The 4 Stages Of A Good Growth Process
The four stages of a growth process, and the specific way each one breaks. The failure points are what you actually manage against, and the stage nobody has ever had to defend is almost always the last one.
Growth is not a bag of silver-bullet ideas. It is a repeatable process with four stages: user-centric ideation, disciplined prioritization, high-velocity execution, and focused learnings. Each has a target outcome, a specific way it breaks, and a self-assessment checklist below. Run the cycle one stage at a time, and manage against the failure points rather than the target outcomes, because the failure point is what is actually happening on your team. Ask a growth lead which stage they are weakest at and it is almost always the last one, which is the one nobody has ever made them defend.
When I evaluate growth candidates for hire, I test specifically on these 4 areas of a growth process. Not their favorite growth hack, and not their channel expertise. I ask them to walk me through their process, and then I ask which of the four stages they are weakest at.
The answer to that question is at the bottom of this piece, because it is the same answer almost every time.
Each stage below has a target outcome, a specific way it breaks, and a checklist. The failure points are the part to pay attention to. A target outcome tells you what good looks like, which everyone already agrees on. The failure point tells you what is actually happening on your team right now, and that is the thing you manage against.
Why?
"Growth" is a process. The best growth leaders I know are successful because they run a diligent and repeatable process which drives business learnings and ultimately revenue growth metrics.
There are no "silver-bullet" ideas in a good growth program, there is only user-centric ideation, disciplined prioritization, high-velocity execution, and focused learnings. From startups all the way up to established companies, understanding these concepts is what separates winners from losers. It's what enables consistent outperformance in a market.
The 4 stages of a growth process
I'll go into each of these stages in more detail including target outcomes, common failure points, and a self assessment checklist. But first, some definitions -
User-Centric Ideation: This is the process for coming up with hypotheses in a user-centric way. Meaning that you root your hypotheses in foundational user understanding and research rather than personal or company-held opinions/perspectives.
Disciplined Prioritization: A framework for capturing and evaluating the ROI of hypotheses in an unbiased way. And a backlog that is resistant to turbulence and new ideas/requests which are low-ROI.
High-Velocity Execution: This is referencing your experiment velocity which is the top-of-funnel for a good experimentation program. How many experiments do you launch per week, per person on your team?
Focused Learnings: How to get the most learnings benefit from positive and negative results, sharing learnings amongst your team and broader org to amplify collective intelligence, and grouping learning goals into "themes". This helps guide you towards a comprehensive understanding of users.
The process of growth experimentation and iteration is circular. Which means, if you are not strong in every stage, then the strength of the whole cycle suffers. Weak learnings produce weak ideation. Weak ideation produces a weak backlog, and no prioritization framework saves that.
So if you are trying to improve a growth metric, there is nothing more important and impactful than also improving in these areas.
User-centric ideation
Target outcome:
- A large backlog that is high-confidence and derived from multiple idea source types.
Most common failure point:
- One low-confidence source, usually a brainstorm, and you call it a backlog.
Self-assessment checklist: Have you...
- Drawn from multiple idea sources? I.e. Comparables, user research, data analysis, group brainstorming, subject matter experts etc.
- Generated at least 10 ideas?
- Structured the ideas around a common user theme/question or metric you are trying to solve for?
Disciplined prioritization
Target outcome:
- A sort-ranking of your ideas which optimizes for return-on-investment and the lowest risk.
Most common failure point:
- Effort and confidence get skipped, and you run whatever the loudest voice in the room wants next.
Self-assessment checklist: Have you...
- Used a quantifiable framework to estimate the ROI ideas such as I.C.E. Scoring?
- Evaluated the confidence of an idea accurately by taking into account the idea source type?
- Proactively communicated your prioritization method to stakeholders and ran new ideas or requests through the same process as they come up?
- Gotten at least one other source of scoring input to mitigate your personal bias and strengthen scoring confidence?
- Applied the framework on multiple levels to maximize your team's effectiveness? I.e. Initiative/user-theme level, and individual hypothesis level.
High-velocity execution
Target outcome:
- A high experimentation velocity (rate of experiments / week / team size)
Most common failure points:
- No real process at all. The ideas exist and nothing ships.
Self-assessment checklist: Have you...
- Created a streamlined process which is straightforward, reduces back-and-forth + idle time, leverages the strengths of different functions on your team, and empowers individuals with ownership?
- Set up, automated, and consolidated the tools you use for execution? Adequately trained your team on how to use them and set reasonable expectations?
- Documented and gotten feedback on your processes?
- Designed experiments which are inherently fast because they are focused on testing the core underlying hypothesis and have de-scoped features which are not crucial to that goal?
- Developed a growth-mindset and culture on the team which prioritizes experiment execution speed over comprehensiveness?
Focused learnings
Target outcome:
- A better understanding of your users to help improve strategic direction and generate higher quality hypotheses across your team and the broader org.
Most common failure point:
- You ship the test, read the result alone and move on. Nobody else gets smarter. Dumb way to spend a test budget.
Self-assessment checklist: Have you...
- Created a standardized results analysis report dashboard with multiple segmentation views which allows you to understand the drivers of positive and negative results in an experiment?
- Ensured that you are executing statistical best practices such as a minimum runtime duration and minimum statistical significance?
- Developed a way to document experiment results that is easy to understand and digest for others?
- Created effective sharing mediums for your team and broader org?
- Proactively shared both positive and negative results?
- Tied results back to an overarching user question that you are trying to figure out?
The answer to the interview question
It is the last one. Almost always.
Not because learnings is the hardest stage. Because it is the one nobody has ever made them defend.
Which matters more than it sounds, because the cycle is circular. Weak learnings produce weak ideation. Weak ideation produces a weak backlog, and no prioritization framework saves that. Be weak at one stage and the whole cycle is weak, and the stage nobody defends is the one quietly setting the ceiling on the other three.
Common questions
What are the four stages of a good growth process?
User-centric ideation, disciplined prioritization, high-velocity execution, and focused learnings. The process is circular rather than a sequence that ends: better learnings produce better ideas, which is what makes it compound. Be weak at one stage and the whole cycle is weak.
Where do most growth programs fail?
Almost always at one specific stage. They ideate from a single low-confidence source like group brainstorming, they prioritize without honestly weighing effort and confidence, they never build a real execution process so velocity stays low, or they run experiments and never share the learnings. Find your weakest stage and fix that one first.
How do I know if my growth process is actually working?
Pressure-test each stage against its target outcome. Ideation: a large backlog drawn from multiple idea sources. Prioritization: a ROI-ranked backlog that survives new requests. Execution: a rising rate of experiments per week per person. Learnings: a standard results format that both positive and negative outcomes get shared in. If any stage can't clear its bar, that's your bottleneck.
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