Ever feel like you’re chasing shadows with lost opportunities and sluggish organic growth?

Many executives blame external factors like budget constraints or intense competition. Sound familiar? The truth is that internal issues can be equally, if not more, detrimental.

One of the worst barriers to success is denial – the refusal to acknowledge or address issues that hinder progress. This article explores how denial manifests in various roles, its impact on organizational growth, and strategies for overcoming it. By tackling these issues, leadership can foster a growth-focused culture and unlock the organization’s full potential.

Understanding Denial in Organizations

Denial is the refusal to accept reality or facts. In organizations, denial of internal shortcomings often hinders long-term success. This usually means maintaining the status quo despite client or changing market conditions. This resistant mindset can be reinforced by organizational culture, fear of change, or a misplaced sense that past success guarantees future results.

Last month, I met with a CEO who proudly discussed their company’s “growth-focused” culture and how her whole team was focused on improving organic growth. However, the more we talked, the clearer it became that she was in denial. What she labeled as a growth-orientated culture was anything but that… Denial and lack of accountability fostered entitlement, leading to stagnant growth and opening the door for competitors to win opportunities they should have won.

Ready to confront reality? Let’s peel back the layers of denial to see if you recognize these challenges in your organization:

The Six Faces of Denial

1. Program Managers (PMs) Talk about Growth but Don’t Act on it

Do your PMs talk a good growth game but are MIA when asked to perform business development (BD) tasks? Many PMs view project execution as their only responsibility. BD is not their role, and they think it is better left to others. This mindset leaves money on the table and stifles growth.

Impact

Without PM involvement in BD tasks, organizations miss out on valuable client intelligence:

• PM not leveraging relationships to identify new opportunities

• Lost recompetes and missed opportunities for on-contract growth.

How to Improve

• Establish a Growth Culture: Hold PMs accountable for engagement metrics and growth goals. Provide training on engagement skills and overcoming negative perceptions about performing BD and capture responsibilities.

• Integrate BD into Project Execution: Emphasize how engagement skills improve project success by allowing them to better understand and meet client deliverables.

• Transform PMs into BD Champions: Empower PMs to become key growth contributors by developing a growth mindset and equipping them with the necessary skills. This will unlock sustained organizational growth and maximize the value of existing client relationships.

Reflection: Are your PMs equipped and motivated to integrate BD tasks into their project management role?

2. Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) Prematurely Solve Problems

Do your SMEs often interrupt discovery to present a “quick” solution without fully understanding your client’s needs? Imagine a doctor prescribing treatment before the patient finishes describing all their symptoms. Sounds absurd, right…Yet, it happens often and can damage client trust and lead to misaligned solutions and proposals.

Impact

When SMEs jump to present solutions prematurely, they often miss the mark on real client needs, making the client feel unheard, and they shut down, effectively ending your ability to gather additional client intel. This misalignment can:

• Stops discovery and intel gathering

• Turns off Clients and damages relationships

How to Improve

Implement a self-paced training program like Hi-Q BD or Sales Essentials to provide your SMEs with essential engagement skills:

• Active Listening: Teach SMEs to listen to everything the client says.

• Focused Questioning: Train them to ask the right questions for deeper insights.

• Mastering the Pause: Encourage SMEs to pause and reflect before proposing solutions.

• Joint Call Planning: Using tools and templates for pre-call discussions can help SMEs better understand their role and when a solution discussion is appropriate.

Reflection: Are your SMEs patient and skilled enough to fully understand the client’s needs before proposing solutions?

3. Business Development prefers giving rather than getting intel.

Do your team’s client meetings revolve around capability briefings and PowerPoint presentations? Listening is a superpower, but often, BD teams fall into the trap of ‘show and tell,’ preferring to talk about what they could do and missing out on the game-changing client intel about what they should do.

Impact

By talking and not listening to client needs, BD teams miss out on critical client intelligence and fail to show the client how much they care. This approach results in:

• Missed opportunities to understand client needs

• Weak win strategies and discriminators

• Superficial client relationships

How to Improve

Transforming your approach from ‘show and tell’ to active listening and strategic questioning helps your team uncover client needs, shape their thinking, and position your solutions effectively, ensuring better outcomes and stronger client relationships. Do this by

• Training your Team on BD and Intelligence-Gathering Skills:

  • Use an immersive training program like BD Masterclass with role-playing to improve your team’s ability to engage clients and gather high-quality intel.

  • Ensure your team knows who to engage and when to engage them.

  • Encourage your team to ask fewer questions but go deeper to understand the context and impact of client needs.

  • Teach your team what can be shaped and how best to shape client thinking and requirements.

Reflection: Is your team uncovering client needs or just peddling solutions?

4. Proposal Teams Lack the Client Intel Needed to Articulate Discriminators

Does your proposal team get game-changing and actional client and competitive intel from your team, or does it look like the same intel everyone else is likely gathering? When BD, PM, and Capture teams ask the same questions as everyone else, they get the same intel, resulting in a compliant proposal that lacks differentiators.

Winning proposals don’t come from superficial engagement. They come from engaging the right clients at the right time with the right questions and digging deeper to uncover the client intelligence your proposal team craves.

Impact

• Generic proposals lack the discriminators needed to win.

• Increased focus on price as the primary discriminator

• Lower win rates

How to Improve

• Develop a Qualification Checklist for intel gathering: Ensure your team knows what specific information to gather during engagements.

• Provide Engagement Training across the organization: Provide everyone with baseline training that covers the importance of gathering intel and how something they may not realize is important could be the differentiator needed to win.

• Establish clear communication channels.

Reflection: Does your proposal team have the “golden nuggets” to differentiate your offerings?

5. The Relationship Reality Check

Does your team overestimate the strength of client relationships, thinking they have winning relationships, but in reality, it’s nothing more than friendly small talk? Clients usually reach out to their inner circle first when they need help. If your clients aren’t reaching out for help, your team is likely overestimating the quality of their client relationships.

Denial can lead to a false sense of security in client relationships. Superficial relationships don’t foster the trust and understanding needed for long-term winning relationships.

Impact

Organizations may believe they have great connections with clients while failing to realize untapped potential, resulting in:

• Missed early opportunity discussions

• Limited access to key decision-makers

• Vulnerability to competitor inroads

How to Improve

Building genuine trust and engaging with decision-makers can secure valuable intel and foster long-term partnerships, ensuring your organization remains competitive and successful.

• Regularly Assess Relationship Strength: Use tools like the HI-Q Client Relationship Quality (CRQ) assessment to evaluate client relationships.

• Develop and execute comprehensive account plans:  Ensure your team consistently develops and executes account and contact plans to engage key decision-makers.

• Deepen Relationships: Focus on building Winning Relationships at multiple levels based on trust and mutual respect through planned ongoing engagement with key decision-makers.

Reflection: Is your team developing winning relationships or merely chit-chatting with acquaintances?

6. The Capture Process Trumps Client Intelligence.

Your team diligently follows every step of the capture process but lacks the intel needed to win, causing a disconnect between what you offer and the client’s needs. With limited intel, gate reviews become solution brainstorming sessions, filled with assumptions often presented as facts. Executives must separate fact from fiction by verifying the ‘why’ behind the ‘what’ with questions like, “Who gave you that intel, and why did they respond that way?”

Impact

Intelligence is the oil that makes the acquisition process work – decisions without it are just hopes and wishes, and that’s not a great strategy for growth. Focusing on the “what and when” of the acquisition process at the expense of the “why” and “quality” of client intelligence hinders sustainable growth and results in:

• Misaligned solutions

• Poor go/no-go decisions

• Wasted resources on unwinnable opportunities

How to Improve

Focusing on high-quality intelligence and rigorous scrutiny during gate reviews will lead to better decision-making and more aligned solutions, improving your success in achieving organic growth targets.

• Value Client Intel: Everyone in the organization needs to understand the value of client intel, and opportunities without it should be disqualified early.

• Scrutinize all Client and Competitor Intel: Expect executives to ask probing questions to verify the origin and context of the intel and all information presented at opportunity and gate review

• High-Quality Intelligence Results in Better Decisions: Emphasize the value of collecting and using high-quality client and competitor intelligence. Use this intel to make informed go/no-go and bid/no-bid decisions, enhancing the overall business case.

Reflection: Is your capture process driven by quality intel or merely by following the next step of the process?

The Impact of Unaddressed Denial on Organizational Growth

When denial goes unchecked, it can have severe consequences for organizational growth, including:

• Stifled organic growth: Missed opportunities and failure to adapt.

• Decreased competitiveness: More agile competitors will gain market share

• Talent Retention: Difficulty attracting and retaining top talent

How to Overcome these Challenges

Change is difficult and requires executive leadership to develop a “Whole Organization” Growth-Focused Culture. But always remember the change paradox: Everyone is for change, but most people don’t want to change.

To address these challenges, leadership must recognize and address denial and foster a proactive approach to business development. They must:

1. Develop a Playbook: Streamlines BD efforts to enhance win rates, and fosters strong client relationships.

2. Align Goals: Align individual and team goals with overarching organizational growth objectives.

3. Set Clear Expectations: Define roles and responsibilities to ensure everyone understands how they contribute to growth.

4. Provide Professional Development and Training: Invest in training to address skill gaps and foster a growth mindset.

5. Encourage Open Communication: Create an environment where your team is comfortable sharing concerns and ideas.

6. Promote Collaboration: Break down silos and encourage collaboration between PM, BD, SMEs, and proposal teams.

7. Monitor and Measure Performance: Implement metrics to track progress and hold teams and individuals accountable for results.

8. Incentivize and Reward Performance:  Celebrate and reward activities and results.

Conclusion

Denial is a silent growth killer! By confronting these six areas of denial, organizations can position themselves to capitalize on new opportunities and achieve sustainable organic growth.

Remember, denial is not a river in Egypt or a path to consistent revenue growth. By overcoming denial, organizations can position themselves to capitalize on new opportunities and achieve sustainable, organic growth.

The choice is yours: Embrace change and confront the uncomfortable truths, or cling to comfortable denial and fade away. What will your legacy be?

Call to Action

Ready to unlock your organization’s full potential? Schedule a call today to discuss strategies for boosting your organic growth and overcoming organizational denial.