6 Powerful Factors for Exceptional Growth

Source: Lou Pambianco, used with permission

In the 1980s, Gestalt therapist Lou Pambianco, with Dave Richards and Ken Marineau, founded their consulting firm, Corporate Development Partners, working with startups that skyrocketed into billion-dollar companies, including Intel, Cisco, Sun, Compaq, and Apple (Pambianco, 2021, personal communication). When the founder and CEO of Connor Peripherals asked them, “How are we going to grow at the rate we’re growing without blowing apart at the seams?” they began their exceptional growth research.

In the summer of 1989, to find out how Apple, Sun, and Compaq had grown from zero to a billion dollars in 10 years or less, Pambianco and his partners interviewed these companies’ teams and CEOs. They discovered the six factors of the Exceptional Growth Model, which they shared with each participating company. In October 1989, they trained 170 Connor managers on the model. The company introduced four new disk drives in January 1990, grew to over a billion dollars in revenue in four and a half years, and became Fortune’s company of the year.

The Exceptional Growth Model

The Exceptional Growth Model combines six powerful factors that can lead to growth, success, and flourishing for both companies and individuals.

1. Vision. People in these exceptional companies were guided by a shared vision. They knew who they were and where they were going. “Vision,” Pambianco says, “is so critical. Can you imagine Jobs in his parents’ garage in Sunnyvale, saying, ‘Apple will change the world?' And that remains the vision of Apple to this very day.”

“Vision,” Pambianco says, “drives the culture, the values, and the behaviors—the right brain of an organization. The vision also drives the left brain—the strategy, the tactical plan, the business model. The exceptional growth companies integrate the right brain and the left brain in a bimodal model. They're in balance.” When a company’s values and actions are out of balance, Pambianco says, they “become ‘schizophrenic,’ meaning that they say one thing but do another. There's anger and resentment and disappointment,” and imbalanced organizations ultimately fail.

2. Strategy. Successful companies implement their vision with strategic action. Pambianco says, “There are many roads to Rome. Pick one that gets you there. These companies absolutely picked the road that got them to Rome. So their strategy was dead-on.”

3. Enduring teams. The synergy of enduring teams is another powerful factor, too often overlooked by companies that treat their employees like replaceable parts. In exceptional companies, Pambianco says, “Their members were there at the beginning and they’re continuing to work together. They didn't have a revolving door.”

4. Investment in infrastructure. Exceptional companies are focused. They maintain their balance by investing in the necessary infrastructure to support their teams. Pambianco points out that giving teams “the tools to succeed is critical.”

5. Reflecting the founder’s identity. As Pambianco points out, Steve Jobs had a very strong sense of identity—“and he projected himself into pretty much anything and everything he did beginning with the Apple C and then the Macintosh. The Macintosh is a projection of Jobs. It reflected who he was and became a personal productivity tool for the individual user. And that became an incredible success.” Pambianco goes on to say, “The Mac was followed by the iPod, a personal entertainment tool; then the iPad, initially a personal library; and the iPhone, a personal communication tool and now a pocket-sized personal computer.” Pambianco says, “Think of the ‘i,’ as ‘I’ in the product name not ‘i’ standing for internet. The Apple products honor the personal identity of Jobs and the individual user.”

6. Putting the team’s objective ahead of personal gain. The final factor is altruism. As a Gestalt therapist, Pambianco recognizes that “the whole is greater than the sum of the parts.” It’s common, he says, “for each one of us to want to be recognized, sometimes at the expense of others. But that wasn't the case in these exceptional companies. There was a saying at Conner that if a ball got dropped, you could hear heads knocking as people dove for the ball to ensure that it didn't hit the ground.” When the team puts the objective above personal gain, he says, “everybody wins.”

The Exceptional Growth Model in Our Personal Lives

The Exceptional Growth Model combines powerful factors that can help us all flourish.

• Vision. Pambianco sees “the ability to visualize internally” as essential to our human nature, explaining how “I, in a quiet moment, can visualize a direction where I want to be in life. Once I visualize the direction, I then articulate the vision. At that point, the vision becomes manifest in life.” This ability, he says, can bring us “incredible success in life. There's hope. There's resilience. There's inspiration and engagement.”
• Strategy. Visualizing our goals and developing the strategies to achieve them is the heart of hope psychology (Snyder, 1994). To flourish, we all need meaningful goals that reflect our personal identity together with the pathways (infrastructure) and motivation to achieve them (Feldman & Snyder, 2005; Seligman, 2011; Snyder et al, 1991).
• Positive Relationships. Combining enduring teams and altruism, putting the team’s objective ahead of personal gain, can promote exceptional growth in individuals. Research has shown that positive relationships enable us to flourish (Seligman, 2011). These relationships broaden and build our capacity to live happier, more meaningful lives (Fredrickson & Joiner, 2002), and studies have shown a strong connection between positive relationships and better health (Cohen, 2004).

Source: Lou Pambianco, used with permission

Today, Lou Pambianco is applying the Exceptional Growth Model to the biotech incubator, Startup Sandbox, founded in affiliation with the University of California, Santa Cruz in 2017. Working “for the betterment of humanity and the health of our planet,” this new venture connects with the university’s outstanding researchers who have mapped the human genome and developed one of the largest RNA research centers, becoming a world leader in sustainability and diversity. Their research has been cited in thousands of publications worldwide.

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Sandbox participants include the university’s scientists, postdoctoral researchers, and graduate students as well as people who apply through its website. These new entrepreneurs have access to low-cost laboratory, office, and shared space as well as valuable networking opportunities. Pambianco counsels each of them on the Exceptional Growth Model as they build their fledgling companies.

Source: Lou Pambianco, used with permission

The Exceptional Growth Model continues to change the world, filling Lou Pambianco’s life with vitality, joy, and meaning. When people ask him why, at this point in his life, he’s working with Startup Sandbox, he says, “If I was alive during the 16th century, in Florence, Italy, I would have had the opportunity to engage change agents for the world. That's what's happening in the Silicon Valley, Santa Cruz area. Why would I not want to be part of this?”

By combining vision, strategy, and positive relationships, we can all create opportunities for exceptional growth within and around us. How can you apply this model to your own life?

This post is for informational purposes and should not substitute for psychotherapy with a qualified professional.