Six Disciplines On The Amazon Kindle

Six Disciplines Execution Revolution, rated as a bestseller by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USA Today and BusinessWeek, is now available for the Amazon Kindle - for only $9.99.

• Revolutionary electronic-paper display provides a sharp, high-resolution screen that looks and reads like real paper.
• Simple to use: no computer, no cables, no syncing.
• Wireless connectivity enables you to shop the Kindle Store directly from your Kindle—whether you’re in the back of a taxi, at the airport, or in bed.
• Buy a book and it is auto-delivered wirelessly in less than one minute.
• More than 180,000 books available, including more than 98 of 112 current New York Times® Best Sellers

More about the Amazon Kindle - here.

Gary Harpst - Podcast on PriceWaterhouseCoopers Startup Show

Gary Harpst, CEO of Six Disciplines, recently was interviewed on the PriceWaterhouseCoopers Startup Show.

You can listen to the conversation here.

Gary Harpst Podcast: How Smart Businesses Succeed

“Don’t think of your biggest problem as the thing in front of you,” says best-selling author and Six Disciplines CEO Gary Harpst. “Your biggest problem is that as you solve problems and overcome hurdles, bigger ones will come and until you build an organization that recognizes that, you’re going to have this up and down reaction-oriented type of business.”

Harpst talks about how he built his business, Six Disciplines, in this podcast by Central Valley Business Times.

Six Disciplines Audio Books - Now Available

Audio books of the best-selling "Six Disciplines Execution Revolution" and the award-winning "Six Disciplines for Excellence" are now available - exclusively from Six Disciplines Publishing.

Each audio book is on 4 CDs, and each are available for U.S. retail $24.95. Order your audio books here!

The Benefits (?) Of The Networked Workforce

According to the latest Pew Internet research report on networked workers, people who own BlackBerrys and similar devices (Smartphones) pretty much never stop working.

Some findings from their research:

• 62% of employed adults use the internet or email at their job, and many have cell phones and Blackberries that keep them connected even when they are not at work
• 45% of employed Americans report doing at least some work from home
• 18% of working Americans say they do job-related tasks at home almost daily
• 70% of device owners check work-related emails on the weekend
• 55% check work-related email on vacation
• 70% check work-related email when they’re taking a sick day
• 43% check work-related email when they’re shopping or commuting
• 49% of workers say that technology has made their lives more stressful.
• 71% said it has increased their flexibility.

Suprising? Not anymore.

It's a Digital Life - and there's no going back!

A Leadership Crisis?

With all the bad news coming eminating from Wall Street, here's some refreshing news about leadership.

Our research shows the top most commonly mentioned attributes of an admired Leader:

• Integrity
• Honesty
• Inspirational
• Competent

Any more that have to be near the top? I encourage your Comments!

Small Business Television Network Features CEO Gary Harpst

Small Business Television Network (SBTV) features five podcasts with CEO and best-selling author, Gary Harpst.

The podcasts cover the following topics:

• Setting Business Strategies
• Execution Revolution and the Challenge
• Surviving Slow Down Times
• Sometimes It Is Time To Fire Your Client
• Motivating the Workforce

Listen to these podcasts here.

Managing Teleworkers

As gas prices continue to skyrocket, more and more companies are using "teleworking" as an option for knowledge workers. Studies have demonstrated that increasing the number of teleworkers would ease the demand for gasoline, lowering fuel prices and lessening rush hour traffic.

In fact, about 28 million American workers do at least part of their jobs from home offices, telework centers, or other remote locations, according to a recent survey by the International Telework Association and Council.

Sometimes referred to as telecommuting or remote working, the benefits of being able to work from anywhere is just one more tool organizations are using to attract, motivate and retain talent and to foster a healthy work-life balance.

Fortunately for savvy managers, there's actually little difference between managing the performance of a teleworker and managing the employee who works at the main office.

Here are some guidelines for managing teleworkers:

• Break employee work into objectives, projects, tasks, and action items. Assigning, tracking, evaluating, and rewarding work output using these specifics dramatically improves your knowledge of work activities, and helps with consistency in establishing expectations.
• Telework needs to be performance-based - not activity-based. Just because you can't see an employee doesn't mean he's not hard at work. Tasks and projects must have clear goals, deadlines, and outcomes - they must be measureable. Results are more important than the activities themselves. Focus on the results of work performed not where it is performed.
• Keep connected through technology. Phone, email, instant messaging - all driven by the Internet - are enabling teleworkers to be connected - and stay connected.
• Establish a regular means of communications. Status updates and progress reporting needs to be done regularly and consistently.

Strategy Execution in Leadership Excellence

Read Gary's Harpst's newest thought-leadership article "Strategy Execution: Go With A Complete Program" - as published in the September issue of the highly-respected Leadership Excellence magazine.

Introducing Change Into Your Organization

In a new article published in IndustryWeek, lean manufacturing expert Jamie Flinchbaugh
offers suggestions on how to introduce lean into your manufacturing operations. Flichbaugh's suggestions have broader implications for all organizations.

The assumptions:

• Employees are naturally resistant to change. That's why when companies first introduce lean into their operations, it's often necessary to gain buy-in from the staff to facilitate real change.

The suggestions:

• Plan a common 90-second to three-minute standard communication message that will leave a lasting impression with workers
• Use the informal time to explain what will change and why it's necessary rather than as a teaching session.
• Make these messages consistent to build understanding and support from employees.
• Ensure the staff understands that lean is being implemented because the process is flawed; not the employees doing the work.

Leadership Development Crisis?

Consulting firm DDI set out to examine why confidence in leaders is declining despite a heightened focus on developing leadership talent.

After surveying almost 1,500 HR professionals and more than 12,000 leaders from 76 countries, DDI's survey (as featured in Management Issues) reveals what it described as "major shortfalls in leadership development initiatives around the world".

Key findings:

• Although 75% of the executives surveyed said that improving leadership talent was a top business priority, just 40% were satisfied with what their organizations were actually doing to help them.
• Amost 60% of executives said that they and their manager had not agreed on a formal written plan for their development.
• Just 25% of organizations monitor their leadership development programs or formally measure their results.
• Another problem area seems to be succession planning, with only 50% of organizations globally have succession plans for their leadership team -- and US organizations even lower than the global sample.

Reason for the dissatisfaction? While executives want more opportunities to learn on the job, such as special projects or moving to a new assignment, their senior management seldom takes responsibility for making this happen.

BOTTOMLINE: According to DDI's president: "When times get tough, leadership skills are really put to the test and organizations with the right quality and quantity of leaders will weather the storm better than those less well- prepared. In the face of pressure to reduce costs, organizations must remain firm in their commitment to invest in leader assessment and development."

Small Business Advantages for Talent Management

What is the most productive way to invest in your workforce, and what are the chances you will see a tangible return?

A new study conducted jointly by IBM's Institute for Business Value and Washington-based think tank Human Capital Institute (HCI) has yielded promising answers to those questions.

Respondents scored their companies in 30 specific competencies, which fell into six key practices of talent management: strategy development, attracting and retaining, motivating and developing, deploying and managing, connecting and enabling, and transforming and sustaining.

Some of the key findings:

• Companies with high scores across the board were more likely to have strong financial performance.
• Organizational size was a main difference-maker between companies that did well on the survey and those that did poorly.
• Organizations with fewer than 1,000 employees were 4% better than the total sample at collaboration and sharing knowledge, 6% better at promoting virtual working, and 4% better at identifying relevant skills.
• Surprisingly, medium-size companies—between 1,000 and 10,000 employees—were less likely to have implemented five out of the six talent management practices in the study.
• Knowledge-intensive businesses tended to focus on development and collaboration, while service-intensive ones emphasized employee attraction and retention.

BOTTOMLINE: According to their research, "The best way to invest in talent management depends greatly on the size and industry of a company. And there's no easy fix for the human resources woes that are becoming more common in all business.

But for those looking to link talent to profits, there were two competencies that a majority of the best-performing companies had in common: understanding and addressing workforce attitudes and engagement levels; and aligning employee incentives with appropriate business goals."

Execution - And Building A Learning Organization

Many executives believe that relentless execution—efficient, timely, consistent production and delivery of goods or services—is the surefire path to customer satisfaction and positive financial results.

Yet, according to Harvard professor Amy Edmonson, placing value only on "getting things right the first time", organizations are unable to take the risks necessary to improve and evolve.

However, firms that put a premium on what Edmondson calls execution-as-learning focus not so much on how a process should be carried out as on how it should evolve.

Organizations that foster execution-as-learning provide employees with psychological safety. No one is penalized for asking for help or making a mistake. These companies also employ four distinct approaches to day-to-day work:

1. They use the best available knowledge (which is understood to be a moving target) to inform the design of specific process guidelines.
2. They encourage employee collaboration by making information available when and where it’s needed.
3. They routinely capture data on processes to discover how work really happens.
4. Finally, they study these data in an effort to find ways to improve execution.

Taken together, these practices form the basis of a learning infrastructure that makes continual learning part of business as usual.

Inspiration from the Olympics

One day last March, at the University of Michigan, where Michael Phelps and several of his Club Wolverine teammates were training, the whiteboard poolside bore this message.

"In business, words are words, explanations are explanations, promises are promises, but only performance is reality."

The quote originated from Harold S. Geneen, former president and CEO of ITT, but, in sports, it's the same.

Enjoy the Olympics - truly the ultimate inspiration in performance excellence!

Innovation and Execution - Part II

There's a perception that large companies are the primary drivers of innovation. Reality, however, tells us that it's the small and midsized businesses that provide most of the innovation that propels economic growth.

In the July/August issue of The American, CEO Carl Schramm and researcher Robert Litan from the Kauffman Foundation offer their take in "The Growth Solution."

In the article, they lay out a seven step plan for achieving a high-growth, entrepreneurial economy through “radical innovation.”

Here's a quick summary:

1. Create a skilled work force.
2. Embrace high-skilled immigrants.
3. Rethink the intellectual property system.
4. Embrace global trade.
5. Reform health insurance.
6. Reduce poverty.
7. Address climate change.

BOTTOMLINE: While these are all worthy steps in the march toward an entrepreneurial economy, it seems that the brush is broader than any one organization can paint. In order to participate in the next wave of innovation, organizations must understand that to innovate, all members of the organization need to fully understand its strategy and how their daily activities support that strategy. Aligning every person every day with the goals of the organization, and measuring progress continually, is the first step toward innovating purposefully.

The Challenges for Tomorrow's CEOs

From Harvard Business Publishing, comes a new article "Four Challenges for Tomorrow's CEOs" in which author Umair Hague argues that the following are four of the most critical challenges:

1. A crippled global financial system.
2. Endemic underinvestment in innovation.
3. Accelerating disequilibrium.
4. Shallow strategy.

His assessment?

"Business hasn't changed much, but today's array of tectonic global shocks demands a different, radically better kind of business. Yesterday's corporations visibly cannot meet today's economic challenges."

BOTTOMLINE: I'd argue that there are many challenges for today's and tomorrow's CEOs, but NONE is more vital or critical than the ability to execute strategy. It's what the Execution Revolution is all about!

Six Disciplines Execution Revolution on New York Times Bestseller List

The new book by CEO Gary Harpst, "Six Disciplines Execution Revolution" has been named to the New York Times Bestseller list for Hardcover Business Best Sellers.

Six Disciplines CEO Gary Harpst Appears on FoxBusiness

On July 31, Six Disciplines founder, CEO and bestselling author, Gary Harpst, appeared on the "Money for Breakfast" show on FoxBusiness TV, discussing the timely topic: "Recession: Yes or No?"

View the entire video clip of the interview here.

Exquisite Writing Reviews Six Disciplines Execution Revolution

The folks at Exquisite Writing have published their review of Six Disciplines Execution Revolution.

The review begins:

"The latest book by Gary Harpst, "Six Disciplines® Execution Revolution: Solving the One Business Problem That Makes Solving All Other Problems Easier" is a follow-up for his successful previous book, "Six Disciplines for Excellence". In a high-tech world, executing stategy is not only mind-boggling but seems to be set only for high level businesses. Harpst's book sets the course for small and mid-sized businesses instead, detailing the entire strategy program and how important it is for a business as a mainstream requirement."

Read the entire review here.

Six Disciplines Execution Revolution Named to Wall Street Journal Best-Seller List

On July 25, 2008 Gary Harpst's new book, Six Disciplines Execution Revolution, has been named to the Wall Street Journal's Best-Seller List - #1 for Business books, and #7 for Non-Fiction books.

Take The Execution Revolution Challenge!

Six Disciplines Encourages Small and Midsized Organizations
to Take the Execution Revolution Challenge

Interactive Tool Provides CEOs with Deeper Insight into the Biggest Challenge in Business

Six Disciplines, developers of the first complete strategy execution program for small and midsized businesses, has developed a free, interactive tool that enables organizations to rate how well they execute their strategies. The Execution Revolution Challenge only takes one minute to complete, but the results will cause you to begin thinking and acting differently about how you address the biggest challenge in business: execution.

“The purpose of the Execution Revolution Challenge is to prove whether everyone in your organization is on the ‘same page’ or not, in terms of the strategy execution capability of the organization,” said Gary Harpst, founder and CEO of Six Disciplines. “Businesses are not alone in their struggle to grow predictably and profitably. Very few businesses have this mastered. Taking the Execution Revolution Challenge is the first step in understanding what you need to do differently to solve the biggest challenge in business.”

Harpst encourages every person within an organization to take the Challenge. When completed, the tool provides CEOs with a crystal clear view into the level of strategy and execution alignment within their organization.

“After an organization takes the Challenge, most CEOs come away with a sense of urgency that something needs to be done differently, in order to execute strategy more consistently and predictably,” said Harpst.

“I thought we were doing well, but by having our leadership team take the Challenge, I quickly realized we weren't on the same page -- at all,” said Todd Roberts, CEO of Total Fleet Solutions, a 150-person services firm in Toledo, Ohio. “The results helped change how I think and act about executing strategy in our company. Six Disciplines has started a movement, a real revolution in the way we approach getting things done.”

The Idea Behind The Execution Revolution Challenge
The idea behind the Execution Revolution Challenge comes from the new book Six Disciplines® Execution Revolution – Solving the One Business Problem that Makes Solving All Other Problems Easier, by CEO and award-winning author, Gary Harpst. The Challenge brings the Six Disciplines Business Excellence Model™ to life. The model illustrates that every organization, during its life cycle, moves around on a four-quadrant matrix, characterized by weak and strong strategy and execution, which indicates consistent operations and profit potential.

“The Execution Revolution Challenge illustrates that there is a revolutionary new way for businesses to move to the upper right hand quadrant, where strategy and execution are balanced and predictable, indicated by profitable growth, ” said Harpst. “Every CEO aspires to perform profitably and consistently and the Challenge helps CEOs start the baseline to begin.”

The new book, Six Disciplines® Execution Revolution is available from http://www.sixdisciplinespublishing.com/ and is also available from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Borders, 800-CEO-Read, and wherever books are sold.

How the Execution Revolution Challenge Works
Any individual can initiate the Execution Revolution Challenge for their organization by visiting www.SixDisciplines.com/Challenge, and answering five simple questions. This individual can then plot where they think their company is on the strategy execution matrix. Doing so generates an email which includes a Challenge ID unique for the rest of their organization. By forwarding this email to every person in the organization, each employee gets to plot where they think their company is relative to executing strategy. Once everyone has taken the Challenge, team members can return to the interactive tool, and collectively see how each person rates the organization’s overall ability to execute strategy.

As more companies have their employees take the Execution Revolution Challenge, Six Disciplines will enhance the interactive tool to help companies understand how to better balance strategy and execution. A number of differing views of the results will be supported soon, including: your company vs. other companies in the same industry; your company vs. others of the same size (number of employees); and comparison of responses by role vs. others.

To sign up and take the Execution Revolution Challenge for your organization, visit www.SixDisciplines.com/Challenge.

New Study Articulates Advantages of Business Coaching

A new study on coaching, "COACHING - A Global Study of Successful Practices" prepared by the American Management Association, has some valuable information for organizations that are thinking of hiring a coach.

Some of their key findings:

• Coaching is used by only about half of today’s companies. 52% of US companies report having such programs in place, compared to 56% of international companies sampled.
• Coaching continues to gain in popularity. Among respondentswho say their organizations don’t yet have coaching programs, a sizable proportion (37% in the North American sample and 56% in the international sample) say such programs will be implemented in the future.
• Coaching is associated with higher performance, reporting two kinds of advantages: 1. They’re more likely to report that their organizations have higher levels of success in the area of coaching. 2. They’re more likely to say that their organizations are performing well in the market, as determined by self-reports in the combined areas of revenue growth, market share, profitability, and customer satisfaction.
• Coaching is primarily aimed at boosting individual performance.
• The more a company has a clear reason for using a coach, the more likely that its coaching process will be viewed as successful.
• External training (coaching) seems to work best. Externally based methods of providing training on coaching are most strongly correlated with overall coaching success, though they are less often used.

The Need for Updating Succession Plans

A survey of more than 2,500 senior HR executives by consulting firm Novations Group has found that succession planning among American firms is not nearly where it needs to be.

Some of their findings:

• More than a fifth said that, even though they had succession planning in place, it was valueless because, as often as not, they ended up recruiting someone externally anyway.
• Another quarter admitted that, while there was work done on succession planning, it was only done in "fits and starts".
• 46% said that they updated their succession plans regularly, an absolutely critical requirement in a fast-changing, fluctuating business environment.
• 7% of firms admitted to having no succession planning in place at all.

BOTTOMLINE: Succession planning must be an integral part of an organization's annual planning process. However, the plan must be reviewed quarterly. When the succession plan is seldom updated, it's a symptom of a more fundamental problem.

Warren Buffet's Seven Secrets

More often than not, truth lies in simplicity.

Here's Warren Buffet's seven secrets for living a happy and simple life.

Secret # 1: Happiness comes from within.
Secret # 2: Find happiness in simple pleasures.
Secret # 3: Live a simple life.
Secret # 4: Think simply.
Secret # 5: Invest simply.
Secret # 6: Have a mentor in life.
Secret # 7 :Making money isn’t the backbone of our guiding purpose; making money is the by-product of our guiding purpose.

(Hat tip to Shilpan Patel at SuccessSoul)

Six Disciplines Execution Revolution Hits #3 on Amazon

This morning, the new book by award-winning author and CEO, Gary Harpst, "Six Disciplines Execution Revolution" hit #3 on Amazon.

Get your copy today from Amazon, Barnes & Nobel, 800-CEO-READ, or wherever books are sold.

Introducing The Gary Harpst Blog

Attention all long-time readers of Be Excellent! There's a new blog in town, and I want to point you toward it.

It's the Gary Harpst Blog - by successful serial entrepreneur, CEO and award-winning author, Gary Harpst. It's located on the informational GaryHarpst.com web site.

Gary intends to use his blog as an open forum on a wide variety of topics, running the gamut from strategy formulation and execution, to change management, planning and goal setting, communication, time management, employee engagement, activity alignment and problem-solving.

So, get your RSS reader ready and visit the Gary Harpst Blog.

Instilling Company-Wide Accountability

According to a 2007 survey of 317 C-level executives conducted by BusinessWeek Research Services, (and published by Joe Mullich for Microsoft's People-Ready Business Insights,) the biggest obstacles to successful execution of performance management are “lack of accountability” and “a culture that does not support measurement.”

"Too many people think of performance management as an exercise in scorecarding,” says Richard T. Roth, formerly chief research officer of The Hackett Group, an Atlanta-based consulting firm. “World-class organizations focus less on performance metrics than on instilling company-wide accountability.”

How can companies overcome those obstacles and develop winning attributes? Researcher's found the following attributes:

• “Organizations achieve a competitive advantage when they develop a culture that fosters improved performance—one that holds a high respect for facts, is customer-centric, competes from a common playbook, makes data-driven decisions, and promotes cross-group collaboration, alignment, and execution.”
• "Firms that possess a performance discipline align objectives with shareholder value and radiate that message from the top through every part of the organization."
• "Performance management is not a big-bang process. It is a continuous improvement process. You are constantly tweaking, so it has to be something that you do in the normal course of business.”

Book Review: Six Disciplines Execution Revolution

Julien Dionne, editor at Incentive, Compensation and Sales Performance Management, has published his review of the new book by Gary Harpst, Six Disciplines® Execution Revolution.

An excerpt of his review:

"I was particularly interested by this book because not only does it talk about how a business can achieve excellence, it also focuses a lot on performance management. Throughout the book Gary acknowledges the importance of performance measurement, performance measurement, business intelligence and analytics, and performance management systems. Overall, this book is straight to the point, well-organized, and as the title suggests, focused on execution."

Read the entire review here.

Coming Soon - The Execution Revolution Challenge!

Where is your organization, in terms of strategy vs. execution?

Six Disciplines, developers of the first complete strategy execution program for small and midsized businesses, is developing a free, interactive tool that enables organizations to rate how well they execute their strategies.

The Execution Revolution Challenge only takes one minute to complete, but the results will cause you to begin thinking and acting differently about how you address the biggest challenge in business: execution.

“The purpose of the Execution Revolution Challenge is to prove whether everyone in your organization is on the “same page” or not, in terms of the strategy execution capability of the organization,” said Gary Harpst, founder and CEO of Six Disciplines. “Businesses are not alone in their struggle to grow predictably and profitably. Very few businesses have this mastered. Taking the Execution Revolution Challenge is the first step in understanding what you need to do differently to solve the biggest challenge in business.”

“We’re encouraging every person within an organization to take the Challenge. When completed, the tool provides the CEO with a crystal clear view into the level of alignment within their organization. Most come away with a sense of urgency that something needs to be done differently, in order to execute strategy more consistently and predictably,” added Harpst.

The Idea Behind The Execution Revolution Challenge
The idea behind the Execution Revolution Challenge comes from Chapter 1 of the new book Six Disciplines® Execution Revolution – Solving the One Business Problem that Makes Solving All Other Problems Easier,” by CEO and award-winning author, Gary Harpst.

“The Challenge brings the Six Disciplines Business Excellence Model™ to life,” said Harpst. “The model reveals that every organization, during its life cycle, moves around on a four-quadrant matrix, characterized by weak and strong strategy and execution. The breakthrough idea is there is a revolutionary new way for businesses to move to the upper right hand quadrant, where strategy and execution are balanced and predictable, indicated by profitable growth,” added Harpst.

(Check back here soon - we'll let you know when the Execution Revolution Challenge is "live"!)

Management and The Growth Challenge

Robert Bruner, Dean of the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, observes:

"Economic indicators suggest that growth of the world economy is slowing. High commodity prices and fear about future conditions are driving investors and customers out of the market. What would it take to restore us to sensible growth?"

His answer? "Probably many things. But among these would certainly be good general management."

Recent research at Darden reinforces this notion in the context of the growing firm. Ed Hess, professor at Darden has been studying the role of general managers in producing long stretches of organic growth within companies.

Hess's research confirms that: ...building a stretch of strong internal growth depends on creating “a seamless, consistent, self-reinforcing alignment across strategy, execution processes, structure, leadership, culture, HR policies, accountability, technology, measurement and rewards. In other words, good growth leaders are able to think in a systems integrative mindset across functions."

Bruner's research shows that "...to be a consistent high performance company, strategy is not enough- you must be a great execution company. And to be a great execution company you need a deep bench of good servant leaders, high employee engagement, customer centricity, and a good technology platform across your company-especially your supply chain."

BOTTOMLINE: "This is the power of integration and alignment. General management is a way of thinking - a mindset which appreciates the integrative complexity of human behavior.”

Barriers To Sustainable Performance

"It may be overly simplistic to say that a company’s success depends on the quality of its communication and internal dialogue. But look at the top and you’ll see that a leader who is authentic is a leader who has inspired clear and honest communication."

So begins the Ivey Business Journal article "The New Leadership Challenge: Removing The Emotional Barriers To Sustainable Performance in a Flat World," by Paul Wieand, Jan Birchfield and M. Carl Johnson III.

Pulling from disparate works such as Thomas Friedman's "The World Is Flat" and Jim Collins' "Good To Great", the authors summarize effective leadership in a five-step model:

Step 1: Overcoming the Personality: Removing barriers to self-knowledge and authenticity
Step 2: Authentic Leadership: Developing an authentic leadership style and applying it for effective decision-making
Step 3: Collaboration: Communicating to create unity without consensus
Step 4: Culture: Helping the leader create an environment that enhances openness, candor and dissent as essential characteristics of communication
Step 5: Commitment: Committing to a Level 5 environment for sustainably good results

BOTTOMLINE: "We would encourage CEOs and their executive staffs to embrace the 5-step model we describe above and commit to achieving a highly collaborative culture founded on authenticity. With this achievement, we believe that organizations will raise their success odds for delivering sustainably good performance."

The Power of The Two Word Strategy

When it comes to strategy formulation, it's important to be as clear and concise as possible. Brevity is key.

With that in mind, try boiling your strategic position down to two words (or at least two key concepts.)

The two words you choose need to answer the following two questions:

1. What business are you in?
2. What makes you different?

For example: Dell (computers direct); Southwest Airlines (short flights); FedEx (overnight delivery); JiffyLube (quick oilchanges) and so on.

Why?

Long-term business success is rooted in your ability to build and sustain a product or service that is different than your competition - different in ways that are important to customers.

BOTTOMLINE: Getting to this level of clarity is not easy. But, simplifying your strategic position to two words:

• Forces you to make tough choices (you can be all things to all markets)
• Strengthens your focus and direction (use the strength of competitors against them)
• Ensures clarity (so everyone in the organization understands it and aligns activities to it)

Six Secrets of Breakthrough Companies

Author Keith McFarland, a former Inc. 500 CEO, has spent years researching thousands of private companies and interviewing their leaders -- in an attempt to identify the secrets of "breaking through." Here are six of his most surprising findings.

1. Happy employees make successful companies. How employees feel about working in a place is a significant driver of success. A key discovery, driven home in our visits to one breakthrough company after another, was that the task of building a great place to work wasn't delegated to the human resources department alone. The top people in the company thought about it every day.
2. Money doesn't solve everything. You don't always need other people's money. We've all heard the professional investor's elevator pitch, "Sure, you can grow your business, but you can grow it faster with our money." We were shocked by the fact that not one of nine breakthrough companies was funded by venture capital in their start-up years.
3. Many paths lead to success. It's not about where (or even whether) you went to school. The diversity of the people who established and/or are running the nine breakthrough companies is simply astounding.
4. Talent is contagious. Don't look for extraordinary people; build a place where ordinary people can do extraordinary things. While they certainly obsessed about each individual hiring decision, breakthrough companies also focused on creating systems that helped their people grow along with the business.
5. Change matters. Sticking to the knitting won't always get you there. Just as the breakthrough companies ignored the so-called experts when it came to the prospects for their industry, they also kept redefining their businesses.
6. Breakthrough companies are found in unexpected places. The most interesting companies may not operate in the markets that Wall Street and the business press consider interesting or "cool." Many of the breakthrough companies began in market segments experts considered unattractive at the time.

Six Disciplines Client Video - Kellermeyer

Kellermeyer, a leading Midwest supplier of retail janitorial services for home and retail space with offices nationwide, works with Six Disciplines to better align its people for sustaining their business success.

Watch this short video as President Jill Kegler talks about how Six Disciplines helped them to optimize operating efficiencies and to get its workforce to become more engaged and accountable. See how she overcame barriers to drive positive change with this unique strategy execution program.

Get Six Disciplines Execution Revolution - for FREE

It's time to start the Execution Revolution!

As our way of thanking all of the Be Excellent readers, we're offering a complimentary* copy of the new book "Six Disciplines® Execution Revolution" by CEO and award-winning author Gary Harpst.

Get a copy of the new book for yourself - and tell others to get theirs quickly as well.

To get yours, visit www.SixDisciplines.com/START - and enter the Coupon Code: "START"

*Offer valid for U.S. residents only. Limited to the first 5,000 books, one per address. Offer ends June 19, 2008.

Innovation and the Small Business Challenge

This month Inc. Magazine challenged A.G. Lafley (CEO of Procter & Gamble) and Ram Charan (strategy execution guru) to apply the lessons from their new book The Game-Changer: How You Can Drive Revenue and Profit Growth with Innovation to a much smaller company - one with only $4 million in revenue and 30 employees.

Lafley and Charan took on the challenge and came up with a seven-step routine for innovation.

The steps include:

1. Select the Strategy (Look for an underserved market)
2. Connect to Customers (Use social networks as an idea collector)
3. Generate Ideas (Brainstorm the right way)
4. Select an Idea (Separate the good ideas from the great)
5. Prototype and Test (Bring on the customers)
6. Go to Market (Even half-baked product ideas can work)
7. Adjust for Growth (Devote resources to innovation)

Change Management - Why Is It So Hard?

A new Economist Intelligence Unit study investigates the state of organizational change programs, and asserts that an unstable economy won't dampen spending on change programs.

In Managing change successfully (March-April 2008), sponsored by Celerant Consulting, the researchers found that business leaders are responding to the economic slowdown by launching more change programs and spending more money on them.

Although change programs in the last year have had cost reduction as their primary goal, the survey found that, over the next year, the goal will be organizational flexibility for operational efficiency -- 57% of companies surveyed put this at the top of their agenda.

The problem?

• In spite of this enthusiasm for change, few companies are consistently successful at it. Although change management, as a business discipline, has been around since the 1940s, most companies still struggle to put theory into practice.
• Of the 607 senior executives polled for this survey, 58% say that, over the past five years, half or fewer of their change initiatives have been successful. The U.S. fares a lot worse, with 75% of respondents stating that half or fewer of their change initiatives have been successful.

Why is change so hard?

• The element of change management that companies have the most difficulty with is "winning hearts and minds" (51%). This was followed, in second place, by "lack of management buy-in" (31%).
• When change management initiatives fail, companies' blame "lack of clearly defined or achievable milestones" (24%). Next on the blame-list is "lack of commitment by senior management" and "poor communication" (both with 19%). In other words, the ingredients that are required to convince people of the case for change.

BOTTOMLINE: Human nature is one of the key barriers to effective change management, (along with economics and expertise) all of which are directly related to executing strategy.

Read Chapter 3, What Is It So Hard? - from the new book by Gary Harpst, Six Disciplines® Execution Revolution, for insights into why change is so hard, and a breakthrough way to overcome this ongoing challenge.

Growing Businesses with Execution to Succeed

Six Disciplines Equips Growing Businesses with Execution to Succeed

New, current clients keep the recession where it belongs: external to business operations

Six Disciplines, headquartered in Findlay, Ohio, is empowering their clients to manage and build their business for success, no matter what the economic environment holds.

New customers, including Blue & Co., an Indianapolis-based regional CPA firm providing consulting and certified public accounting services, are being taught to build their business from the inside out with the aid of Six Disciplines.

The Six Disciplines® strategy execution program integrates a repeatable methodology to drive organizational learning, ongoing external coaching to ensure accountability, an execution software system to align daily activities of every person, every day, and community learning to accelerate and sustain business excellence.

“While many small businesses tend to pull back, spend less, and wait things out in an uncertain economy, this approach disrupts current business initiatives and profits, as well as the culture and long-term financial success of the company,” said Gary Harpst, CEO and founder of Six Disciplines. “In times of economic uncertainty leaders must focus on what they can control – their internal business’ strategy and overall execution.”

Entrepreneurs remain unmoved by the current economic climate and refuse to be another negative statistic. Nine out of 10 U.S. small business owners reported seeing opportunities for their businesses in the current recession, and more than 75 percent expect growth, based on Intuit's recent "Get Back to Business" survey. Six Disciplines’ customers, as an entrepreneurial segment, are better equipped to deal with an economic downturn or external pressures.

“Incorporating Six Disciplines into our business allowed us to increase our focus and refine our strategy, regardless of outside economic factors,” said Paul Kramer, CEO Kramer Enterprises and two-year Six Disciplines client. “We’re growing and using the supposed economic slowdown as an opportunity to make sure every employee is on the same page and that our goals are well-defined.”

For businesses to stay one step ahead of the economy and successfully build and manage an internally stable business that can withstand external hardship, Six Disciplines leverages the following framework:

• Better understand the competitive landscape. Take the time to research how competitors shift strategies and benchmark the activities for key learnings and to identify areas of opportunity to reach new customers.
• Evaluate the corporate mission and goals. Unexpected and uncontrollable forces will always impact short-term business results. It is important to stay focused on the company’s ultimate mission and goals, regardless of external factors. Outside forces may change, but the mission and goals should remain steadfast.
• Expand your business/revenue stream. Based on the competitive research and corporate mission/goals, identify new ways to reach a broader client base– while everyone else is tightening their business’ belts, leverage the opportunity to expand into new
• Invest in technologies that serve long-term purposes of the organization.
  Because of the cost to integrate any technology, the decision to buy shouldn’t be based on a short-term fix. Look ahead several years to ensure that all technologies purchased complement one another for maximum efficiency and productivity.

Harpst created the Six Disciplines program based on personal experience, in addition to research resulting from professionals with more than 50 years combined business experience. His first company, Solomon Software, went through a recession and Harpst was forced to lay off staff.

“It was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do,” he said. “The worst part was I knew it was preventable if I had only planned and demanded more internally of our operations; I needed to run my business tighter from the inside out and keep environmental forces out of my business.”

After running the business for 20 years, Harpst sold his business to Microsoft, which implemented more than 60,000 business management systems in small and midsized businesses. Upon the sale, he vowed to create a methodology to aid businesses in achieving business success consistently at less cost to the business and staff while providing more value to customers. He founded Six Disciplines in 2000 to help small- and midsize businesses create ongoing strategy and success.

Harpst is the author of the top-rated book, Six Disciplines for Excellence: Building Small Businesses That Learn, Lead and Last and, scheduled for a July release, Six Disciplines® Execution Revolution: Solving The One Business Problem That Makes Solving All Other Problems Easier.

About Six Disciplines
Six Disciplines, founded in 2000, has developed the first complete strategy execution program, specifically for small and midsized businesses. The Six Disciplines program integrates a repeatable methodology to drive organizational learning, ongoing external coaching to ensure accountability, an execution software system to align daily activities of every stakeholder, and community learning to accelerate and sustain business excellence. The program is offered exclusively through a growing national network of locally-owned Six Disciplines Centers. Businesses that have implemented the Six Disciplines program include those from the Inc. 500, ISO-9000 certified companies, and a 2007 Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award recipient. Visit http://www.sixdisciplines.com/ or http://www.garyharpst.com/

The AppGap Reviews Six Disciplines

Bill Ives, a contributing editor to The AppGap, recently interviewed Six Disciplines founder and CEO Gary Harpst in his review Six Disciplines - Providing Integrated Consulting, Coaching, and Software for Small Businesses

According to Bill, "Six Disciplines offers more than just how to use the new technology, but the concept is the same. There is a significant mind set transformation in play."

Read the entire article here.

Be Excellent Named To Best Blog List

According to Benjamin Jones, editor at entrepreneurial blog Ben-Means-Business:

"There are thousands of small business and entrepreneurship blogs in the blogosphere. Unfortunately, many of them are not at all useful to the experienced or aspiring entrepreneur. We've all seen them. The great majority of which are e-commerce "pros" masquerading as entrepreneurship experts. This makes finding solid, useful information for the traditional small business owner very difficult. Therefore in my frustration, I have decided to create what I like to think of as "The A-List" of entrepreneurship and small business blogs."

At Be Excellent, we're humbled to have made Ben's list.

Check out The 41 Absolute Best Blogs about Entrepreneurship and Small Business.

Strategy Execution Expert Gary Harpst Launches An Execution Revolution

In support of the upcoming July release of his newest book, Six Disciplines® Execution Revolution, successful serial entrepreneur, CEO, and author Gary Harpst forsees a revolution brewing within America’s small and midsized businesses.

“A revolution is about to start that will provide a leapfrog opportunity for small and midsized businesses in the way they execute their strategy,” said Harpst. “Knowing how to plan and execute, while overcoming today’s inevitable surprises, is the most foundational capability any successful organization can learn. To accelerate this revolution, we’ve established a publishing division and supporting websites designed to educate business leaders on how they transform their businesses and maximize their ability to execute strategy,” added Harpst.

Harpst’s newest book, Six Disciplines® Execution Revolution: Solving The One Business Problem That Makes Solving All Other Problems Easier, is scheduled to be published in July 2008. In Six Disciplines Execution Revolution, Harpst details the elements of a complete strategy execution program, explains why it could only have happened now, and clarifies why such a program will become a mainstream requirement for successful small and midsized businesses. The new book is now available for pre-order from http://www.sixdisciplinespublishing.com/.

Harpst’s first book, the highly-rated Six Disciplines for Excellence, received the 2007 USA Book News Best Books finalist award, and was rated the No. 1 business book for 2007 by The Center for Workplace Excellence. Six Disciplines for Excellence is also consistently ranked in the top ten books of the Organizational Learning category on Amazon, and is also available from Six Disciplines Publishing.

In addition, Harpst’s new website, http://www.garyharpst.com/, offers insights into Gary’s successful background, his companies, his books, videos, podcasts, his newsletter on strategy execution, speaking engagement calendar, and his personal blog on business excellence topics.

About Gary Harpst
Gary Harpst, a highly successful entrepreneur and CEO, spent twenty years as leader of Solomon Software, which implemented more than 60,000 businesses management systems in small and midsized businesses, before it was eventually sold to Microsoft. Today, as founder and CEO of Six Disciplines, Harpst and his team have developed the first complete strategy execution program for small and midsized businesses, which includes a repeatable business-building methodology, local accountability coaching, an innovative execution management software system, and the accelerated advantages of community learning.

Harpst is also the author of two highly-respected business improvement books, Six Disciplines® Execution Revolution and Six Disciplines for Excellence. A highly-regarded speaker, Harpst uses his 30 years of business leadership and entrepreneurial experience to provide a fertile inventory of hard-hitting, real-world examples that pepper his presentations and engage his audiences. Visit http://www.garyharpst.com/ and http://www.sixdisciplines.com/.

About Six Disciplines Publishing
Six Disciplines® Publishing, a division of Six Disciplines, LLC, is responsible for the creation and distribution of materials and media covering the broad topic of strategy execution. Headquartered in Findlay, Ohio, Six Disciplines Publishing develops content across a wide variety of media: printed books, audio books, blogs, whitepapers, web sites, podcasts, speeches, presentations, and videos. With integrity, excellence and respect for lasting relationships, Six Disciplines Publishing, in conjunction with its Partners, creates a winning combination of design, publishing, production, distribution, publicity, public relations and marketing services. Visit http://www.sixdisciplinespublishing.com/.

Achieving Business Excellence

In a newly released PDF that you can download for free from ChangeThis, consultant John Spence condenses his years of consulting and research into six strategies that all great companies focus on, entitled Achieving Business Excellence.

The six strategies:

1. Have a vivid vision: A clear and well-thought-out vision of what you are trying to create that is exceptionally well communicated to everyone involved.
2. Hire the best people: Superior talents who are also masters of collaboration.
3. Create a performance-oriented culture: One that demands flawless operational execution, encourages constant improvement and innovation, and completely refuses to tolerate mediocrity or lack of accountability.
4. Encourage robust communication: Open, honest, frank and courageous, both internally and externally.
5. Create a sense of urgency: The strong desire to get the important things done while never wasting time on the trivial.
6. Encourage extreme customer focus: Owning the voice of the customer and delivering what customers consider truly valuable.

Download the Achieving Business Excellence pdf here.

What You Think Is Your Biggest Problem, Isn't

As Karl Albrecht said in his book Corporate Radar, "The majority is not always right, the conventional wisdom is not always wise, and the accepted doctrine could well be flawed. The more fashionable an idea, the more it is likely to be exempt from critical evaluation. Breakthrough thinking sometimes calls for contradicting the most widely held assumptions and beliefs."

Consider what you think is your biggest business challenge. Is it growth? Competition? Innovation? Cost containment?

We'd like to challenge how you think about your biggest business challenge. In fact, what you think is your biggest business problem, isn't.

The foundational challenge - one that transcends all other business problems - is executing strategy. In other words, building an organization that has the ability to plan and execute, while at the same time, overcoming the inevitable surprises - is the biggest and toughest challenge in business.

The good news? This one problem, if solved, will make solving all other problems easier.

That's what the Execution Revolution....is all about!

Small Business Advocate Interviews Gary Harpst

Want to know how to thrive, not just survive during a slow economy?

Listen to this MP3 as author and CEO Gary Harpst speaks with Jim Blasingame at the Small Business Advocate, with some thoughts on what he thinks is the main characteristic of successful organizations, execution.

Gary Harpst - National Leader of The Month

LeaderNetwork.Org conducts interviews with the nation's top leaders. Previous leaders who have been interviewed include: Dr. Stephen Covey, Ken Blanchard, Lou Holtz, John Wooden, and Zig Ziglar.

For May 2008, Gary Harpst, founder and CEO of Six Disciplines, has been named "National Leader of the Month" by LeaderNetwork.Org.

Harpst was interviewed by Brian McCormick, and the MP3 podcast is available for downloading here.

The written transcript of the interview can be viewed here.

The Challenge of Innovation? Executing on Strategy

According to findings of a recent survey published by Accenture, business strategy is driven largely by innovation, but corporate responsibility for the innovation process is highly fragmented.

Additional findings from the study:

• Innovation is a top corporate priority, but it also indicates that more senior-level accountability, greater CEO involvement and improved speed-to-market execution can help companies deliver on their promise of innovation and boost their competitiveness.
• 62 percent of respondents said that their organization’s business strategy is either totally or largely dependent on innovation.
• The challenge of innovation for organizations is not commitment and intent but rather execution against the innovation vision.

BOTTOMLINE: "The role of the CEO in the innovation process has grown dramatically in its importance and needs to evolve from vision- and direction-setting to enabling and driving execution,” said Dan Chow, a senior executive in Accenture’s Strategy practice.

“CEOs need to properly align resources and action with the innovation vision and performance goals. However, simply having a vision for innovation and naming an executive to head innovation is not enough to make it work. Senior management must look at innovation as a core process to be actively managed; avoid a quick-fix approach; and focus their energy on execution.”

Enduring Business Excellence

Fortune Magazine recently published an article by management expert Jim Collins entitled "The Secret of Enduring Greatness."

Lessons learned:

• The most significant business innovation of the past 200 years: systematic management development.
• Just because a company stumbles - or gets smacked upside the head by an unexpected event or new challenge - does not mean that it must continue to decline.
• Companies do not fall primarily because of what the world does to them or because of how the world changes around them; they fall first and foremost because of what they do to themselves.
• When you've built an institution with values and a purpose beyond just making money - when you've built a culture that makes a distinctive contribution while delivering exceptional results - why would you surrender to the forces of mediocrity and succumb to irrelevance?

Genuine Curiosity's Review of Execution Revolution

Dwayne Melancon over at Genuine Curiosity, has published his review of Execution Revolution, the new book by Gary Harpst, founder and CEO of Six Disciplines.

Here's an excerpt from Dwayne's review:

"This is a book designed to get your business to the next level. I loved this book, and I think the subtitle sums it up quite well: "Solving the one business problem that makes solving all other problems easier." What's the "one problem?" Execution."

"Harpst's book goes beyond platitudes, and his recommendations are meaty and actionable.
This is not a 'getting started' business book. It's a 'getting better' or 'getting results' book that is well-suited for established SMB's who are in the mids of (or in fear of) a plateu or decline in performance. If you want to jump the curve and get better results in leading an SMB, this book is one you should read."

Read Dwayne's entire review here.

Finding and Retaining Top People

In a recent survey conducted by the Institute for Corporate Productivity (i4cp) in conjunction with HR.com, the companies responding to the March 2008 Tawere clear about their priorities: in a word - talent.

The top five HR growth issues in 2008, as indicated by survey responses, were all related to talent in one way or another:

• Employee retention (72%)
• Engagement (70%)
• Recruitment (64%)
• Development of high-potentials (64%)
• Succession planning (56%)

BOTTOMLINE: Regardless of economic landscapes, finding, orienting, engaging and retaining top people continues to be a top growth issue for companies of all sizes. Combine the newfound struggle swith cross-generational challenges (Gen X, Y, Millenials, etc.) - and you have a new demand that prior workforce managers have never quite had to deal with.

Executive Coaching Survey Responses Revealed

The good folks at Sherpa Coaching have released data from their 2008 survey on Executive Coaching.

Some of the more interesting findings (responses from executive coaches only):

• 62 percent said their development as a coach was primarily from classroom training and certification as a coach
• 44 percent said they charge between $150 - $299/hour for business coaching
• 77 percent said in-person meetings were the most effective for coaching
• 45 percent said effective coaching is delivered twice a month
• 45 percent said people at all levels within an organization should receive coaching
• 54 percent said people who need leadership development need business coaching the most
• 53 percent said business or consulting experience is the most appropriate background for business or executive coaching

Small Businesses: The Heros of the U.S. Economy

With all of the gloom and doom being spread throughout the major media about the economic sky falling, let's step back a bit and reflect on our strengths - specifically, the strengths contributed by small and midsized businesses.

In helping to celebrate National Small Business Week, consider the following statistics from the National Federation of Independent Businesses (NFIB):

• Small firms account for 39 percent of the country's gross national product
  Small firms create two out of every three new jobs
• Small firms are twice as innovative per employee as larger firms
• Small, innovative firms produce 13 times more patents per employee than large patenting firms
• 66 percent of the Americans think that small businesses "exert a positive influence on the way things are going in the country today"
• 91 percent of small business owners contributed to their community in the last year through volunteering, in-kind contributions, and/or direct cash donations

BOTTOMLINE: "Even though small businesses collectively generate $5 trillion in sales in the U.S., the biggest challenge of an individual small business is "survival." At times, the challenges can be daunting, indeed overwhelming. It's encouraging to know that the struggles we encounter every day are normal. ALL small businesses face them. And like other "heroes," we continue the fight because the cause is worth it." (from Six Disciplines for Excellence)

PRO-TEC To Receive Malcolm Baldrige Award This Week

PRO-TEC Coating Company of Leipsic, Ohio, one of only five organizations in the U.S., will receive the prestigious Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award this week in Washington D.C. The award is the nation’s highest presidential honor awarded annually for quality and organizational performance excellence.

PRO-TEC was the only the only recipient of the 2007 Baldrige award in the “Small Business” category. Criteria for the Baldrige award include: leadership; strategic planning; customer and market focus; measurement, analysis, and knowledge management; human resource focus; process management; and business results.

About PRO-TEC CoatingPRO-TEC Coating Company, Leipsic, Ohio, provides world-class coated sheet steel in coil form primarily to the quality-critical automotive market. PRO-TEC is a 50/50 joint venture partnership of U.S. Steel Corporation (USS) and KOBE Steel, Ltd., of Japan. The company is privately held. PRO-TEC organizational culture blends the strong American steel-making tradition of USS and KOBE’s technical and analytical Japanese style with the strong work ethic and family values of rural Northwest Ohio to produce a superior product. PRO-TEC is certified to stringent ISO-9001, ISO/TS 16949 and ISO 14001 standards. Visit PRO-TEC at http://www.proteccoating.com/

Read the stories "PRO-TEC journey 'has just begun'" and "Pursuit of excellence pays off at PRO-TEC."

(DISCLAIMER: PRO-TEC has been a Six Disciplines client for three years.)

Execution Revolution: Now Available for Pre-Order

The new book by author, CEO and founder of Six Disciplines, entitled "Execution Revolution," is now available for pre-order on Amazon.

About Execution Revolution:

With all of the pressures successful business leaders have today, none is more urgent or challenging than learning the ability to execute strategy.

While larger businesses have the luxury of budgets and resources to meet this challenge, it’s the small and midsized businesses that now have a tremendous opportunity to level the playing field, leapfrog the expensive, outdated approaches of the past, and attack the challenge of execution in a revolutionary way. The key insights are:

• Excellence is the enduring pursuit of balanced strategy and execution.
• Planning and executing, while at the same time dealing with the inevitable surprises, is the biggest challenge in business.
• Overcoming this challenge is what we mean by solving the one problem that makes all others easier.
• Failing to solve the problem destines your organization to a reactive, fire-fighting future.

Based on breakthrough research, field testing and proven best-practices, the thought-leading vision described by Gary Harpst in Execution Revolution sets a new course for how small and midsized businesses can finally confront the never-ending challenge of executing strategy.

As a follow-up to the success of Six Disciplines for Excellence, Harpst’s new book, Execution Revolution, details the elements of a complete strategy execution program, clarifies how it could only have happened now, and explains why such a program will soon become a mainstream requirement for your business.

(NOTE: The pub date has been moved up to July 1 -- not September as indicated)

IndustryWeek Reviews New Book: Execution Revolution

IndustryWeek has recently published a review summary of the new book by Gary Harpst, "Execution Revolution."

"What's needed, says author Gary Harpst, is not only the discipline to learn how to develop a good plan, but more importantly the proper use of technology in execution. "

Read the entire review here.

(The new book will soon be available for pre-order on Amazon)

Communicating The Need for Change

If there's one thing that's constant, it's change.

But the one thing that our employees need is a clear explanation of:

• Why are we changing? (what's wrong with what we're doing now?)
• What are the benefits of changing? (how will things be better if we do?)
• What are the consequences of not changing? (what will happen if we don't?)

It's no wonder then, that:

• 70 percent of all change initiatives fail -- due to human nature (people) issues

The reasons? Sometimes it's because of senior leadership's inability to lead or explain the reasons that changes are needed. Other times, it's a lack of understanding, or engagement, or unwillingness to deal with change, and so forth.

BOTTOMLINE: Keep in mind the following eight-steps of change, by John P. Kotter:

1. Establish a Sense of Urgency- Examine market and competitive realities- Identify and discuss crises, potential crises, or major opportunities
2. Form a Powerful Guiding Coalition- Assemble a group with enough power to lead the change effort- Encourage the group to work as a team
3. Create a Vision- Create a vision to help direct the change effort- Develop strategies for achieving that vision
4. Communicate the Vision- Use every vehicle possible to communicate the new vision and strategies - Teach new behaviors by the example of the guiding coalition
5. Empower Others to Act on the Vision- Get rid of obstacles to change- Change systems or structures that seriously undermine the vision- Encourage risk taking and nontraditional ideas, activities, and actions
6. Plan for and Create Short-Term Wins- Plan for visible performance improvements- Creating those improvements- Recognize and reward employees involved in the improvements
7. Consolidate Improvements and Produce Still More Change- Use increased credibility to change systems, structures, and policies that don't fit the vision- Hire, promote, and develop employees who can implement the vision- Reinvigorate the process with new projects, themes, and change agents
8. Institutionalize New Approaches- Articulate the connections between the new behaviors and organizational success- Develop the means to ensure leadership development and succession

Twelve Different Ways To Innovate

MIT Sloan Management Review reveals the landscape of "The 12 Different Ways for Companies To Innovate":

But what exactly is innovation?

"Although the subject (or innovation) has risen to the top of the CEO agenda, many companies have a mistakenly narrow view of it. They might see innovation as synonymous with new product development or traditional research and development. But such myopia can lead to the systematic erosion of competitive advantage. As a result, companies in a given industry can come to resemble one another over time."

In actuality, business innovation is far broader in scope than product or technological innovation.
In fact, your company can innovate along any of 12 different dimensions with respect to your:

1. Offerings
2. Platform
3. Solutions
4. Customers
5. Customer experience
6. Value capture
7. Processes
8. Organization
9. Supply chain
10. Presence
11. Networking
12. Brand

BOTTOMLINE: And you thought you could only innovate with regard to products and technology! As discussed in Six Disciplines for Excellence, Discipline V. Innovate Purposefully is not an isolated event, nor is it isolated to just products, R&D and new technologies. It's a organizational learning mindset that permeates the culture of an excellent company.

The ROI of Employee Engagement

It is no surprise to hear that a highly engaged workforce improves an organization's performance.

But as global research has highlighted, the sheer scale of the improvement in bottom-line results can be remarkable.

An employee engagement study by ISR has found:

• A gap of almost 52 percent in the one-year performance improvement in operating income between companies with highly engaged employees versus companies whose employees have low engagement scores.
• High engagement companies improved 19.2 percent while low engagement companies declined 32.7 percent in operating income over the study period.

BOTTOMLINE: "Our research continues to show that a well-substantiated relationship exists between employee engagement - the extent to which employees are committed, believe in the values of the company, feel pride in working for their employer, and are motivated to go the extra mile - and business results," said ISR Global Research Director Patrick Kulesa. "This data reaffirms the remarkable ability of an engaged workforce to impact a company's bottom line."

Six Disciplines Program Streamlines Management Process

The Toledo Business Journal recently published a feature story about Kramer Enterprises, a Findlay, Ohio-based, family-owned business - which is also a Six Disciplines client.

"In order to help strengthen the company as it grows in size, Kramer Enterprises has also used the resources of Six Disciplines, a business excellence program."

According to Rich Kramer , “It (Six Disciplines) has created a lot of opportunities for us. It’s a good selling point to let people know that you’re focused and you have a plan.”

Learn more about Kramer Enterprises continued growth and their use of Six Disciplines here.

How To Thrive In A Down Economy

Gary Harpst, CEO and founder of Six Disciplines, was recently interviewed on WTVG-TV (Toledo - an ABC affiliate) regarding his advice for business leaders during times of economic uncertainty.

Unlocking Your Company's Creativity

Forbes article How To Unlock Your Company's Creativity offers six steps to help unlock the creativity in your company:

1. Let Everyone Contribute. Employees at every level should have a way to share their ideas. Begin by scheduling a group innovation strategy session - brainstorm ideas (no judgement) based on your organization's strengths. (Using innovating tools like the 100 Point Exercise from Six Disciplines helps to get ideas down, and prioritizes them quicker)
2. Cross-Functional Ideas Teams. For the purposes of innovation, organize your company into cross-functional, creative teams with people from different departments, and with varying levels of experience, who meet on a regular basis.
3. Prize Diversity. Sameness--of thought, background and experience--is a creativity killer. This is where multi-generational workforces can contribute.
4. Rethink Assumptions. What has worked in the past may no longer work. And what hasn't worked in the past, may now be the innovative catalyst you are seeking.
5. Identify Your (Truly) Precious Resources And Exploit Them. Conduct a SWOT analysis to determine what your organization's strengths are - and key in on them.
6. Hammer It Home. Reward ideas that solve problems.

BOTTOMLINE: Remember - the point of unlocking creativity needs to be done in a purposeful way. Innovation is simply another name for problem solving. The creativity need to be focused on solving problems that will provide you with competitive advantage. Anything less is just... "ideation." (Thanks, IBM )

Gary Harpst Interviewed on Small Business Guru

Gary Harpst, founder and CEO of Six Disciplines was recently interviewed by Kelly Brown of Small Business Guru.

Some takeaways from the podcast interview:

• The best practices of larger organizations can (and should) be incorporated into small business
• Leaders manage for the future - in lean times they’re preparing for growth, in busy times they’re preparing a slow down
• Great managers down focus on firefighting, but they do focus on constantly improving they systems, looking for low hanging fruit.
• With a recession imminent (or already here) the natural inclination will be to pull back and play it safe, but this is really a time of opportunity to:
• Assess your competitive position
• Re-evaluate & recommit to you corporate mission & goals
• Expand your business by creating new products & new revenue stream

Find Gary’s Book on Amazon:Six Disciplines for Excellence: Building Small Businesses That Learn, Lead and Last.

Gary’s newest book, Execution Revolution, will be available in the coming months.

The podcast is available here.

Fundamental Opportunities During Uncertain Times

Small businesses are poised to weather the current economic downturn and plan to grow despite it, according to Intuit Inc.'s recent "Get Back to Business" survey results.

In a considerable showing of solidarity:

• 90 percent of U.S. small businessowners reported seeing opportunities for their businesses in the current recession
• More than 75 percent still expect growth
• To make this growth a reality, small business owners say they'll rely on their experience and passion.
• 70 percent of small business owners said their personal passion drove them to start their own company, and that the same passion will help them get through a downturn
• Undaunted by the economy, 86 percent of respondents said they remain as passionate as the day they started

BOTTOMLINE: Focus, persistence, passion - all foundational qualities of smart, forward-looking business leaders.

Changing The Way You Think About Strategy Execution

A revolution is coming in the way that small and midsize businesses can solve the oldest and biggest problem in business.

What most business leaders think is their greatest challenge -- really isn’t. All business leaders face new challenges each day and are tempted to think of the latest problem at hand as their “biggest.” No matter what the problems are today, however, they’ll be different tomorrow and they will be bigger.

There is one business problem that, if solved, makes solving all other problems easier.

Knowing how to plan and execute, while overcoming “today’s surprises,” is the most foundational capability any organization can have.

The inability to do this is the problem that business leaders must solve. With the capability to execute continuously, you gain control of your business. Without it, your business will be relegated to a reactive, firefighting existence.

For any business to sustain success, it has to have an clear strategy and the organization must be equipped to execute that strategy. Between the two, execution is always the hardest part of that equation.

In Execution Revolution, the new book by CEO Gary Harpst, he explains the new way that is coming to attack this really old and big problem;a way that has never been accessible to small- and midsize businesses - until now.

(Execution Revolution: available on Amazon in late April!)

Execution: The Great Unaddressed Issue In Business

Ram Charan is one of the leading management consultants in the world. One of his books, co-authored with Larry Bossidy, is Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done. More than one million copies have been sold and it is one of the best-selling business books of all time.

Stephen Bernhut, the editor of Ivey Business Journal Online, interviewed Ram Charan in Toronto, where he recently spoke at the annual meeting of the Human Resources Professional Association of Ontario.

Some key excerpts from the interview (ED NOTE: italics are mine):

IBJ: It’s now more than five years since you wrote what is considered to be “the” book on execution. Is it still as important as it was when you wrote the book?

RC: Execution is the great unaddressed issue in business today. Too many leaders today still place too great an emphasis on high-level strategy, on intellectualizing and philosophizing, and not enough on implementation. The fact is that the real difference between a company and its competitor is the ability to execute.

***

IBJ: In your book on execution, you say that many people equate execution with tactics. You also say that’s wrong. Why?

RC: Execution is a discipline and a system, it’s not only tactics. It must be built in to a company’s culture, strategy and goals. It’s a leader’s most important job. But many leaders today don’t do that. They spend time learning and deploying the latest management techniques. Execution is a discipline of its own, and today it is the critical discipline for business success.

***

Read the entire interview at Ivey Business Journal here.

Coaching for Total Organizational Engagement

Management-Issues reports that seven out of 10 British employers now use coaching within their organizations, compared with just under two thirds last year.

The reasons?

• Nearly eight out of 10 employers that offered coaching to all their employees used it for "general personal development", with three quarters saying they used it for "helping poor performance".
• More than half of the organizations polled believed that coaching by line managers was the most effective learning and development practice, with nearly half anticipating that even greater responsibility would fall on to line managers in the next five years.

Most significant change?

• More than two fifths of organizations now offered coaching to all employees, with some four out of 10 offering it only to directors and senior management and a third offering it to senior managers and line managers or supervisors.

According to Dr John McGurk, the primary researcher: "Coaching is not just a popular technique but an immensely powerful one for supporting personal development. There is no doubt that coaching is having a significant impact both on individual and organizational performance. As coaching helps people to develop, it's a perfect fit for the fast moving knowledge economy in which we operate," he added.

BOTTOMLINE: "Organizations face significant challenges in drawing up frameworks that ensure value for money and that are aligned with their organization's strategic objectives," says McGurk.

One of the key components of the Six Disciplines strategy execution program is accountability coaching, which is used to improve both individual and organizational performance.

Business Best Sellers - Are They Really That Bad?

So...how many business best-sellers have YOU read?

The April issue of FastCompany has an article by Elizabeth Spears, Library of the Living Dead, in which she warns: "Embrace a business best seller at your brain's peril."

Sure, there's the typical diatribe about business books that feature overused/misplaced metaphors, jargon and so forth.

Then comes the stunner: the "well-intentioned hope that the books will provide a useful framework for solving problems"...and that "they create the illusion of progress simply by adding another layer of busyness."

Well, ideas for business performance improvement have to start somewhere, and business books are one such method. More important than the business book itself, however, is what action you take as a result of reading the best seller.

If you succumb to the widespread practice of MBBS (Management By Best Seller), causing you to continually change direction and focus, then yes, the worst is still ahead.

However, if you understand that books - in and of themselves - are not to be used as a replacement for consistent, repeatable action, then you've already won at least half the battle.

FULL DISCLOSURE: Six Disciplines for Excellence, and the soon-to-be-released Execution Revolution (both written by Six Disciplines founder and CEO Gary Harpst) are both examples of the business book category.

What makes these business books different is that they're not ends unto themselves - it's how these two books are being used by business leaders.

Execution Revolution sets the stage for business leaders to view their biggest problem (executing strategy) in a breakthrough way. It then reveals the first complete strategy execution program, which consists of a repeatable business-building methodology described in detail in Six Disciplines for Excellence. When combined with local accountability coaching and innovative software tools for real-time activity alignment, the complete program helps companies to build these ideas into performance-changing organizational habits on a daily basis.

"Tell me and I'll forget; show me and I may remember; involve me and I'll understand."