Research shows a growth mindset can elevate your performance and contribute to your company’s revenue growth.
What is it?
A growth mindset is the belief abilities are not fixed and can be developed through effort, effective strategies and input from others. It contrasts with a fixed mindset, which assumes abilities are static. Stanford University professor Carol Dweck introduced and popularised this idea in her book Mindset and in subsequent writing.
How can business leaders apply a growth mindset?
According to McKinsey & Company’s report Achieving Growth: Putting leadership mindsets and behaviours into action, top-performing organisations consistently prioritise growth, act boldly and foster adaptability. Aligning leadership actions with these principles, companies can bridge the gap between aspiration and execution.
Customers first
Customer insight is highlighted as a defining source of competitive advantage. McKinsey reports that 63 per cent of executives identify customer feedback as one of their top sources of new growth ideas, yet only 15 per cent consistently act on that information. The research stresses that genuine customer-centricity means embedding the client’s voice into decision-making and ensuring it drives innovation, product design and service delivery. Companies that do this effectively, notes McKinsey, outperform peers in both customer satisfaction and long-term growth.
Boards can foster a growth mindset from the top by modelling curiosity and continuous learning, empowering the executive team to embed adaptive thinking into strategy, culture and decision-making across the organisation. This is not only a cultural imperative, but also a governance one.
Research from INSEAD highlights that boards play a crucial role in developing dynamic capabilities that allow organisations to anticipate, reconfigure and renew strategy in response to shifting environments. The study finds that firms remain competitive by engaging in both exploration and exploitation — and that boards with these dynamic capabilities are better positioned to guide renewal, resilience and long-term performance.
This principle is increasingly evident in leading organisations and their board-endorsed strategic vision. At Telstra’s recent results presentation, CEO Vicki Brady GAICD spoke of the importance of combining infrastructure investment with a pro-growth mindset.
“We welcome the national conversation on productivity and we believe the telco sector has an important role to play,” she said. “To unlock opportunities from technology, we’ve got to have the right foundation of digital infrastructure.” Brady called for a “national digital infrastructure plan” to accelerate competitiveness, noting, “This comes with having a pro-growth mindset to policy and regulation overall.”
The growth mindset is referenced prominently in Telstra’s investor materials. Telstra Business executive Amanda Hutton reinforced this adaptive approach, describing how the division is “thinking about this segment in a fundamentally different way”. She emphasised that “having that reseller mindset is going to be important for us to make sure that our business is sustainable moving forward,” and that, “there is lots to be optimistic about”. Referring to the company’s evolving culture, Hutton added, “Maybe if we touch on just one more — growth mindset,” linking Telstra’s transformation directly to an ethos of renewal and learning.
Invest despite turbulence
McKinsey’s research reveals that leaders spend 22 per cent of their time on long-term growth initiatives, with the remainder consumed by short and medium-term objectives. This imbalance shows how near-term pressures often limit strategic ambition. The report explains that outperformers counter this bias by maintaining investment discipline and resource allocation through market cycles. By setting ambitious targets and focusing consistently on growth, they are better positioned to outperform peers on both revenue and shareholder returns.
The research also found that 83 per cent of overperforming companies say they regularly test new ideas and learn from results, demonstrating a willingness to experiment and adapt. Despite widespread recognition of the need for boldness, too few leaders translate that mindset into meaningful reallocation of resources or empowerment of teams. Growth leaders are characterised by decisive action and rapid iteration, creating cultures that embrace learning and speed rather than perfection.
A similar mindset underpins PwC Global’s recent case study on the transformation of a maritime company facing disruption after shifting to an analytics-led model. Working in partnership with PwC Australia and PwC South East Asia Consulting, the company reinvented its products, services and operating model to rebuild customer trust and competitiveness. Through a combination of human-centred design, digital expertise and governance renewal, the business achieved double-digit top-line growth and re-established its strategic position. PwC reported that board members’ outlook shifted “from being pessimistic to having an ambitious growth mindset”, enabling the company to attract new talent, pursue acquisitions and raise capital for future expansion.
Together, these examples demonstrate how leadership endorsement of adaptive thinking, from the boardroom to the executive suite, can drive renewal, innovation and sustained growth. By consciously embedding a growth mindset, boards empower management teams to turn disruption into opportunity and build the dynamic capabilities required to thrive in a changing economy.
Ditch the “know-it-alls”
BCG points to Microsoft as the standout execution of the growth mindset at scale. Under CEO Satya Nadella, the company reframed strategy around “mobile first, cloud first”, redirected investment from Windows to Azure, and placed early material bets on AI. As the 2017 annual report put it, Microsoft set out to build “best-in-class platforms and productivity services for an intelligent cloud and an intelligent edge infused with artificial intelligence.” BCG credits this generative approach to leadership with aligning strategy, capital allocation and talent around learning and renewal.
The cultural reset was just as important. Nadella sought to replace “know-it-alls” with “learn-it-alls”, embedding collaboration, customer obsession and inclusion across product groups and go-to-market teams. BCG notes that Microsoft broke down internal silos, modernised engineering practices and partnered with former rivals to solve customer problems. The results followed. By BCG’s account, Microsoft’s market capitalisation rose roughly seven-fold from 2014 to early 2021, illustrating how a board-backed growth mindset can translate into sustained strategic renewal and outsized performance.
This philosophy, to ditch know-it-alls in favour of learners, is borne out in Dweck’s original thesis.
“Individuals who believe their talents can be developed (through hard work, good strategies and input from others) have a growth mindset. They tend to achieve more than those with a more fixed mindset (those who believe their talents are innate gifts),” wrote Dweck for Harvard Business Review. “This is because they worry less about looking smart and put more energy into learning. When entire companies embrace a growth mindset, their employees report feeling far more empowered and committed; they also receive greater organisational support for collaboration and innovation.”
“In contrast,” said Dweck, “people at primarily fixed-mindset companies report more… cheating and deception among employees, presumably to gain an advantage in the talent race.”
This article first appeared as 'Growth mindset' in the November 2025 Issue of Company Director Magazine.
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