I remember sitting in a small café in Shoreditch five years ago, listening to a founder insist that growth was all about “top‑line numbers.” At the time, it sounded almost doctrinaire—revenue as truth, profit as a distant afterthought. Back then, you still heard a version of that mantra at many pitch events up and down the country: get scale first, worry about the rest later. But what I’m hearing now, in boardrooms and in back‑of‑the‑napkin conversations, suggests a shift that’s deeper than any quarterly report.
In the UK, a remarkable number of companies are beginning to articulate a form of growth that doesn’t stop at revenue. Take the data emerging from midmarket manufacturers. Recent research shows a striking 72 per cent of these firms reported increased profitability precisely because they integrated sustainability into their operations, and a large majority now treat it as a strategic priority rather than a checkbox exercise. That’s not just greenwash or a tweetable target; it’s evidence that investment in resource efficiency and environmental planning is feeding back into the bottom line.
This trend emerges at a time when UK chief executives talk about growth very differently than they did a decade ago. In the latest EY survey, roughly 80 per cent of CEOs expressed optimism about profitability and competitive positioning in the year ahead, even as they recognise that transformation needs to align with sustainability and digitalisation. In those figures you glimpse a broader realisation: that long‑term value isn’t a function of scale alone, but of resilience, adaptability and a willingness to balance multiple objectives at once.
It’s tempting to see this as a moral turn, a collective sigh of corporate conscience. But that would miss the nuance: what’s happening feels more pragmatic than pious. In many cases I’ve observed, sustainability and profitability aren’t in tension; they’re two sides of the same strategic coin. Leaders who balanced environmental goals with operational efficiency often find that customers and partners respond in ways that reinforce margins rather than erode them.
There’s also a growing cohort of purpose‑led businesses whose metrics challenge the conventional hierarchy of growth indicators. Data from B Lab UK shows that certified B Corps in the country have not only outpaced peers in turnover growth but also expanded headcounts at a much faster rate. This isn’t anecdote; it’s a pattern that suggests growth built around mission and people can coexist with, and even enhance, financial performance.
Contrast that with companies where chasing sheer revenue without grooming a healthy core has led to trouble. You don’t have to dig deep into commercial archives to find firms that expanded rapidly, only to be felled by sensitive cost structures or fickle market sentiment. In the current climate, where geopolitical headwinds and technological disruption both loom large, some of those old playbooks feel brittle.
Consider the quieter stories—firms like RSK Group, a UK environmental services heavyweight that posted £2.2 billion in revenue in 2025. But if you look beyond headline turnover, you see a company wrestling with debt, acquisition‑led expansion and profitability pressures that temper applause for growth alone. The real lesson isn’t that big firms are bad; it’s that size without solidity doesn’t buy much in terms of endurance.
And then there are firms that quietly embody this new ethos. Wherever I go in the UK’s business ecosystem—from tech hubs in Manchester to manufacturing clusters in Lancashire—I hear similar refrains: “We need to grow, but we want to be profitable,” “We want investment to lift productivity, not just burn cash,” “We’re thinking in five‑year horizons, not 12‑month quarters.” It’s an ethos that doesn’t reject ambition but contextualises it.
Profitability, in this frame, is no longer a trailing metric that shows up after revenue has done all the heavy lifting. It’s a companion metric—equally vital, equally interrogated. In one conversation with a founder of a fast‑growing Midlands tech firm, the CFO pointed to gross margins and customer lifetime value as primary indicators, relegating raw user acquisition figures to a secondary tier. They saw revenue growth as a means to a bigger purpose: sustainable cash flow that underwrites R&D, talent retention and market relevance.
At a recent roundtable with UK CEOs, the optimism around revenue was clear, but so was the consensus that sustainability and operational discipline were strategic differentiators. Leaders are now more likely to talk about “balanced scorecards” and “integrated performance metrics” than the monolithic revenue targets of old. You can see this in the fact that a large proportion of transformation initiatives prioritise customer engagement, sustainability targets and productivity—not just top‑line expansion.
I sometimes think back to that Shoreditch café and wonder how many founders from that era would recognise today’s vernacular of growth. There’s a certain unease when old assumptions get challenged, but also a sense of relief among leaders who’ve found that profitability and purpose don’t have to be diametrically opposed.
What this evolution points to is a more textured understanding of business health. Growth measured purely in revenue can mask fragilities just as surely as an exclusive focus on profitability can blindside a company to opportunities for scale. The interplay matters. It’s why midmarket manufacturers are digitising supply chains not because it’s fashionable, but because it cuts waste and bolsters margins. It’s why CEOs talk about competitiveness and sustainability in the same breath.
So growth in the UK is increasingly a composite of signals: environmental stewardship and bottom‑line strength; strategic patience and organisational vitality; human‑centred purpose and financial rigour. And as more companies embrace this multidimensional approach, the very idea of what it means to “grow” quietly changes beneath our feet.
