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.