Father's Day Advice

Entrepreneur.com has a great article exposing business advice from a father.....just in time to celebrate Father's Day:

"Here are the most valuable business lessons he taught me:"

• Pay your dues. He instilled in me a strong work ethic that has served me well in my career. His father used to have a sign on his desk that read: "The harder I work, the luckier I get!"
• Do work you enjoy . If you love what you do, it doesn't feel like work.
• Walk and talk. Being accessible and approachable is important if you want a culture where people can admit they don't have all the answers and need help in a certain area.
• Lead by example. Never ask people to do things you wouldn't do yourself.
• Share success. When good things happen, make sure everyone who contributed is acknowledged and rewarded, not just the people at the top.
• Give back. Be active in your community.
• Stay positive. My dad is one of the most upbeat and optimistic people I've ever met. He has a great attitude and people love being around him. I think it makes them feel better about themselves. He always has a kind word or encouragement and smiles a lot. There's something very magnetic about people who exude happiness.

Happy Father's Day!

Six Essential Roles of the CEO

Vistage speaker Lawrence King offers his take on the six essential roles of the CEO:

1. Co-Strategist. First and foremost, key executives must contribute to the development of strategy. They must use the knowledge and information they gain from their critical vantage points to help set the future direction of the company.
2. Team leader. Like the CEO, key executives must make the difficult transition from functional expert to leader. “They may go kicking and screaming,” notes King, “but you must drag them out of their familiar, comfortable, functional roles and into this new, ambiguous and demanding role of team leader.”
3. Content expert. In their specific areas of knowledge or expertise, key executives need to bring global best practices to bear on the current, everyday practices of the company.
4. Champion of change. Key executives need to beat the drum, wave the flag and point their people in the right direction, while constantly reinforcing the vision of why the company must go forward.
5. Role model. Key executives must march shoulder-to-shoulder with the CEO, actually living the values that are spoken for the company.
6. Student. As with the CEO, key executives must engage in continued professional development, but as students of leadership, not of the technical/functional turf they manage within the organization.

Finding and Keeping The Right People

According to a recent survey by Right Management, the most common mistake organizations make when hiring or promoting managers and executives is failing to define and assess those roles most crucial to successful performance.

• 43% of companies cited inadequate definition and evaluation of roles critical to successful performance as the number one mistake businesses make in hiring and promoting managers and executives.
• 41% cited insufficient grooming of high-potential employees through coaching, mentoring and training programs.
• 29% cited using overly subjective criteria and unreliable assessment tools.
• 27% cited too much focus on the basic requirements of the jobs to which people are being hired or promoted - such as managerial and interpersonal skills - and not enough emphasis on less apparent talents, such as morale or team building.
• 10% cited giving inadequate consideration to people from outside the organization.

More reasons why it's critical to find - and keep the right people:

• It costs an average of 2½ times an individual's salary to replace an employee who doesn't work out, including recruitment, training, and severance costs, and lost productivity, according to a survey of 444 organizations throughout North America released by Right Management earlier this year.
• More than four out of 10 organizations (43 percent) said it costs at least three times the employee's salary.

Six Disciplines Leadership Center of Northwest Ohio Announces New Ownership

Six Disciplines Corporation today announced that it has named Eric Kurjan to assume the leadership role of president and owner of the flagship franchise of Six Disciplines Leadership Center of Northwest Ohio, located in Findlay.

Kurjan and his team will be responsible for ensuring the long-term success of Six Disciplines clients in Northwest Ohio and Southeast Michigan. Eric’s team will coach and offer strategic advisory services to top-performing organizations that adopt the Six Disciplines™ Methodology, in pursuit of continual business process improvement.

Six Disciplines Leadership Centers offer a new class of professional business improvement service that helps the best performing organizations to achieve lasting business excellence. By using a systematic business-building methodology, practical Internet technologies, and an organizational coaching and strategic advisory service, passionate business leaders learn how to become more aligned with their strategy, focus on execution, and improve their organization’s performance to achieve lasting, sustainable excellence.

Read the entire release here.

Making Change Stick - Part II

This article from Workforce Performance Solutions offers questions can predict the success of your change initiative.

Prudent leaders will ask them before undertaking systemic change.

• Where are we going and why?
• Who is involved?
• Will our culture work for or against this change?
• How will people feel about having to change?
• How can we mitigate the fears associated with change?
• Must we get everything right the first time?
• How can we set people up to succeed?
• What behaviors and attitudes should be reinforced?
• How will we know if it’s working?
• How can we create a more change-capable organization?

Integrity - The Foundation of All Leadership

Here's a fundamental truth from Gary Bourgeault's ManagersRealm: "Integrity - The Foundation of All Leadership"

The essence:

What is integrity? It means that basically what you say and what you do are one and the same and unified within you. What you show when your bosses or others in leadership are around is the same when they aren't. It involves the values you speak are what really determine your behavior and if you give your word it's as good as done.

Read the entire article here.

Be Excellent™ Celebrates 17,000th Visitor!

Since starting our blog in late July of 2005, we're excited to announce another milestone - our 17,000th visitor to the site!

It would seem that "Helping the best small businesses to achieve lasting excellence" - is a message that resonates - with thousands of you, all over the world.

Thanks to every one of you --the best is yet to come!

Seven Principles of Admirable Business Ethics

"If you have integrity, nothing else matters. If you don't have integrity, nothing else matters." -- Alan K. Simpson

One of the most important attributes for small business success, is the distinguishing quality of practicing admirable business ethics. Business ethics, practiced throughout the deepest layers of a company, become the heart and soul of the company's culture and can mean the difference between success and failure.

Read the Seven Principles of Admirable Business Ethics here.


(Tip of the hat to Steve Rucinski - at Small Business CEO)

Six Disciplines Leadership Centers Expand Into Indiana

Six Disciplines Corporation today announced that it has signed a franchise agreement to launch a Six Disciplines Leadership Center to service the Central Indiana area.

Six Disciplines Leadership Centers offer a new class of professional business improvement service that works with the best performing organizations to help them achieve lasting business excellence. By using a systematic business-building methodology, practical Internet technologies, and an organizational coaching and strategic advisory service, passionate business leaders and their employees learn how to become more aligned with their strategy, focus on execution, and improve their organization’s performance to achieve lasting, sustainable excellence.

Chip McLean will be the General Manager and owner of the Six Disciplines Leadership Center of Central Indiana, which will be located in Indianapolis. The Six Disciplines Leadership Center of Central Indiana will service clients in the greater Indianapolis area, extending to the East and West state borders, North to Marion and South to Seymour, Indiana.

The Leadership Center is scheduled to be operational in June of 2006. For more information, contact Chip McLean at 317.691.3169 or email CMcLean@SixDisciplines.com . Visit the Six Disciplines Leadership Center of Central Indiana on the web at www.SixDisciplines.com/Indy .

The addition of the Six Disciplines Leadership Center of Central Indiana is the result of an expansion effort by Six Disciplines Corporation to add to its growing nationwide network of independently owned and operated professional business process improvement franchises. Other Six Disciplines Leadership Centers are operational in Ohio, North Carolina, and Florida. To inquire about Six Disciplines Leadership Center franchise opportunities in other U.S. locations, contact Scott May at 419-581-2821 or email SMay@SixDisciplines.com.

Six Disciplines Leadership Center of Central West Florida Builds Client Momentum in Tampa

Six Disciplines Leadership Center of Central West Florida today announced that it continues to build customer momentum in Tampa by signing a new client agreement with Sharn Veterinary, Inc. Sharn, which was formed in 2001, focuses on veterinary monitoring and has gained an industry-wide reputation for best-in-class monitors.

Sharn Veterinary will be adopting the Six Disciplines business-improvement Methodology and Six Disciplines Business System within their organization. They chose Six Disciplines as a systematic and practical way to address business performance improvement and increase accountability throughout the organization. “By working with Six Disciplines, we’ll be better able to focus on building and executing our strategy,” said Andrew Schultz, President and Founder of Sharn Veterinary. “By adopting the Six Disciplines methodology, we intend to be increasingly effective on executing on our mission to improve patient care and to offer exceptional customer service.”

“Six Disciplines continues to attract local, top-performing organizations that have a passion for continual business improvement,” said Sean Burke, President of the Six Disciplines Leadership Center of Central West Florida. “By incorporating our methodology within their organization, Sharn Veterinary is taking a proactive approach toward building organizational accountability, leading to tangible improvements in their business processes using a systematic and repeatable process that has lasting impact,” said Burke.

The Six Disciplines Leadership Center of Central West Florida offers a new class of professional business improvement service, by working with top-performing organizations to help them achieve lasting business excellence. By using the Six Disciplines systematic business-building methodology, practical Internet technologies, and an organizational coaching and strategic advisory service, passionate business leaders and their employees learn how to become more aligned with their strategy, focus on execution, and improve their organization’s performance. Visit the Six Disciplines Leadership Center of Central West Florida on the web at www.SixDisciplines.com/Tampa or call 813.975.7222.

Ensuring Team Member Performance

Talk about scary statistics!

• About 25% of all new hires won't make it through their first year, according to research from the Employment Policy Foundation.
• Almost half - 46% - of rookies wash out in the first 18 months, found Leadership IQ, a training firm that studied 20,000 newly hired employees over three years.
• 53% of managers and executives brought on board from outside are gone within a year, according HR consultants Development Dimensions International.

Why?

• A huge percentage of new employees, including new managers, are not clearly told what they were hired to do or what their goals should be for the first six months and the first year.
• If you don't know your goals or what success looks like, you can't succeed.

What to do about it:

• You need to listen at least five times as much as you talk.
• Ask questions to understand what's really going on.
• Focus on the goals of the group, team, or company.

BOTTOMLINE: On day one, ensure the success of team members by making sure they are aware of your organization's mission, vision, values, strategic position and goals. Work with them to develop an Individual Plan (IP) that helps them understand how their activities align with the organization's goals. See Discipline IV. Work The Plan.

Managing Performance Effectively

Ventana Research, the leading performance management research and advisory services firm, has unveiled a series of research studies that quantify companies' lack of the information and technology they need to manage performance effectively.

The research results to be released at the Connections 2006 event (Ventana Research's upcoming Analyst and Research Summit on Performance Management) include findings that have implications for the ability of corporate executive management to deliver maximum productivity and value:

• Almost 50% of those individuals in businesses using scorecards and dashboards to be able to manage to established metrics cannot drill down to find out supporting details and more than a third cannot change the perspective or views of the information.
• Only 30% of organizations are using their expensive enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems in ways that support performance management.
• Almost 67% of all scorecards, dashboards and alerts are internally developed and lack key functions
• More than 70% of companies have scorecards measures that are subject to manipulation or “gaming”
• 61% of dashboard users cannot drill down to important details
• 62% of users said their performance alerts were out-of-date and not helpful in guiding a response

Ethics and Values

Enron and other corporate scandals have led to a sea-change in how employees view their own company's ethics, a U.S study has suggested.

The study of more than 200,000 U.S. employees, examined issues of integrity, social responsibility and company values.

• Between 2001 to 2005, it found that employee opinions on company integrity had increased by a significant 11 per cent.
• Nationally, employee perceptions of internal corporate values increased from 78 per cent in 2001 to 82 per cent in 2005.
• Likewise, perception of management's consistency with stated internal values increased from a 60 per cent positive response in 2001 to 65 per cent in 2005.

BOTTOMLINE: "Knowing where to focus your efforts is half the battle, and companies are clearly paying more attention to ethics and values." (See Discipline I-B, Renew Values (pages 68-71, Six Disciplines for Excellence.)

Excellence - Sports Quotes of the Day

"I am not seeking perfection. It's unattainable. What I am striving for is professional excellence." (Tiger Woods)

"The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to their commitment to excellence, regardless of their chosen field of endeavor." (Vincent Lombardi)

"Whatever you do, don't do it halfway." (Bob Beamon)

"Excellence is the gradual result of always striving to do better." (Pat Riley)

"I've always felt it was not up to anyone else to make me give my best." (Akeem Olajuwon)

"Desire is the key to motivation, but it's determination and commitment to an unrelenting pursuit of your goal--a commitment to excellence--that will enable you to attain the success you seek." (Mario Andretti)

"The will to win, the desire to succeed, the urge to reach your full potential... these are the keys that will unlock the door to personal excellence." (Eddie Robinson)

“Sports serve society by providing vivid examples of excellence.” (George Will)

"Excellence is the unlimited ability to improve the quality of what you have to offer." (Rick Pitino)

"The quality of a person's life is in direct proportion to his commitment to excellence, regardless of his chosen field of endeavor." (Vince Lombardi)

"Excellence is not a singular act but a habit. You are what you do repeatedly." (Shaquille O’Neal)

Small Business Trends: How To Build A Small Business That Lasts

Small Business Trends is clearly one of the top small business blogs.

Anita Campbell, the editor at Small Business Trends, interviewed Gary Harpst about Six Disciplines on her Small Business Trends Radio program.

According the Anita:

"Six Disciplines is unlike anything I've seen for small businesses.

It's a book.

It's a methodology.

It's technology.

It's a coaching system.

It's something you'll be hearing a lot more about."


Check out Anita's complete interview with Gary here.

Small Business CEO: “Building Small Businesses That Learn, Lead and Last”

Steve Rucinski, editor of Small Business CEO, co-interviewed Gary Harpst about Six Disciplines.

"The result is Six Disciplines. After investing over $10 million and nearly five years of development, Six Disciplines is like nothing else you’ve seen for small businesses. It’s part methodology (business processes), part technology (Internet-based software to manage a small business), and part coaching (someone who helps the business owner learn and stay on track).

If you have a chance to listen to only one small business podcast, you definitely want to listen to Gary Harpst. There is nothing like Six Disciplines and I guarantee you will get a tremendous amount out of his talk."

The link to this podcast is here.

Adopting Best Practices and Six Disciplines

Today's small business owner is confronted with new business problems and opportunities on a regular basis. Running a company requires the ability to look outside the business for solutions, ideas, and best practices.

A best practice is the process of finding and using ideas and strategies from outside your company and your industry to improve performance in a specific area.

The benefits of adopting best practices? Reduced costs, avoiding mistakes, innovating purposefully, and improved performance.

Steps for Adopting Best Practices

1. Identify one business process or service to improve. (e.g., product delivery)
2. Look for one metric to measure. (e.g., late shipment %)
3. Find competitors and companies within your industry and outside your industry. (e.g., FedEx)
4. Collect information on the successful, best practices of other companies. (e.g., FedEx spoke and hub system)
5. Modify the best practice for your organization. (e.g., Have one retail store per city act as central hub for shipments.)
6. Implement the process then measure the results.

BOTTOMLINE: Developing best practices in your organization is a discipline of continual process improvement.

What makes Six Disciplines unique is that it integrates the best practices of strategic planning, quality control, integrated learning, business process automation, people performance management and measure-driven improvement into a single, holistic business process improvement system - optimized for smaller businesses.

SWOT Analysis: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats

Good summary article here: SWOT Analysis: Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats.

When you are planning strategically with any company--online or offline--it is useful to complete an analysis that takes into account not only your own business, but your competitor's businesses and the current business environment as well. A SWOT is one such analysis.

BOTTOMLINE: The Six Disciplines Business System enables you to create and maintain strategy statements like SWOT (as well Mission Statements, Vision, Shared Values, Strategic Position, and Stop List) - all available on your desktop - so all Team Members can view them at any time - from anywhere - and use them to align to your company's strategy.

Culture is the Legacy of Leaders

An interesting Fast Company article poses a quick test on how to foster a culture of success at your organization.

(I've noted specific page references* from Six Disciplines for Excellence that are related to this exercise.)

Consider the team/group/organization you're leading:

1. Look at your vision/mission statement and jot down the behaviors that everyone supposedly follows. (*Discipline I-A Renew Mission, page 64; Disciplines I-D Renew Vision, page 77)
2. On a second list jot down the behaviors that everyone actually follows.
3. Pick the one discrepancy that annoys you the most.
4. Make it a top priority to change it. (Discipline III-A Identify Misalignments, page 120)
5. Have a conversation with colleagues on why each of you think the discrepancy exists. (Discipline III-F Align People - page 147)
6. Agree on some structures to put in place to ensure that change happens (communication, processes, rewards etc). (Discipline III - Align Systems, page 120)

Traits of Leaders

In this month’s Harvard Business Review, a revealing interview with General Electric’s Jeffrey Immelt shows that GE has defined five growth traits for all of GE’s leaders.

In their quest to become growth oriented (the target is to sustain an 8% rate of organic growth), Immelt tells us they had to change some of their DNA.

Here are the 5 traits of GE’s growth leaders:

1. External focus
2. Imagination and creativity
3. Clear thinking and decisiveness
4. Inclusiveness
5. Deep domain expertise

BOTTOMLINE: "Which brings us back to what leadership development is all about - a scalable and repeatable process of individual improvement tailored to the future needs of the business."

How To Build A Great Team

The article “How to Build a Great Team” by Charlie Feld, provides a great overview of what it takes to build a great team. Charlie found that the “secret sauce” of great leaders are:

1. Character: Doing the Right Thing
2. Leadership Development: The Most Important Task
3. Passion: The Organizational Energy Level
4. Influence and Persuasion: Better than Power

BOTTOMLINE: Leaders have the responsibility of developing people and building teams. How are you doing? What percentage of your time do you spend developing the people around you?

(Tip of the hat to George Ambler at The Practice of Leadership for this one!)

Leaders Are Really Only One Thing

Gary Bourgeault, over at ManagersRealm, posts this one on "Leaders are really only one thing..."

True leaders and great managers, when it comes down to the bottom line, are one thing: servants.

Gary's assertion:

"Everything else in management and leadership springs from this. You're not to think of yourself as over people but rather their servants. It's shocking for those who get this, to see how they draw more from the wells of water deep within their people, than those who have to battle, fight, threaten and bully to get what is needed to be done accomplished. Learn to be a servant. You can never lose if you do."

The Strategy Behind Succession Planning

Too many think of succession planning as having application only in family-owned businesses or in large enterprises.

In fact, succession planning should be a part of every company’s Strategic Plan - your vision of where the company will be going in the future (with - or most likely, without you.)

Succession planning is a part of the process of preparing for the future of your company. And, while most succession planning focuses on the CEO, virtually every key position and key person in your organization is a candidate for a succession plan.

To effectively implement a succession plan, consider some of the following issues:

1. What is the long-term direction of your company? Do you have an effective strategic plan guiding your course and direction? Is it documented? Is it available to share?
2. What are the key areas which require continuity and long-term people development?
3. Who are the key people you want to develop and nurture for the future?
4. How does the concept of succession planning fit into your strategies? Are you concentrating your efforts in the areas where the returns will be highest?
5. What are the career paths that your most talented people should be following? Is each path customized to fit the abilities and talents of the people involved
6. Should you wait for openings to appear before promoting someone, or should you make opportunities for each person as they grow and mature, so that you can keep them challenged and stimulated, and not lose them to other, possibly faster-moving companies?

BOTTOMLINE: When done with your organization's strategy in mind, succession planning will bring the peace of mind that senior management should have, based on the understanding and expectations of its future leadership.

Six Disciplines Explained

Watch this short video by Ken Hilty, General Manager of the Six Disciplines Leadership Center of Northeast Ohio (Cleveland), as he briefly describes the benefits of Six Disciplines.

If It Works - Keep Doing It

Over at QLog, Thom Quinn presents this short article focusing on "Myth Three: None of the techniques from the 20th century work any longer"

His premise?

Here are some just a few ‘ancient’ strategies that still have great value:

• Mission Statements/Purpose Statements
• Monthly/Quarterly/Annual Goal Setting
• Daily Task Lists with Ranked Priorities
• Urgent vs. Important
  

"I am willing to bet that 99 times of out 100, someone employing only techniques developed 40 years ago would be more productive than someone using no techniques whatsoever!"

BOTTOMLINE: "Do not shun an idea just because it turned 50 last week. Instead of asking the question “How old is it?” I suggest asking “Does it work?”

Two Critical Phases of Growth

Jeff Cornwall, over at the Entrepreneurial Mind, shares this story from StartupJournal about there being two critical phases of entrepreneurial growth:

1. The first is aligning your business to the market properly before you even open the doors. This is the process of opportunity assessment.
2. The second critical point is when the business hits its growth phase.

According to Jeff, "During growth, both the business and the entrepreneur have to go through transitions. For the business, the entrepreneur has to build systems and processes that can handle processes that the entrepreneur managed himself when the business was smaller. And that leads to the second transition. As the entrepreneur builds more and more of the day-to-day details into systems and delegates responsibility to the expanding team, his job must change. As seen in the case at StartupJournal, the transition from being mostly a "doer" into becoming a "real CEO" can be one of the biggest challenges an entrepreneur can face."

BOTTOMLINE: In the growth phase, the entrepreneur/CEO must make the transition (To use a Gerber phrase) from working "in" the business - to working ON the business." That means building processes that others can be accountable for as the business grows. Until now, there's only been disconnected "systems" to help growing organizations to approach this in a systematic fashion.

Six Disciplines is a systematic, repeatable and cyclical business-building process, that includes practical software systems enabling top-performing organizations to document and improve processes, tying together the core business fundamentals (strategy, planning, measurement, execution, learning and leadership) ith measures to monitor change and improvement. Six Disciplines Leadership Centers provide the on-going coaching and strategic advisory services that CEOs and their organization's need during this critical business growth phase.

Video: The Idea Behind Six Disciplines

Watch this streaming video of Gary Harpst, CEO and Founder of Six Disciplines Corporation, as he describes how the idea for Six Disciplines came about.

(NOTE: Video is in Windows Media Format )

Company Culture Vital in Recruiting Employees

According to new research from conducted by NFI Research, the three most effective incentives for recruitment were:

1. Company culture (59%)
2. Organization's reputation (57%)
3. Stability of the company (54%)

For retention of valued employees, the top three incentives were

1. Company culture (57%)
2. Stability of company (50%)
3. Flexibility (44%)

BOTTOMLINE: There was no significant difference by company size. This means it's important for large enterprises - and for small businesses. Start working on your company's culture today....a good start? Read Six Disciplines for Excellence.

Uncovering Growth Opportunities

Sometimes uncovering or building growth in mature industries means more than simple product extensions or acquisitions.

The answer?

Develop "growth platforms" that extend your business into new areas, according to this article in Harvard Business Review called "Building a Platform for Growth"

The Factors of Leadership Motivation

weLEAD magazine offers this take on "The Factors of Leadership Motivation" by Brent Filson:

His premise?

"To understand motivation and apply it daily, let’s understand its three critical pillars:

1. Motivation is physical action.
2. Motivation is driven by emotion.
3. Motivation is not what we do to others, it's what others do to themselves.

BOTTOMLINE: "By applying motivation the right way (understanding and using the three pillars, can serve you well in many powerful ways throughout your career."

Good Performance Is No Longer Enough

In bookstores Gallup Press, "Married to the Brand: Why Consumers Bond With Some Brands for Life," by William J. McEwen, draws on more than 60 years of research from The Gallup Organization to examine how and why we connect to the products we use and the brands we buy.

So why is this important for organizational performance?

This research demonstrates that customer satisfaction is woefully insufficient when the goal is an ongoing exclusive relationship between a customer and a brand.

"Good" performance is no longer enough, and one purchase in no way guarantees that another will follow.

Instead, an enduring (lasting) relationship between a company and a customer has four prerequisites. Together, these add up to an emotional connection that is both powerful and profitable:

• Confidence: Customers must feel that a brand is one they can always trust and one that will always deliver on whatever it promises.
• Integrity: Customers must feel that the brand treats them fairly -- as they've earned the right to be treated. And they must believe that the company stands resolutely behind its products and services. They must feel that if a problem ever arises, the company will fix it.
• Pride: Customers must feel proud to be associated with the brand -- proud to be known as a brand owner, shopper, or user. They must be convinced that the brand and its representatives will always treat them with respect.
• Passion: The customer must feel that the brand is irreplaceable in their lives and represents a perfect fit with their needs, whether those needs are tangible or intangible. In fact, they should feel that their world really wouldn't be the same without it.

BOTTOMLINE: These four aspects of an enduring customer relationship must be reinforced wherever, whenever, and however companies touch their customers. At its very core, however, the relationship between a brand and its buyers is visceral and emotional. It derives not just from the product and its features, but from the experience that surrounds its purchase and use.
It is a continual reminder to ...Be Excellent™.

Six Essential Roles of the CEO

From the May 2006 issue of Vistage International's newsletter to CEOs, comes this piece on the "Six Essential Roles of the CEO."

Exactly what should the CEO focus on? The role of the CEO encompasses six essential functions:

1. Strategist
2. Ambassador
3. Inventor
4. Coach
5. Investor
6. Student

BOTTOMLINE: "Most CEOs know what they need to do to fulfill their role. The problem is they allow themselves to get sucked into doing other people’s jobs. Focusing on the six key roles and your success profile will go a long way toward keeping you on track and ensuring that others are doing what you pay them to do.”

Lessons from Bill Gates

Bill Gates - the world's richest person, and arguably the person many "love to hate." But beyond "all of that".....he's one of the most studied persons in business

Interested in taking some business lessons from Gates?

• Lesson #1: Stick To Your Vision
• Lesson #2: Develop an A-Team
• Lesson #3: Think Long-Term
• Lesson #4: Make A Strong Recovery
• Lesson #5: Never Stop Learning

Eight Attributes of Management Excellence

In the business classic "In Search of Excellence," authors Tom Peters and Bob Waterman described their take of the Eight Attributes of Management Excellence, based on McKinsey's 7-S Model.

The Eight Attributes of Management Excellence include:

1. A Bias for Action
2. Be Close to the Customer
3. Autonomy and Entrepreneurship
4. Productivity through People
5. Hands-on, Value-Driven
6. Stick to the Knitting
7. Simple Form, Lean Staff
8. Simultaneous, loose-tight Properties

Innovation's Biggest Paradox

From FastCompany's recent article, "The Beauty of Simplicity":

"It is innovation's biggest paradox: We demand more and more from the stuff in our lives--more features, more function, more power--and yet we also increasingly demand that it be easy to use. And, in an Escher-like twist, the technology that's simplest to use is also, often, the most difficult to create. "

And....to quote Albert Einstein:

"Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler."

BOTTOMLINE: Simplicity is both sacred and central to a organization's competitive advantage. And no doubt about it, the market for simplicity is complex. Start by simplifying your company. "Less isn't more; just enough is more."

5 Startup Mistakes

CNN/Money Magazine offers these "5 deadly mistakes when starting a business" which include:

Here are five common mistakes to avoid, so you can build a successful business:

1. Too little cash.
2. Thinking small.
3. Skimping on tech.
4. Underestimating the importance of sales.
5. Losing focus.

BOTTOMLINE: At Six Disciplines, we assist organizations in understanding and preventing these 5 mistakes (and many others) - by concentrating on #5 - Losing Focus. All businesses lose focus at one time or another. By creating a vision, mission, strategic position - then establishing goals, and individual plans to execute on a daily basis, organizations develop their core competence to become more skilled - and disciplined - in their approach to strategy execution. By doing this, they do NOT lose focus.

The Half-Truths of Leadership

"We are obsessed with leadership. Thousands of studies and books are devoted to it, and we still want more. So much is written about leaders because we believe that our fate, and the fate of our organizations, is in their hands and ought to be."

In fact, leaders have far less control over organizations than people believe, but they can be more effective if they understand leadership myths and use them to their organizations’ advantage. This recent article on the "The Half-Truths of Leadership" from the Stanford Business Magazine spells it out.

What Should Good Leaders Do?

1. "Everyone expects leaders to matter a lot, even as they have limited actual impact. Leaders need to act as if they are in control, project confidence, and talk about the future, even while recognizing and acknowledging the organizational realities and their own limitations.
2. Because leaders succumb to the same self-enhancement tendencies as everyone else, magnified by the adulation they receive, they have a tendency to lose their behavioral inhibitions and behave in destructive ways. They need to avoid this trap and maintain an attitude of wisdom and a healthy dose of modesty.
3. Because the desirability of exercising total control is itself a half-truth, effective leaders must learn when and how to get out of the way and let others make contributions. Sometimes the best leadership is no leadership at all.
4. Leaders often have the most positive impact when they help build systems where the actions of a few powerful and magnificently skilled people matter least. Perhaps the best way to view leadership is as the task of architecting organizational systems, teams, and cultures—as establishing the conditions and preconditions for others to succeed."

(Excerpted by permission of Harvard Business School Press. Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management, by Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton. Copyright 2006 Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton. All rights reserved.)

The Most Influential Business Books

Forbes’ has published their list of the 20 Most Influential Business Books which was compiled in 2002. The list of book is worth considering if you’re looking for a good business read.

Interesting - but not surprising --7 of the 20 books are referenced in Six Disciplines for Excellence.

SWOT Analysis - Scanning Methods

In the most recent Harvard Business School Working Knowledge issue, the authors of Peripheral Vision: Detecting the Weak Signals that Will Make or Break Your Company offer this advise about Scanning for Threats and Opportunities.

Their premise?

• All managers scan, but they often do so passively.
• To see more of the periphery, an organization has to change how it scans.
• There is a portfolio of scanning methods to capture and amplify the weak signals within targeted zones of the periphery: inside the firm; customers and channels; the competitive space (competitors and complementors); technologies, political, social, and economic forces; and influencers and shapers.

BOTTOMLINE: "To improve the ability to capture the peripheral insights within the organization, there must be (1) appropriate and visible channels for sharing information, (2) wide knowledge of the questions guiding the scan, and (3) incentives for actually sharing useful information. People must engage in frequent and free dialogue for the necessary connections to occur spontaneously. This, in turn, requires a culture of trust, respect, and curiosity, plus the recognition that information sharing is crucial. Too many companies still operate in a mode where information is shared on a "need-to-know" basis only."

Why Organizations Can't Retain Employees

Gautam Ghosh posted his thoughts on "10 reasons why organizations are not able to retain employees."

1. People don't get integrated.
2. Performance goals are unclear.
3. Development is always tomorrow's job.
4. The personal touch is missing.
5. Reward systems are not transparent.
6. Percieved equity of reward systems is low.
7. Goal setting process is not scientific.
8. External equity is missing too.
9. No communication around total value.
10. No career planning.

Eight Things Leaders Never Do

J. Timothy King offers his assessment on the "Eight Things Leaders Never Do."

1. Leaders never say it can’t be done.
2. Leaders never focus on the past.
3. Leaders never resist change.
4. Leaders never belittle or scold their constituents.
5. Leaders never assign blame.
6. Leaders never tell people what to do.
7. Leaders never talk when they could be listening.
8. Leaders never fight.

Leadership Capability - And Profitability

The connection between profits and leadership has been a missing link in most leadership research.

Recently, the Ken Blanchard Companies identified connections between leadership capacity and organizational vitality -- research that allowed Scott Blanchard and Drea Zigarmi to examine what it has dubbed the Leadership-Profit Chain.

Key findings from the research:

• Leaders who hold people accountable and ensure effective, productive behaviors in their people are the most effective influencers and drivers of organizational results.
• Equally important is a leader’s ability to affect the mood, attitude and engagement of employees and the overall culture of the organization through a specific chain of events that are implicitly linked.
• Employee passion results from the employee’s positive experience and overall satisfaction with the organization, its policies, procedures, products, and management practices, and directly predicts customer devotion and organizational vitality.
• Hard measures of employee passion include retention, absenteeism, tenure, and productivity.

Creating an organization that is successful and effective is an inside-out proposition. The quality of the culture, the quality of management practices, and the alignment of these practices with key strategic initiatives rests with leadership.

According to Blanchard and Zigarmi, leaders also hold the key to organizational vitality—the creating of an environment that allows employees to win and be passionate about what they do. By taking care of employees, leaders establish an environment in which the employees take care of the customers at a level that causes the customer to want to return year after year.

BOTTOMLINE: When managers focus their attention and emphasis only on organizational indicators of vitality such as profit, they have their eye on the scoreboard and not on the ball. Profit is a byproduct of serving the customer, which can only be achieved by serving the employee.

Seven Behaviors Of Successful People

Here's a good one from business coach Ron Finkelstein on Results.

Studies have shown that there are seven behaviors that all successful people exhibit. These behaviors include being:

• Selfish
• Focused
• Disciplined
• Persistent
• Take Ownership
• Results Oriented
• People Focused

It's these kind of people that produce results.

Results: Results mean to end in a particular way. You defined your goals; the outcome you want to achieve. You defined how you want things to end and because you took ownership you now have the power to create the desired outcomes. You can create the results.

When you don’t get the results you want you fall back to persistence, ownership, focus and discipline and know that you have the skills, the drive, the desire, the knowledge and the roadmap that will take you where you want to go. Results are simply a way of measuring your success. You either got the job done or you didn’t. If you didn’t, because of your ownership, you go back and try something different.

BOTTOMLINE: According to Yoda..."there is no trying, only doing.” You either got the desired results or you didn’t. No excuses. No remorse. Only results.

The 6 C's of Leadership

The 6 C's of Leadership, as described at a recent Global Conference....

1. Courage. Great leaders take risks. That takes planning and discipline, to be sure, but most of all it takes courage
2. Creativity. Great leaders embrace imagination. They foster innovation. Do it with economic logic and operational discipline, yes, but do it with creativity
3. (and 4) Compassion and Caring. Caring deeply about what you’re doing, about the welfare of your people and customers, and about doing things with a strong moral fiber. Great leaders have emotional and ethical as well as intellectual integrity. They love, and they love ethically.
4. Curiosity. Great leaders come to the party with a sense of wonder and awe. They restlessly and repeatedly ask questions like-- What’s out there? (let's check it out!) What’s behind there? What’s underneath there? What if? Why not? When can we try it? What will happen? What did happen? What did we learn? What’s our next step?
5. Consistency. The issue of consistency is essential for effective branding and sustained competitive success. Great leaders create an environment where C’s #1-5 aren’t a one-shot flash-in-the-pan deal, but so steady and ingrained that people inside and outside the organization can count on them.

Changing CEO Leadership Styles

In an article called "CEO growing pains," Katherine Catlin, founder of the Catlin & Cookman Group, talks about how can you learn to make the right changes in your leadership style at the right time.

The premise:

• Three distinct stages of growth mark an organization's evolution after it has passed through the start-up stage and has stabilized into a “real” company: Initial Growth, Rapid Growth, and Continuous Growth.
• The “red flags” that signal the advent of a new stage of your company's evolution and that demand changes in your leadership to ensure continued success.
• Your changing role and the key responsibilities you must assume if you are going to remain an entrepreneurial leader as your company grows through each stage of development.
• The habits you must break and the personal transitions — specific changes in behavior and leadership style — you need to make to successfully take on each new role, growing from a founding entrepreneur into a great entrepreneurial CEO.

Click here for a chart of "The Evolution of Your Role as CEO."

Stage 1 Start-up, the time when you're trying to figure out what product or service to offer that fits market needs and what your company's real value will provide for its customers. Your role is Doer and Decision Maker.

Stage 2 is Initial Growth. In this stage your company is very sales driven, trying to launch a new or different product, trying to capture market share, and growing revenues. Company operations are fast-paced, highly flexible – even chaotic. People do whatever is necessary to be successful. Your leadership role needs to change to Direction Setter and Delegator.

Stage 3 is Rapid Growth. Here your company is trying to achieve widespread use of its products or services, gain a significant share of its chosen markets, ward off advances from competitors, and move into a market leadership position. Lots of new people need to be hired – rounds and rounds of them. Integrating them and aligning their efforts can be a daunting, never-ending task. In this stage, your role as leader changes to Team Builder, Coach, Planner and Chief Communicator.

Stage 4 is Continuous Growth which is comprised of successive rounds of turbulence and periodic “re-inventions” of the company. Rapid growth led to many more customers and market opportunities, a much larger employee base, a more complex organization, and the potential to dominate the industry. But more of everything also includes more potential to go out of control.

In Continuous Growth, the company tries to dominate the industry by finding new markets and growing new niches in the current market, expanding the product lines, providing more “total solutions” to help customers, and branding itself and its people as “thought leaders”. Growth strategies include new product development, strategic alliances, acquisitions and mergers, spinning off subsidiaries, corporate partnerships to provide funding, or even an Initial Public Offering. The critical leadership roles you must change to are Strategic Innovator, Change Catalyst, Organization Builder and Chief of Culture.

(Source: Excerpted from Leading at the Speed of Growth: Journey from Entrepreneur to CEO by Katherine Catlin and Jana Matthews)

Organizations Worth Working For

Uncovering a company's corporate culture is a critical task for today's job searcher. As important as the job itself. Management-Issues brings their take on "Finding an organization worth working for."

Their advice? There are Three Steps To Uncovering Cultural Truth

1. Know your own cultural values
2. Research the company's culture
3. If you're asked to an interview, arrive early - unannounced if possible - and spend time observing how current employees interact with each other, how they are dressed, and their level of courtesy and professionalism.

BOTTOMLINE: Great list of things to consider - and questions to ask - all here.

Why Business Needs More Geeks

Rob over at BusinessPundit, offers his take on why business needs more geeks.

His premise?

"When I talk about geeks, I am not making blanket statements about tech workers. Plenty of tech workers are lousy at what they do. What I mean by geeks is people that are fascinated with their work, enjoy it, and are willing to do it for fun."

So what can we do? How can business return to the roots of capitalism? By embracing geeks. Here are the top five reasons I think business needs them:

1. Geeks seek knowledge for it's own sake.
2. Geeks like to experiment.
3. Geeks openly debate the merits of technical ideas.
4. Geeks are concerned with doing good work just because.
5. Geeks are about results, not office politics.

BOTTOMLINE: Rob says: "Imagine working in a company where the business leaders embraced these geeky ideas. Imagine the impact a company could have if filled with people who always wanted to learn, debate, and do things the right way instead of the easy way. Imagine working with business geeks who love what they do because they believe business itself is ultimately cool and fun."

Leadership: Be, Know, Do

Once again, our good friend Skip Angel over at Random Thoughts of a CTO offers his take on a leadership framework "to help others understand what leaders need to aspire to become."

It's simple, straightforward, and easy to remember:

BE...

• A professional.
• A professional who possesses good character traits.

KNOW...

• Yourself.
• Human nature.
• Your job.
• Your organization.

DO...

• Provide direction.
• Implement.
• Motivate.

BOTTOMLINE: This framework, while it works well for personal leadership, also works well (slightly modified) when developing the Vision Statement for an organization. Ask yourself:

• What do you want your organization to BE in 10 years?
• What do you want your organization to HAVE in 10 years?
• What do you want your organization to DO in 10 years?

This kind of tangible vision increases understanding and motivation. It's one more step in the process of moving people from "good intentions to concrete reality."

Sports Excellence - A Tribute to Earl Woods

This, from a tribute to Earl Woods, dedicated father of Tiger Woods, who passed on today at age 74:

"In an athletic world filled with athletes who jog to first base and give half-hearted efforts, Woods stands out for his consistent excellence each and every time he steps on the stage. The fact that he has carried himself with such impeccable manners and decorum off said stage is even more impressive, because we know in this regard, he’s the exception, not the rule.

“I wanted to raise a good person,” Earl Woods told Golf Digest in November of 2000, and therein lies the real glory to a man whose life deserves to be celebrated. Earl Woods never asked of himself anything more than what many of us ask of ourselves when we put our kids to bed at night: Let them be safe. Let them be respectful. Let them be strong. Let them know right from wrong.

BOTTOMLINE: They poured the foundation. They showed the way. That Tiger Woods followed in a manner that has helped make him one of the world’s most admired athlete is a tribute to the power of love. The dignity and humility that have accompanied this incomparable success of Tiger Woods? That is owed to a legacy left by Earl Woods. May he rest in peace.

On Creating Game-Changing Innovations

Scott Cook, the founder of Intuit (makers of great softwarea solutions like Quicken, Quickbooks, TurboTax, etc.) has some great insight on on creating game-changing innovations.

As Cook suggests:

"Innovation happens at the junction between business and customer needs, not from executive ideas or lonely geniuses within the company. Indeed, innovation bottlenecks are often at the top. Creating a culture of innovation is about nurturing customer observation, incubating new ideas, celebrating failure, and staying out of the way."

At Intuit, the goal is to change lives so profoundly that people can't imagine going back to the old way. With that in mind, Cook gave some examples of game-changing business ideas and showed how they were born by the understanding of an unmet customer need and really good innovative solutions.

Cook also highlights the five principles of corporate innovation and outlined the five basic models of innovation:

1. The lone genius
2. The boss is a genius
3. Copy competitors' inventions
4. Cloister the geniuses in a lab
5. Make your people the geniuses
   

Not surprisingly, Scott Cook prefers model #5:

"This is what really works. None of the other models are sustainable or effective in creating a culture of innovation in the long term. Models 1-4 tend to create pockets of innovation that are limited and isolated from the rest of the company. The source of invention is unlikely to be the big executive: innovation comes from where the business connects to customers. It scales, because it allows the company to create many "contact" groups between the company and the customers."

The full text of Scott Cook's presentation at CHI 2006 has also been posted by Sébastien Paquet.

Enthusiasm and Passion

Scott Young has an great entry on Enthusiasm.

Enthusiasm is like any other skill. If it is continually practiced and exercised, it gets better. If it is not, then it will atrophy. Enthusiasm rarely comes naturally and it must be the result of conscious effort. Practicing the ability to use enthusiasm can keep you excited and driven even in horrible circumstances. Without this ability even great circumstances are viewed through the lens of sarcasm and cynicism.

Passion
Genuine enthusiasm can only be sustained about something you are truly passionate about. Anyone can get themselves hyped up over a boring situation for the moment, but sustained enthusiasm can only come when you deeply care about something. If you aren’t that interested in the outcome of something, you won’t be able to create enthusiasm.

Don’t spend your time pursuing things that you aren’t passionate about. If you aren’t passionate about something, try to minimize or remove the time it is taking from your life. Nobody is going to applaud you for working at a boring job, having boring hobbies or staying in a dead relationship when you are dead. We are ultimately responsible for the amount of passion we experience in our lives.

If you look at really successful people, all of them having something they are very passionate about. These people have a drive that compels them to give 110%. Nothing is more motivating than an obsessive passion. As a self-proclaimed obsessive about personal growth, I can attest to that.

BOTTOMLINE: Common sense? Perhaps. Insightful? You bet! Keep in mind - Scott Young - is still in high school. How about THAT for enthusiasm and passion??

What If...Part V

What If...

...there was a local Six Disciplines Leadership Center near you, staffed with passionate, service-driven professionals who were experts in empowering the best-performing small businesses to adopt this methodology and integrate the system into their business?

…this local business coaching organization was staffed with professionals who were experts at drawing priorities and decisions out of the people in your organization, as opposed to suggesting what your priorities should be?

…this local business coaching organization was also certified in helping you align your business priorities so everyone in your organization can learn to execute toward your established goals and objectives?

…this local business coaching organization was there to show you to learn how to use the Six Disciplines Methodology -- so it becomes a natural, rhythmic way of working on your business?

…this local business coaching organization sole purpose was to keep your organization on track, make you accountable, and to make these continual improvements sustainable, and last for the long-term?

…this local business coaching organization professional staff worked with you to document your most important business processes and workflows so they become known and accessible to everyone in your organization?

...these standard business processes were built right into the software system you used everyday?

…this local business coaching organization could show you how your company can become a “learning organization” – one that has a key competitive advantage as you align your people, systems and priorities?

...your company had a local Six Disciplines Leadership Centers by your side to assist you along the way?

BOTTOMLINE: Time to experience what a Six Disciplines Leadership Center can offer to your organization.

What If...Part IV

What If...

...this intuitive software that you used every day could help you to document your mission, vision, values, strategic position, making it all accessible to everyone in your organization?

...this software also helped you to track your organization's financial, operational and people goals?

...this same software also featured fully-integrated people-processes like individual performance development, 360 performance feedback, performance appraisals, incentive and recognition programs, and recruiting?

...this same software also featured fully-integrated financial-processes processes like cash, billing, receivables, payables and general ledger?

...this same software also featured fully-integrated key Sales, Marketing and Service processes like sales opportunities, marketing leads, service incidents, contracts, alerts and escalation?

...this same software also featured fully-integrated key Project processes like project scheduling, resource scheduling, project billing, timesheets and expense reports?

...this same software also featured fully-integrated included customized measurements, alerts, and reports – specific to your business - to keep you on track?

...this software system was accessible anywhere there was an Internet connection, was available 24 x 7, was easy-to-use and to learn, and worked seamlessly with other software you already know how to use?

...you had 24 x 7 web-based access to a resource library of hundreds of online learning materials, specific to your use of this system – and to your role within your organization?

BOTTOMLINE: The Six Disciplines Business System is all of this - and more.

What If...Part III

What If...

...an organization conducted several years of research, and chose only the essential elements of strategic planning, quality management, integrated learning, business process automation, people performance management and measure driven improvement – and optimized them -- just for small businesses?

…the result of that research was developed into a very practical, systematic, six-step "business-building" methodology?

…that practical approach to building your business was not “yet another management fad” – but rather, was based upon proven, time-tested, established business principles and best practices?

…that practical approach was designed into an easy-to-use, intuitive software system that you used every day – that kept you on track, and kept you accountable for your organization's execution - and ultimately, it's success?

…this same organization had invested over $12 million and 60 man-years to develop an innovative "system" around this proven, time-tested, six-step methodology – to help the best-performing small businesses achieve lasting excellence?

BOTTOMLINE: What if ....you wanted to find out more? Read Six Disciplines for Excellence.

Small Business Growth Strategies

Fortune Magazine has recently published "7 ways to join the billion-dollar club" -- or how small companies that grow to chalk up huge sales share seven key traits. Although much of this advice might seem like common sense, it's based on hard quantitative evidence.

Here's the seven traits:

1. Create and sustain a breakthrough value proposition. Three ways: create an entirely new market for their products and services, redefine an existing market, or underpricing the competition.
2. Exploit a high-growth market.
3. Focus relentlessly on cash flow. Blueprint companies tend to be profitable from a very early stage. As a result they are able to finance their own growth at less cost than competitors.
4. Leverage big-brother alliances. In their early days, most Blueprint companies found a major corporate partner whose high profile and reputation opened doors to new markets.
5. Pack your board with industry experts. Stack you board with successful CEOs and market experts who offer deep experience and help bring in business.
6. Use marquee customers to build credibility. The best customers become an extension of your sales force.
7. Build an inside-outside leadership team. Dynamic duos are the stuff of corporate legend: In most such partnerships, one leader concentrates on internal operations while the other leader represents the company for clients and investors.

Hard Facts About Business Myths

Rob May, over at Business Pundit, reviews the new book "Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths & Total Nonsense."

Of particular interest was his (and the author's take) on business books:

Rob says: "I have about 15-20 books that I think are excellent, and another 20 that are pretty good overall. The rest are like "One Minute Manager" or "Good to Great," they have a few things worth pulling out of them but people treat them as business gospel when at best they are mediocre half truths."

(BTW....Six Disciplines for Excellence is one of those excellent/pretty good books - read his review here).

A few of the author's conclusions about business books?

• Treat Old Ideas As If They Are Old Ideas. After all, isn't bland old excellence a better fate than an exciting new failure? (!!!)
• Be Suspicious of "Breakthrough" Ideas and Studies. Most claims of originality are testimony to ignorance and most claims of magic are testimony to hubris.
• Celebrate and Develop Collective Brilliance, Not Lone Geniuses or Gurus. Knowledge and success typically build on what was previously done. Lone geniuses are rare in business.
• Emphasis Virtues and Drawbacks. If someone tells you there are no drawbacks to a certain theory or idea, be very very skeptical.
• Use Success (and Failure) Stories to Illustrate Sound Practices, Not as a Valid Research Model. This was Rob's problem with "Good to Great." Who cares what the winners did? Maybe the losers did the same thing. Did anyone check? Does anyone care as long as it sells books?
• Take a Neutral, Dispassionate Approach to Ideologies and Theories.

BOTTOMLINE: Some great critical thinking about the hard facts about most business books. Now, go read "What The Experts Are Saying About Six Disciplines for Excellence."

Seven Traits of Great Leaders

Ken Shelton originally published his "Seven Traits of Good Leaders" in Executive Excellence Magazine. They're shared here at weLEAD.org.

All great leaders have some aspects of their personalities in common. Outstanding leaders share seven qualities:

1. Great leaders identify, cultivate, and inspire enthusiastic followers
2. Great leaders focus their efforts
3. Great leaders face and overcome great difficulties
4. Great leaders expect more from themselves than they do from others
5. Great leaders are not afraid to make tough decisions
6. Great leaders have a vision and utmost faith in themselves to fulfill that vision
7. Great leaders are ambitious for themselves, their companies, and their people

Jumpstarting Your Business

If your business has "stalled" or is somehow losing its edge, Andy Birol, a business consultant in Ohio, offers these "jumpstarting" tips to get your business moving in the right direction.

It's a process he calls determining your "best and highest use" or BHU. Determining your BHU will connect you to the passions and purpose that led you to start your business in the first place.

How do you determine your BHU?

1. Document your successes.
2. Consider the importance of fun.
3. Discover what clients, customers and staff like about you.
4. Distill and simplify.
5. Know your blind spots.
6. Synthesize, apply and focus..

BOTTOMLINE: "Apply these steps and you will gain new insight into your business and its customers. Customers will notice. The relentless logic of the marketplace demands that you deliver solid value to customers in order to keep them loyal to your business, and as they respond positively your comfort zone will expand."

Long-Term Strategic Planning

In a recent McKinseyGlobal Survey, Executives report an accelerating pace of change in an increasingly competitive business environment, driven by knowledge and information trends and the forces of globalization.

They found that the long-term strategic-planning process can be a powerful tool for identifying growth opportunities and external risks.

When asked how their strategic planning was organized, executives revealed significant differences between small and big companies.

• When executives are probed about what strategic planning achieves at their companies, an interesting divergence emerges.
• C-level executives are more confident than their lower-ranking counterparts that the process results in concrete measures.
• Top executives also emphasize the effectiveness of their company's strategic planning in identifying new opportunities for growth.

Blognoggle Recognizes Be Excellent™ as a Top 100 Business Blog

Jerry Bowles, over at the upstart news aggregator Blognoggle, has chosen Be Excellent™ as one of the Top 100 Business Blogs to be "shadowed" (tracked) ".....based in part on the popularity of your blog but also on my estimation of what's good from having spent 30 years or so of my life in corporate communications and print magazine advertising and marketing."

If you havent yet checked out Blognoggle, now's your chance! Good stuff there!

The Great Communicators

BusinessWeek offers these bits of advice from top business leaders on communication styles:

• Jack Welch (GE): Best communication asset: Simplicity Tip: Eliminate jargon
• Steve Jobs (Apple): Best communication asset: Charisma Tip: Create and articulate a bold vision
• Meg Whitman (eBay): Best communication asset: Penchant for listening Tip: Seek feedback
• John Chambers (Cisco): Best communication asset: Preparedness Tip: Review and rehearse your presentation
• Michelle Peluso (Travelocity): Best communication asset: Responsiveness Tip: Be there for your employees
• David Neeleman (JetBlue Airways): Best communication asset: Talent for storytelling Tip: Tell tales that inspire
• Howard Schultz (Starbucks): Best communication asset: Passion Tip: Identify and share what you're passionate about
• Suze Orman (Author, TV Host): Best communication asset: Clarity of expression Tip: Break down complex information into easy parts
• Rudy Giuliani (Giuliani Partners): Best communication asset: Ability to make eye contact Tip: Spend 90% of the time looking at your audience
• John Thompson (Symantec): Best communication asset: Optimistic language Tip: Employ powerful and positive words
• Klaus Kleinfeld (Siemens): Best communication asset: Ability to reinvent Tip: Stay fresh, remain current
• Larry Ellison (Oracle): Best communication asset: Looking like a leader Tip: Pay attention to what your wardrobe says about you
• Richard Branson (Virgin Group): Best communication asset: Generosity with praise Tip: Lavish appropriate praise on employees, customers, and colleagues
  

Business Process Improvement

Business process improvement was revolutionized when Dr. Michael Hammer introduced the international best-seller Reengineering the Corporation. Dr. Hammer’s research and teachings focus on how to transform business operations; his work is relentlessly pragmatic and immediately applicable.

But what are business processes?

"Process simply means end-to-end work, as opposed to piecemeal, activity-level work. Focusing on processes, as opposed to tasks, is a fundamental change in how we regard work. Improving the productivity of individual tasks is of course a useful thing to do, but no longer represents a major opportunity for organizations seeking to improve performance. The real problems in contemporary operations are not found in individual tasks themselves but in how tasks are combined together to create whole processes."

BOTTOMLINE: Companies that concentrate on their processes by designing them, measuring them, managing them, and constantly improving them are able to achieve sustained high levels of operating performance.

Creating Conditions for Sustained Success

What brings success?

Is it better leaders? Better products? Better salespeople? What about better performance management systems?

Any of the above may bring some level of improvement, but research by the consulting company VitalSmarts reveals that sustained top performance can be tied to one thing: how well people communicate within a company.

How Successful People Remain Successful

When James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras wrote their hugely popular 1994 book, Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies, they began by stating clearly that they did not mean to write about visionary leaders, product concepts or market insights. Their goal was to find visionary companies.

But what about successful individuals?

Mark Thompson and Stewart Emery, co-authors with Porras of Success Built to Last, spoke recently with Knowledge@Wharton about their new book.

Can the characteristics of successful businesses also be applied to people? Are there common characteristics among those who are consistently successful?

The answer, it seems, is yes.

Read all about it here.

How Business Should Drive Technology

An excellent article here on "How Business Should Drive Technology " about a very large enterprise (UPS) - and why UPS "....is always asking if what it has is the best -- and whether it can do better."

Their premise?

At UPS, four conditions—what they call the 4Cs of innovation—must be in alignment to make transformation through innovation a sensible course of action:

• Our customers must drive it.
• The new direction must connect to the company's core competency.
• The new business model must be clear.
• Our culture must embrace it.

BOTTOMLINE: This model has driven UPS's transformation through innovation since their founding, in 1907. Go with what works......

Gary Tomlinson's Review of Six Disciplines for Excellence

Gary Tomlinson, a business advisor, educator, author, and professional speaker recently published a review of Six Disciplines for Excellence, which was featured in the April 2006 issue of Business Leader Magazine.

According to Tomlinson:

"This is an incredible book. For the past six years, I’ve been a student of business books. I’ve read many of the best such as; Good to Great, E-Myth Manager, How to Win Customers and Keep Them for Life, The People Principle, etc. For the past 20 months, I have been writing a monthly book review for Business Leader Magazine. I’ve been in search of the best business education, especially on the “Why of It” as well as the “What of It.” After reading and studying Six Disciplines for Excellence, I now feel that I’ve got a good idea on the “How of It.”

Read Gary's review here.

Welcome to the Carnival of Entrepreneurship #12

Be Excellent™ is proud to be hosting "Carnival of Entrepreneurship #12" -- a weekly stop along the midway of the small business blogosphere.

If you're a regular reader of Be Excellent, you'll alread know we're very passionate about business improvement - and particularly small businesses. (If this is your first time here, browse around! You'll find something of interest - and of use for your business.)

This week, we bring you the following great entries:

• David Daniels, who's one of the best business bloggers out there, posts at Business & Technology Reinvention, and brings us A Tale of Two Companies and looks at how failure in the "last mile" of customer aquistion and retention can hurt your company.

• Jack Yoest, a reputable management consultant whose tagline is "Business Sense -- Military Precision -- Timeless Truth" looks at Illegal Interview Questions. Good things to know before you begin your search for the best talent you can find.

• David Terrar, over at Business Two Zero offers his insights into wikis in his Wikis - the insider’s guide, saying, "Wikis are excellent tools for collaboration and knowledge management. Although they are applicable to all sizes of business, they are great and easily affordable for small businesses and entrpreneurs to enable direct communication with customers, suppliers, partners or within your team."

• Yaro Starak at Entepreneur's Journey brings us What Is The 80/20 Rule And Why It Will Change Your Life, a great discussion of Pareto's law, and what it means for you in business, and life in general. His 80/20 lifestyle blueprint is of particular interest.

• Stephen Littau at Fearless Philosophy for Free Minds reminds us "We Can Make April 15th Just Another Day" (this one hits home - in LOTS of ways...)

• Over at Ask Uncle Bill, you'll notice another tax-related entry, You, Inc. And The IRS . And this is supposed to make me feel better? On the other hand, do we really want to bet against the IRS computers, and endure an income tax audit? I think not...

• David Lorenzo presents Creating Momentum posted at The Career Intensity Blog, which details a five step plan to help you work through your next big project and develop some personal momentum. Great ste-by-step process - well thought out here!

BOTTOMLINE: The next Carnival of Entrepreneurship will be at The Small Business Buzz on April 27. Until next week....Be Excellent™.

Perseverance Is The Key

Greg Balanko-Dickson over at Business Performance Coaching presents his take on the lessons business leaders can learn from the New York autistic teen/basketball manager/player who "Never Gave Up."

Greg's assertion:

"With an inner belief, persistence, and openness you will succeed. By remaining open and flexible circumstances begin to bend in your favor. Whereas, being rigid and stiff your strategy can be broken and lead to failure."

BOTTOMLINE: "All my years of experience have taught me that the greatest attribute for any business leader is perseverance. As long as you keep trying, you'll keep learning." (Gary Harpst, CEO and Founder of Six Disciplines Corporation)

How To Read A Business Book

How should you go about reading business books like those from Jim Collins, Michael Hammer, Tom Peters, Peter Drucker and the others?

1. Take a big grain of salt
2. Distill the central idea
3. Create your own toolbox

BOTTOMLINE: Or, you could read Six Disciplines for Excellence, which distills the core ideas of dozens of the top-rated business improvement books into a practical, systematic and repeatable method for continual business improvement.

Three Myths of Management

In a new book, Stanford professors Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton assail popular yet shaky—maybe even harmful—management practices. The catalogue of poor decision practices is immense - here are three of the most common - and most harmful to companies.

Casual benchmarking. There is nothing wrong with learning from others' experience—vicarious learning, as contrasted with direct experience, is an important way for both people and organizations to learn how to navigate a path through the world. After all, it is a lot cheaper and easier to learn from the mistakes, setbacks, and successes of others than to treat every management challenge as something no organization has ever faced before. So benchmarking—using other companies' performance and experience to set standards for your own company—makes a lot of sense. In the end, good or bad performance is defined and measured largely in relation to what others are doing.

Three questions to ask:

1. Is the success you observe by the benchmarking target because of the practice you seek to emulate?
2. Why is a particular practice linked to performance improvement—what is the logic?
3. What are the downsides and disadvantages to implementing the practice, even if it is a good idea?

Doing what (seems to have) worked in the past. Suppose you went to a doctor who said, "I'm going to do an appendectomy on you." When you asked why, the doctor answered, "because I did one on my last patient and it made him better." We suspect you would hightail it out of that office, because you know that the treatment ought to fit the disease, regardless of whether or not the treatment helped the previous patient. Strangely enough, that logical thought process happens less than we might care to admit in most companies.

Three questions to ask:

1. Are you sure that the practice that you are about to repeat is associated with the past success?
2. Is the new situation—the business, the technology, the customers, the business model, the competitive environment—so similar to past situations that what worked in the past will work in the new setting?
3. Why do you think the past practice you intend to use again has been effective?

Following deeply held yet unexamined ideologies. The third flawed and widespread basis for decisions often does the most damage because it is the most difficult to change. It happens when people are overly influenced by deeply held ideologies or beliefs—causing their organization to adopt some management practice not because it is based on sound logic or hard facts but because managers "believe" it works, or it matches their (sometimes flawed) assumptions about what propels people and organizations to be successful.

Three questions to ask:

1. Is my preference for a particular management practice solely or mostly because it fits with my intuitions about people and organizations?
2. Am I requiring the same level of proof and the same amount of data regardless of whether or not the issue is one I believe in?
3. And, most important, are my colleagues and I allowing our beliefs to cloud our willingness to gather and consider data that may be pertinent to our choices?

(Excerpted by permission of Harvard Business School Press from Hard Facts, Dangerous Half-Truths, and Total Nonsense: Profiting from Evidence-Based Management. Copyright 2006 Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton. All rights reserved.)

Managing Multiple Generations

Interesting article here from Harvard Business School's Working Knowledge on "Can You Manage Different Generations?"

Their premise? Managing multigenerational workforces is an art in itself.

• Young workers want to make a quick impact. Younger workers (under 35) feel much less loyalty to institutions than do older workers. They also want responsibility and expect to have input right away, whereas older workers expect people to earn their way up. Younger workers aren't afraid to make decisions, and if you can create a strong social fabric at work, you can leverage their network-centric attitudes.
• The middle generation needs to believe in the mission. This middle (between 35 and 54) cohort tends to be antiauthoritarian and idealistic. They are ambitious, flexible, productive, self-sufficient, and people-oriented. On the other hand, they distrust leadership, are juggling busy lives, and demand merit-based systems and participative management. Make their work fulfilling to them, and they will move mountains; if they fail to believe in the mission, they will disengage—as 71% of this age group have done, and become unproductive
• Older employees don't like ambivalence. Workers (who are 55 and over) bring an entirely different perspective, according to Concours research. They trust authority, respect rules, and are loyal to institutions. They expect people to "pay their dues" before being given authority. They place great value on financial security and may be uncomfortable with the ambiguity that is common in contemporary business. They also tend to have stronger social skills than their younger counterparts.

Your move.

Clarity in Decision-Making

To make good decisions, you must learn how to reach the “clarity state,” which is characterized by both mental and physical focus.

Drawing from neuroscience and sports psychology, this state can be reached. There are four key qualities of leadership that lead to clear decision-making:

1. Authenticity. Authentic decisions are not based on consequences, but instead spring from three things managers can control: the quality of the process, the quality of the data and the level of internal alignment.
2. Responsibility. Managers often hide behind the need for consensus, but good decisions can arise only from debate and the willingness to accept the responsibility for a decision.
3. Vision. A manager must have vision — the product of intuition and imagination — in order to know what questions to ask and which deductions to trust.
4. Courage. A leader must have the courage to consider all options regardless of the perceived risk and, once a decision is made, courage is required to carry out that decision.

(Source: The Right Decision Every Time: How to Reach Perfect Clarity on Tough Decisions - Prentice Hall, 2005.)

Is Strategy a Bad Word?

In this MITSloan Management review, the folks from RedefiningStrategy.com ask the question: "Is Strategy a Bad Word?"

Their premise?

"The frequent failure of strategy might lie in its very definition, which historically implies short-term victory over competitors rather than long-term vision and lasting success."

"By contrast, sustainable success is not, and cannot be by definition, an end unto itself or a goal to achieve. That is, goal orientation becomes arguably inappropriate when success has to be indefinitely sustained."

BOTTOMLINE: "To create sustainable, long-term success, an organization must first and fundamentally understand and relate to its customers. It is the ongoing cultivation of that understanding — based neither on specific competitors nor temporal objectives — which must be at the heart of any real strategy. "

Small Business Confidence: It Depends On Who You Ask

Two differing views on small business owner confidence:

• Optimism among small-business owners took an unexpected tumble in March. The NFIB Small-Business Optimism Index lost 3.5 points, falling to 98.0 (1986=100), two points below the 30-year average. The good news is that profit trends improved, inventory investment was up, and reported sales trends remained strong (virtually unchanged from February).

• Chief executives of small and mid-sized businesses nationwide have increased confidence in a strong economy throughout 2006, according to TEC International’s quarterly CEO survey, the TEC Confidence Index. While CEOs anticipate growth, they are still concerned with staffing, health care costs and implications of an avian flu pandemic. (TEC is now Vistage Corporation)

Be Excellent™ To Host Carnival of Entrepreneurship #12

This Thursday, Be Excellent™ will be the host of the Carnival of Entrepreneurship.

This is our first time hosting the Carnival. You may have seen these listed previously -- and it just keeps getting better.

Here's how Carnival of Entrepreneurship works: Each week, a different blogger hosts the traveling roadshow featuring some of the best tips and inspiration for starting and running your own business. (Hardest part if you're the host? Limiting the number of posts to only seven - there's so much good content out there - it's tough to choose.)

Scott Allen, over at About Entrepreneurs is the creator of this Carnival.

Make sure to come back on Thursday!