Every established business is sitting on growth it can’t see. I’m talking about underused capabilities, forgotten relationships and even insights and opportunities hiding in plain sight. For years LEGO ignored its adult user community. Now they embrace them and benefit from their purchasing power.
When the environment shifts, the instinct is to chase new things, worrying about the need to “go digital” at any cost. The better move is usually to see your business’s essence more clearly, double down on what truly differentiates you, and use that as the launchpad for growth.
Finding your Hidden Assets is the first move. Here are four more that compound it:
- Stay focused on the customer. Trends come and go, but serving real needs never goes out of fashion. Law firms will keep being changed by AI and other tech, but they will always need to build and maintain trust.
- However amazing the tech, trust your commercial savvy. You’ve stayed in business for a reason. Don’t abdicate judgment just because the language is technical or the capabilities dazzling. Marketing automation used judiciously might be helpful, but complex branching algorithms that send a zillion reminders every 30 minutes before a meeting that’s already in an executive’s calendar? They’re spam.
- Simplify instead of adding complexity. When facing change, the temptation is to bolt on more systems, teams, and processes. Often the real breakthrough comes from streamlining. The Sunday Times reduced its subscription options from a dizzying fast-food menu of combinations to three simple choices. Subscriptions jumped 127%.
- Balance urgency with patience. Move fast where you can – but growth is better thought of as a series of compounding steps, not one big leap. Remember the chaos when Heathrow Terminal 5 opened? They thought they could implement it in one big bang. It’s a decent experience now, but it took a long time to recover their reputation.
Established businesses can draw confidence from assets and commercial savvy built up over many years and use that to meet the moment.
© Andy Bass 2026