13 de August 2026
Growing the business or enhancing profitability: the false dilemma that still conditions business strategy today
For years, we have witnessed debates about scenarios that seemed to force us to make a strategic decision: focus on growth, satisfy new demands and gain market share, or focus on being efficient, improving margins and increasing return on investment. What was a priority and what would be addressed next.
The speed at which businesses evolve has brought a new reality to Boards of Directors: the paths must be convergent; Growth and profitability must complement and leverage each other. It should be the energies of yin and yang in business.
In a context like Argentina, where changing economic scenarios have occurred, with expansionary cycles followed by recessionary crises that were repeated cyclically, it was common to see business strategies that also radically changed their orientation.
Those stages where the main indicator of success was gaining market share, expanding operations, incorporating new clients or developing a broader and more sophisticated range of products and services. Leveraging growth was the central objective where the organization's energy was concentrated, convinced that “we must not miss this opportunity to sell more” and “over time the results will come on their own.”
With that vision, many companies incorporated technology, expanded structures and added processes to accompany business expansion. However, these decisions were not always accompanied by a comprehensive review of the operating model. The result is that, in many cases, complexity grew at the same pace as activity.
Processes that were duplicated, structures that added decision levels, information dispersed between different areas, increasing costs, circuits that became slower and investments that did not always generate the expected impact are some of the harmful effects of such a biased strategy.
This is how we reached those stages where the main mandate was to improve economic results, immediately reduce costs and maximize profitability, this time convinced that "we will not be able to survive if we do not improve EBITDA" and "over time we will recover financial capacity to grow again." Balance sheets with better numbers that, in many cases, were accompanied by an impoverishment of organizational capabilities.
Decimated structures, only capable of sustaining operation, without incentives for innovation. Standardized products and basic service levels, only competitive by cost. Loss of social recognition and brand value. Hyper-concentrated decision model and evolution dependent on Top Management.
Today, the conversation in the boardroom began to change: growth and profitability are concurrent purposes.
Beyond the particular context of each industry, in which the challenges and opportunities have different characteristics, there is a management agenda that requires consistent growth goals along with those of generating value and results.
It is no coincidence that this proposal has gained space. According to Gartner, in a survey of more than 200 CFOs, 56% place meeting cost optimization objectives among their top five priorities for 2026, while 51% prioritize improving the accuracy and quality of financial projections. The results reflect an agenda in which growth continues to be an objective, but coexists with greater discipline in management and an increasingly focused view on profitability.
The challenge, then, is to understand how the business works from end to end, to properly direct efforts to sell more and, at the same time, identify where value is generated, where resources are lost and what decisions can have a greater impact on results.
In this scenario, technology continues to be a strategic ally, but it also forces us to review some expectations. Artificial intelligence, automation and management platforms can accelerate important improvements, provided they are implemented on well-designed processes and consistent operating models. When that doesn't happen, the risk is digitizing inefficiencies rather than resolving them.
From our experience accompanying transformation processes in companies from different industries in Argentina, we observe that organizations that manage to improve their profitability have something in common: they stop analyzing each area separately and begin to manage the business in a comprehensive manner. They review end-to-end processes, simplify circuits, eliminate activities that do not add value, improve the quality of information and strengthen the ability to make decisions based on data.
Improving profitability does not mean giving up growth and living in a permanent process of cost reduction. It means building more agile, more productive organizations with greater capacity to allocate their resources where they generate the greatest impact for the business.
Argentine companies will continue to need to grow to compete. But the competitive advantage will not only be in how much they grow, but in their ability to transform and achieve sustainable results that enhance and feed back their growth.
