Founder’s Edition, by Joseph Neu
Like so many companies, NeuGroup is rising to the challenge of becoming exponential.
The recent FinConnect event we helped facilitate for SoftBank’s Vision Fund I CFOs helped me to see NeuGroup’s own path to higher growth, thanks to the insights of the keynote speaker we enlisted (hat tip to Peter Marshall at EY). The speaker was the futurist Salim Ismail, author of Exponential Organizations.
- Mr. Ismail advises companies on how to achieve exponential growth and thrive rather than be disrupted by digital technology and the transformative forces it is unleashing on almost every type of business. His research has identified 11 attributes that define exponential organizations (aka ExOs) or those likely to scale successfully.
What’s our MTP? According to Mr. Ismail, you need at least four attributes of an ExO to succeed and the most important is to have a massively transformative purpose (MTP), which is a higher aspirational objective that captures hearts and minds inside and outside the organization. TED’s “Ideas Worth Spreading” is one example.
We took a big step in this direction by being all about the success of our members and those who serve them to reach their full professional potential with connect, exchange and distill: Connecting you to share and learn, and distilling insight from those exchanges for mutual success. Yet, that’s not massively transformative enough, simple enough nor aspirational enough to grow to our potential. So look for this to change.
Suppress the immune system. The other important takeaway is that to succeed with exponential thinking and achieve unthinkable growth you must overcome the immune system that exists in any organization, which not only resists change but works actively to kill it and stop the transformation from happening.
Knowing that this is the case in every organization makes it easier for me to lean into the effort to change—and it should help you change, too. Why not ask every stakeholder to help embrace a new, massively transformative purpose and help you fight the natural organizational immune system and transform your organizations?
Help us help you. We are here to help you do this. And since we value those who give to get, I am also asking you to help me transform NeuGroup to reach its full potential and embrace a more transformative purpose to connect all finance professionals who want to share and learn—not just peer group members—everyone, everywhere, in any way we can imagine.
Mutual value. In this way, we encourage every financial professional to help your companies become exponential organizations and embrace a digital mindset. This will also shift finance leaders from being naturally associated with being part of the immune system (e.g., “What you’re proposing is not in the budget plan.”)
- We pledge to help you with our unique knowledge, insight and connections. And if you also help us scale our ability to source new connections and insight validated via knowledge exchange, we will in turn create more mutual value and wealth for our entire community—and the crowd beyond it that shares our mission.
Coming to this insight (don’t be afraid of a massively transformative purpose and realize that it is natural for the immune system in your organization to fight your effort to embrace exponential thinking) has been liberating.
- I hope every organization reading this can, like me, be liberated and gain the confidence needed to transform. I expect 2020 to be the most transformative year of my entire career for everyone who is part of NeuGroup.
Thanks for being a part of it.
