Equip your organization for future growth

A look inside ASA’s VITALITY Growth Assessment Tool.

By Pam Henderson, Ph. D, CEO, NewEdge

The ASA VITALITY Growth Assessment Tool is a survey and report to equip you and your organization for future growth.

It offers ASA members a bold new strategic tool to help confidentially assess readiness for growth and success in the future. The assessment will challenge you to think differently about your business and raise awareness about positioning your company.

It provides confidential insights on areas of strengths and shows you where to invest more time and money in order to support your future goals. Whether you are comfortable with your current performance or looking for a change, the Vitality Growth Assessment Tool is designed to meet your needs. Distributors, manufacturers and reps are all welcome to participate.

This tool is sponsored by ASA to provide your own confidential report regarding the structure and strength of your organization’s corporate growth strategy, without getting into the content of your specific strategy.

It looks at six areas: how your organization is driving focus, using trends to develop a view of the future, your vision and strategy and how you are structuring to meet these goals. You will learn how to better drive alignment, which is foundational for growth. You will also learn where your organization is passionate for improvement — which makes driving change that much easier.

It may seem surprising, but all this can be discerned from generic questions that do not require you to provide any insight into where or how you plan to grow – e.g., future investments, acquisitions, talent strategy, etc.

Members have already benefited from the assessment. Here is just a sample of outcomes: external environment could negatively impact their business or open new opportunities.

One organization discovered that its staff did not think the company was innovative, but had a big appetite to improve in that area. The leaders embraced this challenge as they, too, were hungry for greater innovation.

They leveraged the report back to staff to show how they were supporting and engaging staff in future innovation and culture efforts. Communication was strong and the response was incredibly positive. Had they not had that insight regarding the staff appetite for change, the leadership would have missed an excellent opportunity to create momentum, excitement, and the right dialogues.

Another organization found it had good strategy practices in its senior team but that the rest of the organization was not aware of the depth of work being done to guide the company. The results showed that the senior leaders were aligned on the high-quality work they were doing with trends, visioning and strategy, but they were not communicating these efforts to staff.

As a result, the overall alignment scores were low. Once the leadership understood this, it opened the door for sharing insights and inputs into strategy that made the direction of the company even more compelling. Communication was all that was needed to create a more positive culture.

The company engaged in a trends deep dive across their team which was both informative and collaborative, driving new discussions internally. They are now taking that to the next level and exploring even broader trends with a broader group of staff and board members to create a more external-facing culture and informed approach to growth.

Why should your company jump at taking this assessment?

ASA is responding to a trend in VITALITY: ASA has done extensive research on member needs. It recognized and has responded to the needs for innovation in the industry and for help with workforce development.

But ASA also has seen a pronounced need for organizations to develop stronger short- and long-term strategies. Without clear visions and strategies that respond to trends and are embedded in the way they work, ASA members will not fare well in response to trends.

To that end, ASA commissioned NewEdge, a growth strategy and innovation firm, to use its extensive published research on strategy and experience in our industry to create this assessment. It is ASA’s hope that members will use this survey and report to bolster their efforts towards growth and vitality considering the major changes facing the industry.

A third organization realized that it was not really using trends to help it grow. Their current practices were unsophisticated and there were several sources and ways of looking at trends that they were not doing. They saw that rapid changes in the

Employee insights might surprise you: This is not another employee engagement survey. Instead, it is a way to capture a cross-section of opinions from every area of your organization on how your staff sees the direction of the company. By checking alignment within the organization, you will understand whether your people are ready to move forward in a given direction or whether you need to take time to get people on board before moving forward with your strategic growth plans. Once you are all rowing in the same direction, the path to success is a lot easier.

Improving strategic practice: Whether you have a strategic planning process or even a written strategic plan, this tool will give you an idea of what good could look like. It brings together insights from both distributors and manufacturers to show what good, better and best practices are. You will learn how to start your journey looking at trends or improve it to rival best practices. You will see the ways companies’ structure for growth from those just starting their journey to seasoned strategy leaders. Either way, use the report as a self-reflection on how you are driving growth. Look at where your organization is most interested in improving and leverage their appetite for taking on new initiatives.

Who can take the VITALITY Growth Assessment?

All members of ASA, including distributors, manufacturers, reps, master distributors and service providers. From the smallest of companies to the largest of corporations, and even individual business units can benefit from the insights. It only takes a few minutes to register by visiting https://newedgeopportunity.com/growth-assessment/asa or learn more at https://www.asa.net/Industry-Intelligence/ Vitality-Business-Assessment. Once registered, the survey links will be sent out to your staff with a deadline of two weeks to respond.

Leadership participants will receive the executive version of the survey, which will take them about 25 minutes to respond. Other staff will receive a shorter survey that should only take 5-10 minutes.

After the two weeks have passed, an email will be sent to the survey sponsor with a link to your company report. This customized report demonstrating your organization’s vitality, alignment and appetite for change, as well as additional educational resources, will be downloadable as a PDF and can be shared with the organization at the level you see fit.

In addition to the PDF report, you may meet with the NewEdge team for one hour to understand the report and discuss the findings. Your answers show where your current practices are and give tips on how to improve. There are educational resources from ASA linked to the sections of the report so you can utilize these resources for growth.

Your company has a chance to build better practice in strategy using a very low-cost tool. We encourage you strongly to jump on this offer as it will open your eyes to new and often easier ways to grow.

Register today!

Pam Henderson is the CEO and founder of NewEdge and has been involved in innovation and organizational growth for the past 25 years. Pam pioneered NewEdge’s trademarked Opportunity Thinking approach to innovation that has assisted organizations in creating sustainable growth by focusing on opportunities rather than ideas. NewEdge is ASA’s confidential partner in offering the VITALITY Growth Assessment Tool to members.