

First Lever: Income Generation Model

This lever helps you understand how to make money and maximize profit. According to Porter’s Five Competitive Forces model, five key factors affect a company’s profitability:

• Industry competition: The level of rivalry among existing businesses.
• Clients: Customers’ power to influence pricing and demand.
• Substitutes: Alternative products or services that could replace yours.
• Suppliers: Their control over pricing and availability of materials.
• New entrants: Emerging businesses trying to capture market share.

These forces constantly interact. Digitalization has made it easier for customers to compare options, increasing the importance of competitive pricing and unique value. Suppliers aim to dominate supply chains, while new players fight for niche markets. Even substitutes — products that aren’t direct competitors — can take a share of your market.

The balance of these forces shapes the profit-making zone — the part of the market where a company generates revenue. In the past, market share determined profitability, but today, success depends on innovation, new management models, and creative strategies.

Businesses that leverage these tools expand their presence in the profit-making zone and achieve long-term growth. To do this effectively, companies must analyze market opportunities and position themselves accordingly.

10 Strategies to Protect Profits

To safeguard revenue, businesses can use the following 10 key strategies:

1. Product Differentiation. While many companies strive to stand out, differentiation alone isn’t always profitable. Without clear demand, finding the right customers for a unique product can be difficult.
2. Differentiation with Cost Parity. A more efficient approach — a company differentiates its product while keeping costs aligned with competitors.
3. Differentiation with Cost Leadership. A strong strategy for profit protection. By optimizing production costs, businesses can identify and eliminate high-cost, low-value elements, improving margins.
4. One-Year Technological Lead. Investing in R&D can help develop innovative solutions that competitors won’t have access to for at least a year. This offers moderate profit protection.
5. Two-Year Technological Lead. A more effective long-term strategy. With the right execution, businesses can secure user loyalty and sustain profitability.
6. Brand and Copyright Protection. A recognizable brand gives a competitive edge, while copyrights and patents prevent competitors from copying innovations.
7. Customer Relationship Ownership. Companies that collect user data and build loyalty programs can create stable, recurring revenue through targeted offers and personalized experiences.
8. Dominant Market Position. Larger companies with a broad range of services hold stronger market positions, making them more resilient to competition.
9. Value Chain Management. Vertical integration, where a company controls the entire production cycle, is a highly effective way to protect profits.
10. Establishing an Industry Standard. Launching a niche product with no direct alternatives can be a winning strategy, but it requires proper investment and market research to succeed.

These strategies work best when combined, allowing businesses to maximize profitability and strengthen their competitive edge.

Second Lever: Marketing Strategy

To reach the profit-making zone, a company needs a well-defined marketing strategy, including:

• Pricing strategy: Setting prices based on market conditions, competition, and consumer expectations.
• Quality strategy: Ensuring product quality and optimizing production processes to meet international standards.
• Service strategy: Maintaining customer relationships beyond the initial sale.
• Positioning strategy: Identifying and targeting the ideal market niche while staying aligned with industry trends.
• Functionality strategy: Offering product features that directly address customer needs.
• Product strategy: Managing product categories and variations to optimize the assortment.
• Distribution strategy: Organizing sales channels and managing product availability.
• Partnership strategy: Selecting business partners with complementary products and solutions.

By implementing these strategies, a company gains the necessary tools to move closer to sustainable profitability.

Third Lever: Business Processes

A company’s positioning must be reflected in its daily operations. Positioning isn’t just a branding decision — it should be visible at every customer touchpoint.

Each customer interaction aligns with a specific business process, making positioning an active, ongoing element in company operations. If a customer expects certain standards from a company, those expectations should be consistently met at each touchpoint.

Online Touchpoints

• Advertising
• Website
• Blog
• Social media
• Chatbots
• Customer reviews
• Mobile apps
• Content strategy
• Email campaigns

Offline Touchpoints

• Business operations
• Advertising
• Physical office
• Products
• Technologies

This connection between the customer journey and business processes means that every interaction plays a role in revenue generation. Since each step of the customer journey impacts profitability, the Customer Journey Map effectively becomes a visual representation of a company’s profit model. In turn, business processes serve as the internal framework that ensures this model functions effectively.

Fourth and Fifth Levers: Organizational Structure and HR Policy

The organizational structure reflects the company’s business model. According to the competency model, employees are assigned roles based on their expertise and are responsible for tasks aligned with customer needs and their ability to pay.

Tools like RASCI and FTE help define responsibilities, allocate tasks, and organize workflows with clear schedules. The key idea is that business processes should guide the allocation of resources and the assignment of roles, ensuring that functions are effectively distributed among employees.

Sixth Lever: Automation

One of the most important levers for success is the automation of company processes. It speeds up work, saves resources, and improves quality.

Every organization needs an executive function along with tools for process monitoring. These tools help analyze and optimize internal procedures. A digital twin of the company can be used to implement this by creating a virtual model of enterprise processes. Businesses can analyze every aspect of their operations and plan future development based on data-driven insights.

Digital representations of all processes are critical for better monitoring because they connect the company’s IT infrastructure with its day-to-day operations.

The strategy and marketing models should be integrated with business analytics systems, which support decision-making based on data. Additionally, ERP systems are essential for managing finances, including assets, debts, and balance sheet indicators.

For production management, MES systems (Manufacturing Execution Systems) help coordinate production processes, track product quality, allocate resources, and manage maintenance. Automation in production is also enhanced by SCADA systems, dispatching systems (ADTCS), and automated control systems (ACS).

Bottom Line

Success is creating a system that works for your unique business. Each lever we’ve discussed is a critical piece in building a framework that helps your company move from chaos to clarity. By aligning your pricing, business processes, and automation with a clear vision, you can create real, measurable value for both your customers and your bottom line. Building a strategy will help you actively drive growth, minimize waste, and turn potential into profit.