Never Trust a Perfect Growth Strategy

AI in the Boardroom for Strategic Growth Planning

If AI handed you a perfect roadmap for doubling your business, would you follow it?

That’s the question manufacturers and distributors face as they enter annual planning cycles. Forecasts are built. Investments are debated. Last year’s numbers are scrutinized. But AI isn’t looking backward—it’s pointing ahead.

The real challenge isn’t whether AI can generate the roadmap. It’s whether leadership teams can envision it clearly enough—and trust it enough—to execute.

The Hidden Risk of a Poor Growth Plan

For boards and CEOs, the bigger risk isn’t missing out on AI. It’s wasting capital, time, and opportunity on a poorly informed or misaligned plan.

I’ve watched leadership teams get trapped in this cycle. On paper, the plan looks perfect. In practice, missteps in market entry, capacity investments, or M&A sequencing drain resources, erode trust, and set growth back for years.

The best leaders don’t chase the perfect plan. They chase the believable one—the plan that stretches ambition, but still grounds the team in conviction.

From Rearview Mirror to Radar

Data maturity follows a familiar journey:

• Descriptive – What happened?
• Diagnostic – Why did it happen?
• Predictive – What’s likely to happen next?
• Prescriptive – What should we do about it?

Most manufacturers and distributors are stuck in the first two. AI helps leaders move into prediction and prescription—seeing demand shifts earlier, forecasting competitive pressure, and recommending actions before others react.

But AI alone doesn’t overcome imagination bias. I’ve sat in boardrooms where teams can’t see past the way things have always been done. AI will surface opportunities leadership has never considered—but the question is whether they’re willing to stretch their thinking and act on it.

The Growth Capture Curve

This is where discipline matters. Without a framework, opportunity sizing quickly turns into wishful thinking. Most firms can identify attractive markets. The real discipline is asking: can we realistically win there?

The Growth Capture Curve™ is the proprietary model Dorn uses with leadership teams to make growth strategies both bold and believable:

1. Opportunity – Spot high-potential markets, categories, or verticals
2. Plausibility– Stress-test barriers, competition, and channel dynamics
3. Barriers – Identify friction points and design ways to break through
4. Share Capture – Pinpoint vulnerable competitors and systematically win their customers
5. Execution – Resource, sequence, and scale programs to sustain and defend growth

The question isn’t just where can we grow? It’s where can we win—and how fast can we prove it?

A Real-World Example: From Playbook to Breakthrough

A $100M B2B manufacturer set out to double revenue in five years—an ambitious goal that would stretch capital, people, and leadership conviction. On paper, the plan looked familiar—add coverage, launch products, expand markets, invest in capacity. A classic growth playbook.

But once we ran the growth opportunities through the Growth Capture Curve, the boardroom conversation shifted. AI-driven insights reframed the toughest decisions—and Dorn’s benchmarking provided the real-world guardrails that helped leadership trust the outcomes:

• Capacity trade-offs – Should the company build capabilities & expertise internally or buy them through acquisition? Benchmarking against peers showed how the wrong call could tie up capital for years.
• Market realities – Some large markets looked attractive but were locked down by entrenched competitors. At the same time, overlooked segments—smaller, fragmented, less glamorous—were ripe for entry. Our external perspective gave leaders the confidence to walk away from battles they couldn’t win.
• Margin leverage – Not all growth was created equal. Some bets drained resources without improving profitability, while others created the headroom to reinvest in R&D, sales, and marketing. Data + experience helped distinguish between the two.
• Speed to win – Some plays could deliver momentum quickly and build credibility with the board, while others would stall and burn time. Our benchmarks showed which sequencing paths top performers use to accelerate traction.

The leadership team didn’t just adjust the plan—they rewrote it. They redirected resources away from unwinnable battles, doubled down where the odds of winning were real, and prioritized the moves that would expand both revenue and margin.

The result? The company is now on track to hit its doubling target a full year early, while expanding margins and freeing capital for the next wave of growth.

The breakthrough wasn’t AI alone. It was AI clarity paired with Dorn’s guidance and benchmarking—challenging assumptions, stretching imagination, and anchoring the team in a plan they believed in enough to execute with confidence.

Bridging the Trust Gap

AI can hand you a strategy that looks perfect on paper. But if leadership doesn’t trust it, nothing changes.

The best strategies succeed when teams believe in them enough to act decisively. That’s why outside perspective matters.

Our role isn’t to provide generic AI outputs. It’s to translate AI foresight into strategies that survive the boardroom test—stress-tested against barriers, benchmarked against top performers, and designed for execution.

The Growth Capture Curve brings together:

• Experience – Decades in growth planning, market intelligence, and category leadership
• Benchmarks – Hundreds of industrial engagements across markets and products
• Scenario Planning – Balancing capacity, capital, competitor intensity, and organizational readiness

The result isn’t a perfect strategy. It’s a strategy leaders can believe in—and win with.

Takeaway

For boards and CEOs, the cost of a bad growth plan is too high—capital squandered, timing lost, opportunity wasted.

AI sharpens the lens. The Growth Capture Curve ensures what you see is believable and executable.

The real question isn’t whether AI can build a roadmap. It’s whether your team can trust it enough to act.

Never trust a perfect strategy. Trust the one you can win with.

If you’re preparing for your next growth cycle, the question isn’t just where to grow—it’s where you can win. Competition is moving faster and smarter than ever before, and the stakes have never been higher. Dorn helps leaders cut through bias, identify winnable opportunities, benchmark against top performers, and build growth plans their teams believe in enough to execute.

Reach out to start building your Winnable Growth Strategy >>