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Defining Battlegrounds for Growth

From proven value that failed to translate into adoption to a clear growth strategy and adoption battlegrounds, creating the conditions for scalable commercial traction.

Role: Product & Growth StrategyFormat: 1-week engagementFocus: Adoption, GTM, Product-Market Fit

Outcome focus: adoption velocity, workflow integration, retention leverage

Context

This case reflects a one-week strategic product engagement with a clinician-guided mental health technology startup.

The engagement combined stakeholder inputs, facilitated workshops, qualitative interviews, desk research, and synthesis, with the goal of helping the leadership team clarify where real product-led growth could come from and what needed to change for adoption to scale.

The company was approximately 3 to 4 years into commercialisation. While early pilots and research-led deployments had demonstrated clear clinical and operational value, commercial traction had been slow and fragile.

At the time, the organisation was entering a period of strategic reset under new leadership. The central question was not whether the product worked, but why proven value had failed to translate into sustained adoption and scalable growth.

The problem underneath the problem

Adoption had stalled despite demonstrated value. The product worked when embedded in workflows, but failed when optional. Clinicians were under time and incentive pressure. Leadership mandate and workflow integration determined success. The constraint was structural, not feature depth.

My approach

I treated this as a systems and adoption problem, not a feature problem. The work focused on incentives, workflows, leadership, and GTM conditions. I used product-market fit, Jobs to Be Done, and adoption dynamics as lenses. The goal was focus and sequencing, not a roadmap. The outcome aimed at making adoption inevitable, not persuasive.

Strategic framing

A Growth Options grid to clarify where to focus first:

Current markets
New markets
Current product
Chosen path
New product

Narrow focus, embed deeply, prove outcomes, then scale.

Two credible routes to growth

Route 1: Direct-to-patient with clinician back-up
Who it serves: Individuals seeking support, with clinicians available when needed.
Why it works: Reduces clinician load while maintaining clinical oversight. Demand is patient-led and can scale independently of organisational adoption.
What must be true: Clear clinical governance, reimbursement pathways, and evidence that self-guided use delivers outcomes.
Route 2: Intelligence layer for workplace wellbeing
Who it serves: Employers and HR teams managing workforce mental health.
Why it works: B2B distribution, embedded in existing benefits and EAP ecosystems. Purchase decision sits with leadership, not individual clinicians.
What must be true: Integration with existing vendor stack, measurable outcomes for employers, and a GTM motion that reaches decision-makers.

Three battlegrounds for growth

1. Unlock commercial demand through ecosystems

Partner with payers, employers, and existing mental health providers to create pull, not push.

Next 90 days: Map and prioritise 2 to 3 ecosystem partners with aligned incentives.

2. Become indispensable in daily workflows

Reduce adoption friction so the product is used by default, not by choice.

Next 90 days: Identify and remove the top 3 workflow blockers in pilot sites.

3. Earn trust through measurable outcomes

Package evidence that speaks to buyers and clinicians in their language.

Next 90 days: Define and instrument the outcome metrics that matter for GTM.

What I would do first

A simple 90-day plan:

  1. Align on focus and success metrics
  2. Embed and remove adoption friction
  3. Package GTM motion and proof

My leverage points

The decision that changed direction

We stopped asking what features and started asking what conditions make adoption inevitable.

The product worked when embedded, failed when optional. The constraint was structural. We shifted the conversation from feature depth to incentives, workflows, and GTM conditions.

Why this mattered: Leadership could see that the problem was not delivery capability.

The trade-off we made

We chose focus and sequencing over a comprehensive roadmap.

Two credible routes, three battlegrounds. We did not try to solve everything. We gave leadership a clear frame for where to focus first and what to deprioritise.

Why this mattered: A one-week engagement had to leave something usable, not a long list.

The mechanism that made it stick

We defined battlegrounds that all stakeholders could influence, and used them to prioritise next steps.

Ecosystems, workflows, outcomes. Each battleground had a 90-day action. The leadership team could see how their decisions laddered up.

Why this mattered: Shared language enabled alignment without a long process.

Outcome signals

  • What changed in user behaviourClinicians and buyers had a clearer picture of when and how adoption would succeed. The structural constraints were named.
  • What changed in team behaviourLeadership aligned on where to focus first. Two routes and three battlegrounds gave a shared frame for decisions.
  • What changed in leadership confidenceLeadership had confidence in the growth path and what needed to change, beyond feature requests.

This case is anonymised and shared with permission. Details have been adapted for publication.