Growth doesn’t happen by accident. To achieve sustainable, profitable growth, organizations must become disciplined at working “on” the business, not just “in” it. The secret to business performance is developing the right habit of strategic thinking. This is one of the key principles in the Rhythm of Work that has helped thousands of companies over the last two decades.
That’s the core message of Chapter 1 of the bestselling book Rhythm: How to Achieve Breakthrough Execution and Accelerate Growth by Patrick Thean. This chapter introduces the power of implementing a regular “Think Rhythm” as the engine behind strategic growth.
It’s easy for leadership teams to get trapped solely operating in the day-to-day of their business. While they strive to satisfy customers and hit quarterly goals, they fail to carve out time for strategic thinking. There’s always a crisis demanding attention or a fire to put out.
Paradoxically, you can’t grow without stepping back periodically to think about the bigger picture. As author Patrick Thean puts it:
“We would like to think that success happens overnight, that winning moves appear overnight, but they don’t. The lesson we can learn from AvidXchange is that it takes the habit of spending time—on a regular and consistent basis—working on and refining your strategy to create success.”
A Think Rhythm consists of building in dedicated time for strategic thinking at multiple intervals:
According to Thean, your Think Rhythm should focus on two areas:
Every year, take time to review and sharpen the core elements of your strategy, including:
Getting clarity on these elements ensures strategic alignment across the organization. With that foundation, growth initiatives can be more cohesive.
The second focus area is developing your “winning moves” – the 1-3 big bets that will drive the bulk of your growth over the next 3-5 years.
Winning moves have two characteristics:
Your Think Rhythm provides dedicated time to brainstorm, assess, and pressure-test winning moves. This ensures you maintain a pipeline of innovative growth strategies versus trying to create them overnight when growth stalls magically.
Thean suggests asking yourself these questions to uncover potential winning moves:
Analyzing through these lenses may reveal opportunities sitting hidden in plain sight.
Once you’ve brainstormed candidate-winning moves, you need a process to rank them objectively. Thean recommends assessing each potential activity on two dimensions:
Plotting the moves on a matrix of Revenue Impact vs. Ease of Implementation makes it easy to visualize which actions have the optimal blend of high impact with low complexity. Focus resources on those first.
The key lesson from this chapter is that growth stems from regularly scheduled strategic thinking, not one-off annual retreats or offsites. Building the Think Rhythm habit is crucial to staying focused on the future and having a continuous pipeline of innovative growth moves.
Organizations need it to become reactive and evolve their offerings, business models, and sources of competitive advantage over time. Establishing Think Rhythms insulates leaders from the tyranny of the urgent and provides the space needed to craft and refine deliberate, high-impact growth strategies.
That’s just a high-level summary of Chapter 1 of Rhythm by Patrick Thean. You can download the book summary by clicking the button below. Or you can drop us a line; we’d be happy to discuss how we can work together.
Harnessing the Power of Think, Plan, Do® Rhythms for Accelerated Growth
How to Get into a Think Rhythm
Annual Planning: Does Your Plan Include Winning Moves?
Revenue Growth Strategy: 9 Steps to Create a New Revenue Growth Plan
Strategic Growth Initiatives: Create Your 3 Year Strategic Growth Plan Wisely