The 7 Attributes of Agile Growth: The Framework Every Leadership Team Should Be Using

The 7 Attributes of Agile Growth help leadership teams lift capability, sharpen outcome-based strategy, and strengthen execution. Each monograph includes real case studies and practical tools, such as A Guide to Communicating and Delivering Customer Value: The PROMISE Framework. Ideal for CEOs wanting clarity, traction, and scalable growth.

If your leadership team is working hard but not quite working together, you’re not alone. Mid-market companies eventually hit a point where effort isn’t the problem — alignment, capability, and rhythm are.

As a Maestro Business Coach, I rely on a handful of proven frameworks to support the leaders I partner with. One of the most valuable is the Gravitas Impact: 7 Attributes of Agile Growth — a practical, scalable system that helps leadership teams think clearly, align quickly, and execute with confidence.

Alongside the individual monographs, there is also the overarching guide —
The 7 Attributes of Agile Growth: A Gravitas Impact Monograph
by Keith Cupp with Andy Warren.

This book offers a comprehensive overview of the entire framework, explaining how each attribute contributes to more decisive leadership, sharper business strategy, and improved results.

What makes these attributes powerful is that they’re simple, commercial, and relatable to any senior business leader. Each attribute comes with its own monograph, each with real case studies and practical tools — developed by experienced Gravitas Impact coaches who have spent decades in the field working with leaders of scaling companies.

Below is how each attribute enhances leadership team capability — and why I believe they can add value to any mid-market business leader seeking sustainable, intelligent growth.

Leadership: Where Growth Starts or Stalls

As detailed in Creating a Culture of Accountability by Mark E. Green and Glen Dall, leadership is the foundation that either lifts your organisation or drags it sideways.

Strong leadership fosters clarity, promotes healthy debate, and encourages shared ownership. Weak leadership creates noise. And noise always slows the business down.
When your leadership team tightens up its rhythm and standards, performance lifts everywhere else.

Talent: Right People, Right Seats

Building an A-Player Culture by Jerry Fons and Graham Mitchell dives deep into the realities of talent density — something mid-market firms underestimate all the time.

It’s not enough to have good people. You need people who can operate at the altitude your business requires now, not the one it needed three years ago.

This monograph helps teams reset expectations, confront uncomfortable gaps, and build a culture where A-players can thrive.

Strategy: Clarity That Focuses Effort

Strategy becomes liberating when it’s simple and sharp — and that’s where Radical Alignment to a Core Strategy by Leigh Paulden and Hans Schulte shines.

It helps teams cut the noise, ditch the cluttered decks, and get to the heart of what truly matters.
When your strategy is crisp and outcome-based, decisions become easier and execution accelerates.

Execution: Rhythm That Creates Traction

In Executing with Excellence by Ian Judson with Keith Cupp, execution is demystified and made deeply practical.

This attribute turns intention into traction through cadence: quarterly priorities, monthly check-ins, weekly huddles.

Execution isn’t about working harder — it’s about working rhythmically. This alone changes how CEOs sleep at night.

Profit: The Scoreboard That Keeps You Honest

CASH, The Fuel for Your Economic Engine: How 1+1+1 = 19 by Jeffrey A. Redmon with Adam Siegel reframes profit as the truth-teller of your organisation.

A healthy profit indicates that business strategy, leadership, and execution are working effectively. Weak profit signals something deeper misaligned.

This monograph provides leaders with the financial clarity and confidence necessary to make courageous, commercially intelligent decisions.

Customer (PROMISE Framework™): The Attribute That Transforms Commercial Performance

This is the attribute I authored — A Guide to Communicating and Delivering Customer Value: The PROMISE Framework™ with Jean-Guy Le Blanc.

PROMISE helps teams shift from selling what they do to proving what they deliver. It’s a mindset shift that immediately improves margins, win rates, and strategic clarity.

Leaders learn how to define customer outcomes, articulate measurable promises, and track delivery in a way that builds trust and long-term loyalty.

This attribute is often the quickest and most powerful lever in the whole framework.

A Note on the Systems Attribute

Systems is one of the seven attributes — but it’s the only one that doesn’t yet have its own monograph. This will be the focus of a future book centred on AI and the evolution of systems, exploring how organisations can scale with predictability, calm, and consistency.

For now, Systems is about reducing friction. It’s about building a business that doesn’t rely on heroic effort, last-minute rescues, or “that one person who knows how to do everything.”

Strong systems create freedom. Weak systems create chaos. Every CEO knows the difference.

Why the Attributes Matter

When I use the 7 Attributes with leadership teams, patterns emerge quickly:

• Friction drops
• Alignment strengthens
• Decisions get faster
• Execution becomes cleaner
• Leaders start leading, not firefighting

The attributes don’t add complexity — they remove it. They create clarity, they lift capability, they drive intelligent, sustainable business growth.  At approximately 60 pages, they provide a solid foundation for developing collective leadership capability.  I regularly use these monographs with full leadership teams to apply focus, build skills, and encourage a focus on a particular attribute to drive the results we seek.

As a set of monographs, working through the set literally does compound impact quickly.

I encourage you to read one or more of the monographs.  Start with the one that you feel you need the most support on.  If you’d like help identifying your most significant gap in the 7 Attributes, I invite you to complete the 7 Attributes of Agile Growth self-assessment.