Concept
Growth Board
A growth board is the small group of senior people that, in Eric Ries's The Startup Way, acts as an internal startup's investors: it meets on a fixed rhythm, reviews the team's evidence of learning, and decides whether to keep funding, change direction or stop.
If an internal startup runs on metered funding, someone has to decide on the next sum. Ries's answer is the growth board: modelled on a start-up's board of directors, but sitting inside the company, with two or three people who hold real authority. Three things separate it from an ordinary management meeting. The first is what it looks at: not whether the plan was followed or how good the slides were, but the team's innovation accounting, its tested assumptions and cohort results. The second is its rhythm: meeting dates are set before the money goes out, so each meeting is also a pivot-or-persevere decision. The third is that it can say stop. A board with no power to stop an idea gives a yes that means nothing. A good board does not punish a team that ends a weak idea early and cleanly, because punishing it is exactly what teaches teams to hide bad news.
A real-life example
At a hotel group in Antalya, a four-person team testing direct bookings answers to a board of two: the general manager and the finance director. Its first meeting is set for week five before the work begins. On that day there is one question on the table: did returning guests book directly when offered early check-in?
How to use it
- 1Keep the board small, and limit it to people with the authority to continue, change or stop.
- 2Set the meeting dates before the money goes out.
- 3Review the evidence, not the presentation: tested assumptions and cohort results.