Driving Growth With Purpose

Set your vision, track your progress, and stay on course

When founders tell me they’re struggling to scale their business, one of the first questions I ask is: Where exactly are you trying to get to? Because if you haven’t defined the destination, no wonder you’re feeling a bit lost.


You wouldn’t get in your car and just start driving without knowing where you were headed. And yet so many founders do the business equivalent every day - making decisions without a clear vision, chasing opportunities that don’t align, and wondering why progress feels slow or chaotic.


Start with Vision... But Make It Personal

Your growth strategy has to start with your vision, not just for the business, but for you as a founder.


What do you want to achieve? This isn’t just about topline revenue or investor returns. It's about your own definition of success.


I often think of this as a Venn diagram with three overlapping circles:


  • Contribution to the world – the impact you want to make
  • Financial reward – how much you want or need to earn
  • Work/life balance – how you want to live while doing it


The sweet spot in the middle? That’s your personal North Star.




From Vision to Strategy

Once you know where you want to go, you can look honestly at where you are now – your resources, your team, your market position, your operational maturity – and build a roadmap from A to B.


Your vision needs to be translated into strategic goals, broken down into measurable KPIs, and managed with discipline. Otherwise, it remains just a lovely idea.


Strategy Without Execution Is Just a Dream

This is where the driving analogy comes in handy.

  • Your vision is the destination.
  • Your goals are the route.
  • Your KPIs are the dashboard.
  • And your operational management is how well you drive.


You might want to get there quickly, taking the motorway with all guns blazing. Or you might prefer the scenic route, stopping along the way to build slowly and sustainably.


Either way, you need to know:

  • How much fuel you’ve got (cash flow and team energy)
  • How fast your vehicle can go (capacity and capability)
  • What traffic lies ahead (market conditions and challenges)


And just like in a car, if you’re not looking at the dashboard regularly, you risk running out of fuel, veering off course, or blowing the engine.


Tools That Can Help

There are systems and frameworks that can help you manage this journey well.


EOS (Entrepreneurial Operating System) is a popular one – especially for scaling founder-led businesses. It’s a clear, structured approach that gets your whole team aligned behind your vision, with tools for accountability and execution. But it can feel quite prescriptive and process-heavy for early-stage or creative-led businesses.


Other options include:

  • OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) – great for focus and alignment, especially in fast-moving or tech-led teams.
  • Balanced Scorecards – a more corporate-style system, but useful for tracking different performance dimensions.
  • Scaling Up (Verne Harnish) – strategic planning meets high-performance culture.


The right system depends on your leadership style, your team culture, and the complexity of your business. But some kind of system is essential.


Keep Your Eyes on the Road

Ultimately, building a growth strategy is about making intentional choices – not just about where you want to end up, but how you want to get there.


Set your destination.
Check your dashboard regularly.
And manage the drive like a pro.


That’s how you stop drifting, and start making real progress.