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What makes your business genuinely different? And, more importantly, could your team explain it without you in the room?
In this episode of ScaleUp Radio, Kevin Brent talks with Simon Bowen about the Models Method, the power of visual thinking, and why growing businesses need to codify the distinctive thinking that sits behind what they do.
Simon argues that many founder-led businesses have something genuinely special, but much of it remains locked inside the founder's head. As the business grows, that thinking can become diluted internally. The result is that customers increasingly struggle to see the difference externally, leaving price as the easiest point of comparison.
One of the standout messages from the conversation is:
Internal dilution leads to external commoditisation.
Simon describes a company's distinctive thinking as its source code. Marketing and sales may be the visible interface, and processes may determine how work gets delivered, but underneath them sits the way the business thinks about problems and creates value.
The challenge for a scaling business is to capture that thinking so other people can understand, communicate and apply it consistently.
In this episode, Kevin and Simon explore:
- Why founders often find it difficult to articulate how they think rather than simply what they do
- How failing to codify a company's genius can lead to internal dilution and ultimately commoditisation
- Why visual models can become a shared vocabulary across a growing organisation
- Simon's Iceberg Model, moving from the customer's known problem through the hidden problem to the deeper, often unarticulated, "ache"
- Why identifying that unknown problem can move a customer conversation away from price and towards value
- The three ingredients of an effective model: geometry, content and choreography
- How models can help leaders facilitate difficult conversations without making the discussion personal
- Simon's Conflict Resolution Matrix and the four positions of Prisoner, Sniper, Student and Volunteer
- The idea of a Genius Model as the source code for how a company thinks
- Simon's 20/80/20 framework: created thinking, curated solutions and the way they are uniquely integrated
- Why codifying founder knowledge matters increasingly as a company scales and more people become responsible for delivering its value
The one key thing…
If the thinking that makes your company special exists only in the founder's head, it becomes harder to scale without diluting it. Codify that genius so your team can understand it, communicate it and reproduce it.
There's also a powerful lesson here about customers. What they initially ask you to solve may only be the tip of the iceberg. Businesses that can identify and articulate the deeper problem customers feel but cannot yet name become sense-makers, and that can fundamentally change the value conversation.
A question for your next 90 days
What part of the value your business creates still depends too heavily on knowledge or intuition sitting inside your head?
Most founders I speak to feel busy but stuck. Plenty happening, but no real clarity on what matters most this quarter.
Here's what more than 500 interviews on this show have taught me: the founders who scale choose less, and deliver all of it.
That's what the G90 Summit is for. A structured half-day where we cut through everything competing for your attention, agree the three to five things that must happen in the next 90 days, and build the rhythm to make sure they do.
Quarterly, virtual, £97 a seat.
Smart90.co.uk/summit
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