Hello Friend,

In this issue, we have:

• RESEARCH: Why growth governance is a science problem, not a performance problem
  

• IN PRACTICE: How Verizon Connect's COO turned a governance framework into a transformation decision
• EVENTS: Live webinar on Aug. 27, Impact events in SF and Brazil, and a 4-city European Roadshow this fall
  
• GROWTH INSIGHTS QUESTION OF THE MONTH: What would help your team close more deals this quarter?
• NEW TOOL! GROWTH PROBABILITY ASSESSMENT: Five inputs. One number. Find out the probability your system reaches your target.
• REVENUE ACADEMY COURSES: Enroll in upcoming courses across the Bowtie

RESEARCH: Growth Isn't a People Problem. It's a System Problem.

Most leaders respond to a growth miss the same way: add people, increase activity, spend more at the top of the funnel. The logic is intuitive. It is also wrong.

New research from WbD Chief Innovation Officer Dr. Dan Patterson, published in the Growth Journal, makes the case directly. In an AI-native environment, growth runs on systems. Systems compound under the right conditions. Left ungoverned, they decay. The management task has changed. Growth is no longer primarily a people-performance problem. It is a system-performance problem.

That shift has three practical implications.

Find the constraint. Revenue shortfalls are lagging indicators. By the time they surface in the numbers, the constraint has already been compounding for months. The Growth Matrix maps underperformance across the intersections of acquisition, retention, and expansion — and across GTM motions — to make the binding constraint visible. Fix the biggest culprit first. The others reshuffle in priority. Repeat.

Act before the constraint shifts. Constraints do not stay put. What limits growth today may not limit it next quarter. Growth Mapping makes the evolving requirements of each GTM motion visible across time, so the right actions can be executed at the right moment — not in reaction to a miss that has already occurred.

Replace forecasting with confidence. A forecast shows what must happen. It does not show whether the system can actually produce it. Probability-based growth planning replaces single-outcome forecasts with a confidence model — shifting the question from "will we hit $160M?" to "what is the probability our system delivers $160M, and what changes those odds?" That is not a small shift. It is the difference between faith and confidence.

Together, these three capabilities form a governing system. Not a dashboard. Not a quarterly review. A discipline that helps leadership steer the revenue engine in real time, protecting this year's number without undermining the conditions required for compounding.

– Bottom Line –

Governing a growth system requires a different discipline than managing a team. Most leaders still pull the old levers: add headcount, increase activity, spend more at the front of the funnel. Growth Governance replaces that reflex with a structured approach to identifying constraints, timing interventions, and understanding the probability behind every target.

These insights are adapted from an article authored by Dr. Dan Patterson, CIO of Winning by Design. The full piece can be found in our Growth Journal - subscribe here (or read here if already subscribed). 

Figure 1: Growth Planning reveals the probability of reaching the target, enabling better, earlier decisions.

IN PRACTICE: Verizon Connect — Governing Before the Miss

Growth failure is usually treated as an execution problem. Crystal Kennon, COO of Verizon Connect, came to Impact Summit 2026 with a different read: most of the time, it is a design flaw in the system.

The situation. Verizon Connect came in with a strong sales engine. The ambition was end-to-end transformation — recentering the entire business on customer experience. The challenge was not ambition. It was focus. Time was limited, incremental progress was not sufficient, and the organization needed to know where to place its bets.

The pain. Without a clear way to prioritize, every initiative competed for the same constrained resources. The question was not "should we transform?" It was "where do we focus first, and how do we know we're right?"

The decision. Kennon and her team made a data-driven choice to pursue transformation through the Bowtie framework, grounded in a focus on certainty rather than activity. They chose a partner who understood the SaaS operating model, not just the sales motion.

The impact. The transformation generated measurable returns across both human and AI investment. It created a path for change without destroying the existing business. Most importantly, it surfaced a new way of thinking: GTM is a system problem, and system problems require system solutions.

Kennon's takeaways from the process were direct. Being data-driven is a precondition, not a differentiator. Clarity — that GTM is a system problem and a system solution — removes the guesswork from prioritization. And insight, specifically surfacing hidden constraints and the areas of focus that actually support the aspiration, is what turns ambition into a confident trajectory.

The frame that anchored everything: the organization now had a choice. Manage the number after the fact. Or govern the system before the miss.

They chose the latter.

— The Bottom Line —

Verizon Connect did not transform by working harder or spending more. They transformed by getting clearer on where the constraint lived and building the confidence to act on that clarity. The lesson for any revenue leader: more ambition is rarely the unlock. Higher confidence in the system's ability to execute is.

This case was presented by Crystal Kennon, COO of Verizon Connect, at Impact Summit 2026 in San Francisco. Learn more about how WbD works with enterprise revenue teams.

Figure 2: Verizon Connect framed its transformation decision as a choice between two operating philosophies: managing the miss after it happens, or governing the system conditions that determine whether it happens at all.

EVENTS:  A Big Month — and an Even Bigger Fall

- LIVE WEBINAR: BACK TO GROWTH — ENGINEERING AI INTO YOUR GTM PERFORMANCE | AUGUST 27, 2026 | VIA ZOOM / Your board is asking what AI is doing to your growth engine. Most CROs still can't give a straight answer. Jacco van der Kooij returns to the fundamentals of performance management to close that gap — delivering a working model for where AI belongs in your growth engine today, engineered with the same science and method discipline WbD applies to any revenue system.

Register here.

 - IMPACT SUMMER SERIES | Q3 2026 | BAY AREA / Every GTM leader is asking the same question this year: how do you actually get value from AI without losing what makes your reps good at their jobs? The Impact Summer Series is where Bay Area revenue leaders get real answers. AI amplifies good selling — it doesn't replace it. Join a hand-picked group of GTM leaders for a working session on where AI genuinely moves the needle, and where your team still has to do the work.

August 18 in Burlingame > Request an invite
September 17 San Francisco > Request an invite 

- IMPACT SUMMIT 2026: BRASIL | SEPTEMBER 2 | SÃO PAULO / The Summit heads to South America for a full-day executive event of content and networking for GTM leaders, focusing on scalable growth architecture in high-pressure and complex scenarios. Jacco van der Kooij returns to Brazil, alongside renowned panelists and speakers from the market, to demonstrate how to integrate AI into operational logic, strengthen execution governance, and transform experimentation into predictable and sustainable growth.

Register here.

- IMPACT ROADSHOW EUROPE | OCTOBER, 2026 /  Our 4-city roadshow across Europe kicks off this fall. Half-day events. Tailored rooms. Intentional discussions, not keynote-and-out. All locations still have capacity, but spots are starting to fill up. 

October 5 in Amsterdam > Request an invite
October 6 in Ghent > Request an invite
October 7 in London > Request an invite
October 12 in Stockholm > Request an invite 

- PRIOR WEBINAR: THE GTM TEAMS THAT BUILD WITH AI ARE ABOUT TO PULL AHEAD | WATCH THE RECORDING ON-DEMAND / Last month, Dan Smith (Chief Learning Officer) and Patrick McGrann (Impact Architect) previewed WbD's new AI for GTM Certification Course — showing how the teams moving fastest aren't guessing at AI adoption, they're building from a shared playbook. The recording covers the curriculum, the workflows, and what separates teams that are using AI well from those still depending on who happens to be curious.

Watch the recording here.

GROWTH INSIGHTS QUESTION OF THE MONTH

What would help your team close more deals this quarter?

Getting the right stakeholders into the deal, not just your champion 

Building trust and making your value memorable 

The moment that turns urgency into a real deadline

To surface the selling insights hiding in your calls 

RESULTS FROM LAST MONTH'S QUESTION

Which function in your organization has actually reached AI maturity, meaning it runs on AI-powered workflows day-to-day, not just occasional chatbot use?

1. IT / Engineering, it's built into our infrastructure - 20%
2. Executive / Leadership, we use it to shape strategy and decisions - 26%
3. Sales or Customer Success, it's running inside our revenue workflows - 20%
4. Honestly, every function is still at the "individual chatbot" stage - 16%
5. All functions have reached AI Maturity - 20%

NEW TOOL! GROWTH PROBABILITY ASSESSMENT: Find Out the Probability Your Growth Target Is Reachable

Most leadership teams know their growth target. Fewer know their odds.

The Growth Probability Assessment is a new tool from Winning by Design that changes that. Five inputs — current ARR, target ARR, time horizon, net revenue retention, and new logo revenue — return one number: the probability your current system reaches your target on your timeline.

It runs on Helix, WbD's proprietary growth modeling engine. The same engine that powers Growth Guidance engagements for CEOs and boards, at companies like Verizon Connect (see In Practice section), now available to any growth leader in minutes. No cost. Results are instant.

A high probability (70% and above) means the system has the structural capacity to reach the target. A low probability (40% and below) means there is a gap between ambition and system reality — and closing it requires a different kind of intervention than working harder. Either way, you leave with a clearer picture of where you stand and what the board would ask next.

REVENUE ACADEMY COURSES: Uplevel your skills across the GTM

Sign up for Revenue Academy Open Courses —  the next cohort kicks off on August 18th (with cohorts scheduled throughout Q3 and Q4 courses launching soon).

Here's to a great month ahead. Remember, we don't need bigger ambition. We need higher confidence in our ability to execute.

To impact!

The crew @ Winning by Design