Gary Harpst To Speak At Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce

Gary Harpst, CEO and founder of Six Disciplines, LLC, will be conducting a presentation entitled “Execution Revolution: Introducing The First Enduring Business Excellence Program" at the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce on Thursday December 6, 2007 from 11:30 a.m. - 1:30 p.m.

Harpst, the author of the top-rated business excellence handbook "Six Disciplines for Excellence," will be revealing insights from his newest book "Execution Revolution," which is scheduled to be published in 2008.

Click here for a calendar summary and to register for the event.

Using Technology Strategically

According to a recent NFI Research study, the majority of business leaders spend more than 60 percent of their time using technology in the course of a business day.

Three-fourths of senior executives and managers spend more than half of their time using technology (cell phone, BlackBerry, computer, etc.), according to the worldwide survey of 194 senior executives and managers by NFI Research.

Almost one-quarter (23 percent) spend between 70 and 80 percent of their time using technology, and 18 percent spend between 81 and 90 percent of their time using technology.

BOTTOMLINE: It's not how much time you spend using technology that's important. It's how you use technology to support the overall strategy of your organization, and more specifically, how you use technology to support the execution of your organization's strategy.

Ingredients for Good Decision-Making

In a 2007 survey of 154 global C-level executives, conducted by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU) and commissioned by Business Objects, the research found that more than 9 out of 10 corporate executives admit they are making important decisions on the basis of inadequate information.

Other findings from this decision-making research:

• Less than 10% of executives receive the information they need.
• 72% of execs believe management decision making is only moderately efficient or worse.
• 25% of executives believes management frequently, or always, gets its decisions wrong.
• 56% of executives are concerned about making poor choices because of bad data.
• 55% of executive decisions are based on ad hoc consultation instead of corporate metrics.
• 70% of senior managers rate decision-making as moderately efficient or worse vs 52% of C-level superiors.
• Yet, only 29% of executive think poor decision-making structures are a common cause of bad decisions.

The ingredients for good decision-making?

The report's authors identify five ingredients of good decision-making. Obviously, supporting good decisions requires a lot more than technology, but business intelligence systems can help with each of these:

• High-quality data
• Access to advanced systems and training
• Sound judgment
• Trust
• Flexibility

Three Ingredients for Success

From a recent New York Times article (subscription required), the co-authors of the book “Success Built to Last” (Wharton School Publishing, 2006) write that “extraordinary people, teams and organizations are simply ordinary people doing extraordinary things that matter to them.”

Their premise? Successful people are “builders.”

Builders find lasting success when three essential elements come into alignment in their lives and work.

1. The first element is meaning. “What you do must matter deeply to you."
2. The second is a “highly developed sense of accountability, audacity, passion and responsible optimism.”
3. And finally, these successful people “find effective ways to take action.”

Introducing Change within Your Company

When introducing any new business process improvement approach (like the Six Disciplines™ program), change management is a key to successful implementation. Since Six Disciplines can lead to a positive transformation of your company’s culture, it’s important to understand how to introduce this kind of change – BEFORE it actually occurs.

Consider these research findings about organizational change:

• Change can be painful: Organizational change is unexpectedly difficult because it provokes sensations of physiological discomfort. Trying to change hardwired habits requires a lot of effort, in the form of attention. This often leads to a feeling that many people find uncomfortable. So they do what they can to avoid change.
• Behaviorism by itself doesn’t work: Change efforts based on incentive and threat (the carrot and the stick) rarely succeed in the long run (e.g. offer the right incentives, and the desired change will naturally occur.) Yet there is plenty of evidence from both clinical research and workplace observation that change efforts based on typical incentives and threats (the carrot and the stick) rarely succeed in the long run.
• Humanism by itself doesn't work: In practice, the conventional empathic approach of connection and persuasion doesn’t sufficiently engage people. This phenomenon provides a scientific basis for some of the practices of leadership coaching. Rather than lecturing and providing solutions, effective accountability coaches ask pertinent questions and support their clients in working out solutions on their own.
• Repetition, consistency, perseverance are keys: Repeated, purposeful, and focused attention can lead to long-lasting evolution and continual improvement. For insights into why change is necessary, they need to be generated from within, not given to individuals as forgone conclusions.

BOTTOMLINE: Knowing these factors before going into your business process improvement can help set expectations appropriately.

Communicating Organizational Change

Although always important, communication is absolutely critical when deciding to adopt a business improvement process like Six Disciplines. Most importantly, this needs to occur BEFORE the actual change initiative begins.

Consider the following change management research findings:

• The #1 contributor to the success of a business improvement initiative is active, strong and visible sponsorship (commitment) throughout the process.
• The top obstacle to successful change is employee resistance at all levels: front-line, middle managers, and senior management.
• The top reason for employee resistance is a lack of awareness about the change initiative that is coming, why it is necessary, what is expected as a result.
• Employees want to hear messages about change the change from two people: the CEO and their immediate team leader. The message they want to hear from each of these individual is very different.

BOTTOMLINE: It’s difficult to manage the transition if people have no sense of where the changes are headed. Painting a picture for them can be difficult. The truth is that many organizations head into a transition state with nothing more than some basic goals and cherished values to guide them on their journey.

Promoting Company-Wide Accountability

"Whether the goal is elevating employee performance, strategic alignment, spurring innovation, or something else, leaders earn their keep by creating the conditions of accountability in their organization."

In "How to combat a culture of excuses and promote accountability," author Jeff Grimshaw offers his advice on how to promote company-wide accountability.

You can also download an 8-page whitepaper on accountability here.

Excellence of Execution is Top Concern for CEOs Worldwide

According to The Conference Board's most recent survey of 769 global CEOs, execution is taking precedence over profit and top-line growth as a focus for CEOs around the world.

The survey of 769 global CEOs from 40 countries is from The Conference Board report, CEO Challenge 2007: Top 10 Challenges.

When asked to rate their greatest concerns from among 121 different challenges, chief executives participating in this year's survey chose excellence of execution as their top challenge and keeping consistent execution of strategy by top management as their third greatest concern. Sustained and steady top-line growth, which led the pack last year, now ranks second, with profit growth fourth, and finding qualified managerial talent fifth.

Read the entire summary of this new study here.

BOTTOMLINE: This study validates our major premise here at Six Disciplines. Execution IS the most commonly mentioned challenge by CEOs - regardless of size of company or type of industry. In fact, Six Disciplines founder and CEO Gary Harpst's next book named "Execution Revolution" is all about the challenge of execution, and how small and mid-sized businesses will be able to harness and leverage the advances of the past two decades to leapfrog past much larger organizations to deal more effectively with this never ending challenge.

Harpst and Kurjan to Speak at COSE Small Business Conference

Gary Harpst, founder and CEO of Six Disciplines, LLC will be a guest speaker at the COSE Small Business Conference on Friday, October 19, 2007 at the International Exposition Center (I-X Center) in Cleveland, Ohio.

Gary will be speaking from 2:45-4:00 pm in Room 9 - on the topic "Driving Growth Through Goals and Scorecards."

Eric Kurjan, President of Six Disciplines Northwest Ohio will also be speaking at the event. Eric will be speaking from 10:45 am-12:00 pm in Room 11 - on the topic "Evaluating Employees."

Toyota Management Principles

The SystematicHR blog posts a series of articles about Toyota management principles based on the book “The Toyota Way” by Jeffrey Liker.

All are well worth reading.

The Toyota Way: Principle 1 - Base your management decisions on a long-term philosophy, even at the expense of the short term financial goals.

The Toyota Way: Principle 2 - Create continuous process flow to bring problems to the surface.

The Toyota Way: Principle 3 - Use “pull” systems to avoid overproduction.

The Toyota Way: Principle 4 - Level out the workload.

The Toyota Way: Principle 5 - Build a culture of stopping to fix problems, to get quality right the first time.

The Toyota Way: Principle 6 - Standardized tasks are the foundation for continuous process improvement and employee empowerment.

The Toyota Way: Principle 7 - Use visual control so no problems are unhidden.

Managing Energy vs. Managing Time

The new article from the Harvard Business Review entitled "Manage Your Energy, Not Your Time" explores the science of stamina, which has advanced to the point where individuals, teams, and whole organizations can, with some straightforward interventions, significantly increase their capacity to get things done.

Check out this HBR article now, (while it's still free!)

Top Small Business Workplaces 2007

The Wall Street Journal has an article about the "Top Small Workplaces 2007," in which they teamed up with Winning Workplaces, an Evanston, Ill., nonprofit that helps small and midsize companies create better work environments, to spotlight 15 Top Small Workplaces.

Common themes among these businesses?

• These small businesses tend to let employees at all levels make key decisions, and they groom their future leaders from within.
• They offer generous traditional and untraditional benefits (how about a six-week sabbatical?).
• They constantly hunt for new ways to improve the employee experience or engage employees.

According to the article, "many share a sizable slice of their profits with employees, teaching them to read company financial statements so they grasp how their job is connected to the success of the organization."

BOTTOMLINE: While teaching employees how to read financial statements can be a good idea, it's more important for each person to understand how their daily activities connect to the goals of the organization. That's one of the key focuses of the Six Disciplines business excellence program.

Getting The Most Out Of Business Books

Listen to this 10 minute Six Disciplines founder and CEO Gary Harpst as he is interviewed on Biz Magazine Radio on the topic "Getting The Most Out Of Business Books."

Six Disciplines Centers - On FranchiseGator

If you've been following our blog, you're familiar with the Six Disciplines Methodology, as described in the top-selling book, "Six Disciplines for Excellence."

What you may not be familiar with, is our method of service delivery, which is the Six Disciplines Center.

Six Disciplines Centers offer a comprehensive business excellence service that combines a systematic business-building methodology, practical Internet technologies, and local coaching to help the best performing organizations to pursue enduring excellence.

Six Disciplines Centers are offered as premiere business services franchises throughout the United States. Six Disciplines Center franchises are now operating and helping top-performing organizations to achieve lasting excellence in:

• Findlay, OH
• Tampa, FL
• Cleveland, OH
• Cincinnati, OH
• Columbus, OH
• Indianapolis, IN
• Raleigh, NC

...and very soon coming to Atlanta!

For more information, see the profile of Six Disciplines Centers on one of the top Franchise Portals, FranchiseGator.com.

For additional information about Six Disciplines Leadership Centers, contact Scott May.

Gary Harpst Interviewed on Small Business Advocate Radio

Last Friday, Gary Harpst was interviewed by Jim Blasingame, host of the Small Business Advocate radio program, on the topic of "Business Excellence"

Go here and listen to their 9/28/07 interview, or download the MP3 here.

Execution Is All That Matters

Serial entrepreneur Wil Schroter brings this article on "You can’t protect a good idea" - and it all comes down to EXECUTION.

While great companies can benefit from good ideas, they require superior execution.

Wil's advice:

• There's a simple and effective way to protect your idea from the world -- focus on actually executing on the business plan. It’s rare that a company loses to its competitors because they “stole the idea” and somehow instantly created a huge company with it.
• If your idea is good, it will be stolen.
• If your idea has a "secret sauce" - simply explain what the product does, not how it does it.

BOTTOMLINE: "A good entrepreneur believes not only in themselves, but also in their ability to execute better than anyone else to turn the smart idea into a great company. Ideas are a dime a dozen -- execution is ultimately what matters."

New Six Disciplines Web Site

Check out the newly revamped web site for Six Disciplines!

While you're there, make sure to view some of the Customer Stories, and see for yourself why a growing number of already successful organizations are adopting the Six Disciplines program for enduring business excellence.

Leadership: It's Not About You

The minute you transform from being a task-oriented professional to being a manager of people, it stops being about your individual talents, your successes, and starts being all about coaching, motivating, teaching, supporting, removing roadblocks, and finding resources for your employees.

At that point, leadership is not about you. It’s about the people who work for you.

Leadership is about celebrating their victories and rewarding them; helping them analyze when things don’t go to plan.

Read all about it from this article from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

Are You Ready for Change?

For most business book readers, the concept of change is intriguing, even attractive. At least the concepts must hold some interest for you.

The most important question to ask yourself is "How ready are you -- and your organization - for this type of challenge?"

Here's a simple checklist of things to think through to gauge your readiness:

• Is there a hunger for quality, excellence and continual improvement?
• Do you "get" the difference between working on your business - and working in your business?
• Is your organization of sufficient size to understand the challenges that growth brings?
• Does your organization have a high trust culture?
• Is your business stable - decent balance sheet, not running from one crisis to another?
• Does your organization use technology effectively - and strategically?
• Do you value the advice from outside experts?

BOTTOMLINE: If you're ready for change, contact a Six Disciplines Center near you. By adopting the Six Disciplines business excellence program, you'll transform your organization into a place where the leadership team becomes expert at setting the vision for the company and engaging people in the pursuit of that vision.

Emory University Reviews Six Disciplines for Excellence

The Goizueta Business School of Emory University, in conjunction with the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, has published their review of "Six Disciplines for Excellence."

Some excerpts:

"Six Disciplines is clearly, concisely and engagingly written. Its ideas are not new, but they are not meant to be."

"..author Harpst has distilled the best advice he’s found in popular business books that promote strategic thinking by business leaders, and has created clusters of routine activities, or disciplines, for leaders to follow. The goal: Turn strategic thinking into strategic action."


Read their entire review here. (ID and password required)