Newsletter
By Aster Angagaw
October 6, 2025
Why Focusing on the Right Inputs Drives Sustainable Success
When leaders talk about growth, the conversation often jumps straight to revenue. Quarterly earnings, market share gains, and valuation multiples dominate boardroom dashboards. But revenue is a lagging indicator. By the time the number is reported, the actions that drove it—or undermined it—are already in the past.
Organizations that achieve sustainable and accelerated success don’t obsess only over the output. They invest deliberately in the inputs that compound into growth. These inputs, when viewed collectively, form what I call growth capital—an organizational asset as real and valuable as financial or physical capital.
The Inputs That Compound Into Growth
The most resilient organizations measure, invest in, and continuously improve the levers that drive growth before it shows up in the P&L. These include:
- Customer Understanding: Institutionalizing listening systems to anticipate evolving needs and innovate more effectively.
- Talent and Capability Development: Growth follows when people grow through upskilling, reskilling, and strong leadership pipelines.
- Innovation Capacity: The cultural conditions for experimentation, rapid learning, and collaboration matter as much as R&D spend.
- Operational Agility: Data-driven systems and flexible processes that allow organizations to pivot without losing momentum.
- Partnership Ecosystems: Leveraging suppliers, alliances, and communities to expand reach and accelerate scale.
- Trust and Culture: The driver of discretionary effort, loyalty, and resilience during times of disruption.
When leaders broaden their lens to include these inputs, they unlock what MIT Sloan calls a “system of growth”—where reinforcing loops between people, processes, and technology continuously generate value (MIT Sloan Management Review).
As Jim Collins reminds us in Good to Great, “Greatness is not a function of circumstance. Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice and discipline.” Sustainable growth isn’t the product of luck or market timing—it’s the outcome of leaders who consistently choose to invest in the right inputs, even when the payoff isn’t immediate.
Collins’ Flywheel Effect underscores this: organizations that keep pushing on the small but vital levers—talent, innovation, trust, and agility—build momentum that compounds into breakthrough results. Growth works the same way. Every deliberate investment strengthens the cycle, creating resilience and acceleration over time.
Growth in the Age of AI
AI raises both opportunities and risks. On one hand, it accelerates many of the inputs: predictive analytics deepen customer understanding, generative AI enables faster innovation, and intelligent automation enhances agility. On the other hand, it exposes gaps—especially in talent and culture. Technology without trust, ethics, and skilled people becomes a liability, not a growth engine.
Leaders who integrate AI responsibly place people at the center of transformation, amplifying growth capital instead of replacing it. As Accenture notes in its research on the future of work, sustainable outcomes come when humans and AI collaborate to reinvent work and workforce models (Accenture).
The Leadership Imperative
The question for leaders is not “How do we grow revenue?” but “What investments in growth capital are we making today that will sustain and accelerate revenue tomorrow?”
Boards and executives who place growth capital on equal footing with financial capital send a clear signal: growth is not a quarterly event—it is a strategic asset. The real challenge is knowing: Which inputs are you strengthening—and which might be eroding your organization’s growth capital?
🔗 About the Author Aster Angagaw is a board-experienced CEO and global transformation leader who has led multi-billion-dollar profit and loss statements (P&Ls). She is the author of We Are So Much More, founder of Astellara, and a frequent speaker on leadership, organizational thriving, and the intersection of people, technology, and enterprise value.
✍️ Author’s Note: Portions of this article were developed with the assistance of AI tools, including Microsoft Copilot and ChatGPT, to help synthesize research, validate data sources, and refine structure. All external data points are drawn from publicly available, credible sources (MIT Sloan Management Review, Accenture Insights, Jim Collins’ Good to Great). All insights, conclusions, and final edits are my own.