Nearly all companies have some plan to “improve the growth engine." Unfortunately, many companies over-engineer this process. While entrepreneurs might have somewhat of a plan hashed out as to how to reach their dreams, the path is never a straight line.

Tuning the engine is a framework to think about where we put our energy -- including when to pivot or persevere.

It is very likely the plan, market, and even the customer will change and evolve into something that wasn't part of the original vision. The act of choosing to pivot or persevere is optimization: it's tuning the (growth) engine.

We can’t know what we don’t know, and putting time into optimizing for information that might not be needed is wasteful. Instead, we want our energy to be focused on what is in front of us, quickly iterating our product to understand the market and find a path to our vision.

Keep in mind, the term product goes beyond the software we are creating. A product is anything that encompasses any source of value for the people who become customers. The internal marketing campaigns, customer support programs, sales experience, and content are all examples of products we want to tune in order to implement our strategy and achieve goals.

Think about the work you are currently doing.

• Do you know what strategy it ladders into?
• Do you know what information you know (and don’t know) and what you are trying to learn?
• Do you treat the content, campaigns, sales experience, and support programs as products themselves? 

If any of these answers were no, it may be time to tune the engine.