How to Identify & Solve Your #1 Addressable Challenge for Real Business Growth

In our last article, Why Your Strategy Day Doesn’t Work (and What to Do Instead), we explored why one-off strategy workshops rarely deliver sustainable growth – and how success comes from rhythm, accountability, and leadership coaching that keeps business strategy alive.

Building on that, this piece dives deeper into one of the most powerful elements of that rhythm: defining your #1 Addressable Challenge – the single focus that aligns your leadership team, sharpens execution, and accelerates business performance.

The difference between momentum and stagnation? Choosing your #1 Addressable Challenge and aligning your leadership rhythm to it.

What’s a “#1 Addressable Challenge”?

Mark Green describes it as the one issue within your control that, if solved, creates the greatest impact on your business. It’s not about ambition – it’s about precision. The #1 Addressable Challenge becomes the compass point for your year: clear, measurable, and actionable.

The best leadership teams don’t chase every opportunity. They narrow their focus to the one problem that will make everything else easier and build the systems, accountability, and rhythm to resolve it.

Why this matters in your business growth strategy

Through my work in executive coaching across NZ and business consulting with high-growth CEOs, I’ve seen how this single-focus approach transforms performance. When leaders agree on one addressable challenge and align their strategy rhythm around it, everything becomes sharper decisions, priorities, and communication. The noise drops, and results accelerate. When a business rallies around one clear, addressable challenge, you get:

• alignment across the senior leadership team
• faster decision-making and fewer distractions
• measurable progress that you can hold to account
• better results – financial and non-financial

Here are three real example themes that a few of my clients are working on this year with their # 1 addressable challenge:

• “Grow support service profitability to cover all overheads.”
• “Increase core client growth by 15% while maintaining service quality.”
• “Develop a high-performing leadership team so the CEO is not the bottleneck.”

And here’s what one CEO said:

“Having the absolute focus on the #1 addressable challenge, with the whole SLT and their sprints aligned to this, and communicating it to the team … We have achieved phenomenal results with the focus on the one thing.”

What the benefits are

Focusing on the one key challenge gives leadership teams:

• clarity over 12 months instead of 12 projects
• enables leadership coaching and rhythm to be meaningful, not optional
• greater accountability because everyone knows what “solved” looks like
• better customer value: you avoid being transactional and become a valued partner
• helps your growth-strategy work anchor in real outcomes, not just ideas

We see this play out in the numbers. Across my clients, teams that commit to one addressable challenge and build their business growth strategy around it deliver measurable gains – stronger margins, higher engagement, and faster execution. The evidence is clear: focus compounds performance.

How to pick yours – step-by-step

1. With your senior leadership team, ask: If we could only fix one thing next year, what would it be?
2. Make sure it’s addressable – you must have influence over it, not just watch it happen.
3. Define it as a clear challenge statement: “We cannot reliably deliver on our growth commitments.”
4. Identify 2-4 initiatives that will address it (each with someone accountable).
5. Align your strategy rhythm: quarterly planning, monthly reviews, weekly huddles, and ongoing leadership coaching.

Keep Focus Visible

Once you’ve defined your #1 Addressable Challenge, your next task is to keep it visible –  everywhere. This isn’t about rhythm anymore; it’s about reinforcement.

• Open every senior leadership meeting with a check-in on the challenge before diving into operations.
• Make it part of your weekly communication – so your teams see progress, not just hear about it.
• Track key metrics that show movement and celebrate the shifts, even small ones.

Visibility builds accountability. When the focus stays front and centre, it stops being a line in a strategy deck and becomes part of how the business breathes.

Bringing It Home

Your #1 Addressable Challenge is more than a planning tool – it’s a leadership contract. When you make it visible, commit to it, and hold each other accountable for progress, it transforms how your business thinks and behaves.

Gary Keller, author of The ONE Thing, puts it simply: “What’s the one thing you can do such that by doing it everything else will be easier or unnecessary?” That’s exactly what the #1 Addressable Challenge does for leadership teams – it sharpens focus, filters noise, and builds confidence through progress.

So, before you map another long list of goals, ask yourself:

• What problem, if solved, would have the greatest ripple effect across our people, customers, and profit?
• How will we prove we’re moving the needle – not just talking about it?
• What conversations do we need to have to remove the roadblocks?

This isn’t about simplifying your ambitions; it’s about amplifying your impact. A single, well-chosen challenge unites your team, clarifies priorities, and turns strategy from talk into traction.

As one of my CEOs said recently, “When everyone knows the one thing that truly matters, decisions get faster, results get stronger, and leadership feels lighter.”

If you’re ready to find your one thing and build the systems to achieve it, that’s where real growth begins.