What kills growth inside middle-market firms? Join Jack Sweeney, co-host of CFO Thought Leader, as he interviews Robert Sher on details about his newest book Mighty Midsized Companies: How Leaders Overcome 7 Silent Growth Killers.  Rob reveals the seven silent growth killers unique to midsize firms and explores some of the approaches CFOs can use to detect and overcome the organizational shortcomings that routinely prove fatal for growth.

Listen to the entire podcast here.  

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Too much innovation at the top of a midsized company can kill growth.

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The world is littered with the hollowed-out shells of firms that tried to do too much and spent too big trying to grow too fast. Many of those firms were midsize companies; they didn’t have the resources of the big firms to sustain setbacks, nor were they scrappy like most small companies, making do with the resources they had.

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Kiss growth goodbye without processes.  Truth be told, I get emotionally upset every time I see a firm with promising growth blow it due to poor processes.

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I saw a post titled, “Forget Setting Goals. Focus on This Instead” and I couldn’t stop myself from writing a short piece in support of goal setting…

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Lately it seems like just when a company has a winning strategy figured out, things change, and back to the drawing board they must go.  This won’t change anytime soon: we are in a volatile world.

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CEOs of midsized firms must learn to stop tinkering with their strategy.  Most midsized firms have core businesses begging to scale, and tinkering with a successful strategy kills growth.

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CFOs of growth companies mustn’t limit themselves to finance.  In the absence of a strategic HR leader, they are the most likely partner of the CEO to provide HR leadership, both through strategy and by introducing critical processes.

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Robert Sher was quoted in the Inc. Magazine’s September print issue in this article about innovation— asserting that too much innovation can actually hurt your business.  The article reviews statistics that prove the point, and distinguishes between different types of innovation.

It underscores the importance of picking the best ideas—and developing them, as well as focusing on scaling high-growth core business opportunities to cash in on proven innovations, and to reduce focus on new ideas during those intense high-growth times.  Read the story on-line here.

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I was walking through Atlanta airport returning from a client session when a CFO spotted me and told me about how he’d spurred growth in his firm.

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