Sales growth is usually discussed as if it starts with strategy. Better segmentation, sharper propositions, clearer targets. All important. In practice, sustained growth often depends just as much on rhythm, energy and alignment.
Over the past nine months, our Indian organisation realised roughly 15% topline growth. Many factors contributed. One conviction was reinforced again: commercial teams need a drumbeat.
The dragonboat
I have used the dragonboat metaphor for sales organisations for a long time. In May 2025 it became more than a metaphor. Our Indian management team rowed a dragonboat race together in Prague. What struck me there was how little the speed depended on the strength of any individual rower. It came from rhythm. From everyone pulling in cadence. From the drum.
That image stayed with the team and gradually became part of how we talked about growth internally. A commercial organisation works the same way. Product and sales need to row together. Teams need a shared cadence of priorities, follow-up and execution. And leadership has to keep the drum going — not through grand speeches, but through regularity. Weekly focus. Visible momentum. Repetition of priorities. Celebrating small wins. Maintaining pressure where it matters.
Why this matters more in sales than in most other functions
Sales people typically have a strong individual and competitive drive. That can be a strength, but it cuts against collaboration if it is not channelled. The dragonboat reframed something simple but useful: however individual the targets are structured, in the end everyone sits in the same boat.
Repeating that image inside sales meetings did two things. It created alignment. And it created a quiet winning mentality. It became part metaphor, part shorthand for the operating cadence we wanted. Keep rowing. Keep the cadence. Stay in sync.
Culture alone does not produce growth. But it creates the conditions for it.
When growth slows, it is rarely strategy
I have observed it many times. Underperformance in commercial teams is often not the result of a missing strategy. It is drift. Priorities get diffuse. Follow-up weakens. The drum slows down. Restoring that rhythm has a surprisingly large effect on numbers that previously looked structurally stuck.
That has become an important lesson for me about transformation. Growth leadership is not only about setting direction. It is about sustaining motion. Sometimes the role of leadership is just to keep the drum audible.
So what
If your Indian commercial organisation is not delivering the growth the strategy says it should, three questions are usually worth asking before redesigning the strategy.
First, is there a weekly cadence of priorities everyone in the team can name without thinking? If not, the drum is too quiet.
Second, is product moving with sales, or alongside it? If the two are running on different rhythms, the boat slips no matter how hard either side pulls.
Third, where are the small visible wins? A team that goes a month without a celebrated milestone tends to forget what winning looks like. That is when the drift starts.
Interim leadership can contribute here in a specific way. Not by designing structures, but by restoring commercial energy and helping the team move together again. Because a dragonboat moves well only when every paddle hits the water in rhythm. And organisations, in my experience, are not so different.
If this resonates, let’s talk.
