Small Business Organizational Entropy

Webster's Dictionary defines entropy as "a measure of the degree of disorder in a system."

When a small business makes plans, the chaos of everything changing around it gradually erodes those plans -causing unchecked organizational entropy or "decay."

Small businesses must have a systematic and ongoing way to to offset these forces or it will eventually become ineffective to the point that its survival will be at stake.

Here are some organizational entropy warning signs:

• A lot of red tape is required to get things done (GTD) - it takes too long or costs too much
• Inadequate tome is alloted for planning
• People don't know what is expected of them
• People aren't held accountable for their responsibilities
• Results aren't measured, so decay goes unnoticed or unchallenged - and learning is inhibited
• Inadequate resources are allocated to keep systems/processes working properly

BOTTOMLINE: Unchecked organizational entropy is one of the barriers to lasting excellence. The others are:

1. Poorly understood strategy
2. Weak strategy execution
3. Lack of a systematic approach
4. Impractical execution methods
5. People are not engaged

Baby Boomers and Executing Strategy

According to this research from the Conference Board, the aging workforce and approaching retirement of the "baby boom" generation is changing how companies plan and execute their business strategies, with a greater emphasis on workforce planning as a way of improving competitiveness and boosting productivity.

The Conference Board has found more companies are spending more time and effort analysing and forecasting the talent they have or need to acquire in order to execute their business strategy.

Strategic workforce planning, in essence, is aimed at helping companies make sure they have the right people in the right place at the right time and at the right price.

To engage senior executives in workforce planning, the process needed to focus on understanding the strategic business plan and its broad implications for the company's workforce.

"Strategic workforce planning enables the organization to slice-and-dice its workforce data to discover critical issues, compare different groups, understand patterns and trends, home in on critical segments of the workforce such as mature workers and top performers, and customize its approach to managing different segments of its workforce."

"By enabling leaders to see across lines of business, workforce planning can leverage talent within a company. Ultimately, the same workforce planning database tools will enable employees to shop for new jobs, assess their own developmental needs, and prepare for career moves inside the organization."

Effectiveness Can Be Learned

According to Rob May, Peter Drucker's The Effective Executive offers ideas that are useful to almost anyone, particularly entrepreneurs.

Be warned that they are not easy things to implement, and require lots of practice and discipline, but all that hard work is exactly why you end up a more effective entrepreneur.

Drucker's premise?

1. Know Thy Time
2. Focus on Contribution
3. Make Strength Productive
4. First Things First
5. Make Good Decisions

And the 6th?

6. Effectiveness Can Be Learned

"Effectiveness, in other words, is a habit; that is, a complex of practices. And practices can always be learned. Practices are simple, deceptively so; even a seven-year-old has no difficulty in understanding a practice. But practices are always exceedingly hard to do well."

BOTTOMLINE: "Drucker said there is nothing worse than doing something well that shouldn't be done at all. Be effective, and get the right things done."

(Tip of the hat to Rob May, the BusinessPundit for this one!)

Performance Management: The Next Breakthrough

DM Review offers this interesting look at the major breakthoughs in performance management.

From Alfred P. Sloan's take on customer segmentation to the most recent performance management issues, including:

• Harvard Business School's Alfred D. Chandler Jr.'s Organizational Structure
• Harvard Business School 's Michael E. Porter's Theories of Competitive Advantage
• Total Quality Management from W. Edwards Deming, Joseph Juran and Phil Crosby
• Michael Hammer's Business Process Reengineering
• Peppers and Rogers' Customer Relationship Management
• Peter Senghe and Organizational Learning
• Kaplan and Norton's Strategy Maps and Balanced Scorecard

So what's next?

Professor Tom Davenport of Babson College authored a January 2006 Harvard Business Review article proposing that the next differentiator for competitive advantage will be predictive analytics.

BOTTOMLINE: "In conclusion, performance management is not just about better managing performance, but improving performance. Integrating systems and information is a prerequisite, but applying predictive analytics is quite possibly the critical element necessary to achieve the full vision of performance management."

Fundamental Principles About Organizational Change

Jerry Pounds of Management-Issues brings this great article about organizational and motivational change to the forefront.

His premise?

"Most organizational behavior experts, gurus and consultants weave their incantations from the motivational theories of "authorities". If you trace these back to source, you wind up reading B.F. Skinner, Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Alfred Adler and Carl Rogers. "

"Alternatively, you can skip the primary theorists and move to their well-known translators - and the darlings of every college management class - Abraham Maslow and Douglas McGregor."

"Apparently, psychology's basic truths are known only by a privileged few – and they're not talking. Meanwhile, the field of applied psychology remains a battlefield where there are no victors but instead an endless conflict of assertion and rebuttal. "

For organizational change, herein lies the fundamental problem:

"If you review the history of any large organization you'll find that such a framework conspicuous by its absence. In its place is an eclectic mishmash of performance improvement programs, motivational initiatives and behavior change practices which are usually based upon mutually exclusive theories about human motivation."

"But don't expect the management gurus to clarify the disparities between these theories. After all, their stock and trade is the creation of entertaining perspectives on management and leadership. Uncertainty and ambiguity is the breeding ground for new books and the fads they produce. "

BOTTOMLINE: To understand organizational change, three simple laws emerge:

1. Any work behavior (verbal or physical) that works (pays off, is successful, gets us what we want) is repeated.
2. Any work behavior that avoids a negative experience (criticism, needless effort, appearing dumb, avoids something we don't want) is repeated.
3. Any work behavior that leads directly to a negative experience (discipline, embarassment, needless effort) is not repeated.

QLog Reviews Six Disciplines for Excellence

Thom Quinn, over at the QLog, offers his review of Six Disciplines for Excellence.

Some excerpts:

"The Six Disciplines for Excellence: Building Small Businesses That Learn, Lead and Last by Gary Harpst is a different and much needed animal for several reasons. First, it was written specifically for smaller shops (including local non-profits) which intrinsically have fewer resources. Second, this book provides a very systematic approach for a company to follow in order to achieve all of its objectives. Third, it is based on real-world experience (vs. theory from a B-School Professor) as the author was CEO of Solomon (now part of Microsoft) and this company was a test bed for the ideas in the book."

"Unlike most business books which focus on a few techniques, The Six Disciplines provides a true recipe for success."

"I highly recommend this short, but very dense volume. A lot of valuable ideas are found here! The Six Disciplines can be used as a guide book for any small enterprise as the majority of the text is a ‘how to’ manual with very clear instructions."

BOTTOMLINE: Go read the entire review here, and check out the rest of Thom's very insightful blog!

Making Time for Strategic Thinking

If you want to make a difference as a leader, you've got to make time for strategy.

Michael Porter, Harvard's guru of strategic thinking, is covered in this FastCompany article.

Among the gems in this article:

• Business keeps moving faster -- but you better make time for strategy
• Of course strategy is hard -- it's about making tough choices
• Technology changes, strategy doesn't
• Strategy hasn't changed, but change has
• Beware the myth of inflection points
• Great strategists get a few (big) things right
• Great strategies are a cause

BOTTOMLINE: "The chief strategist of an organization has to be the leader -- the CEO. A lot of business thinking has stressed the notion of empowerment, of pushing down and getting a lot of people involved. That's very important, but empowerment and involvement don't apply to the ultimate act of choice. To be successful, an organization must have a very strong leader who's willing to make choices and define the trade-offs. I've found that there's a striking relationship between really good strategies and really strong leaders."

(Tip of the hat to the good folks at MBA Depot)

Geoffrey Moore Returns

For those of you who were in technology marketing and strategy in the 1990's, who could possibly ignore Geoffrey Moore's "Crossing the Chasm" and "Inside The Tornado"?

Moore is back with "Dealing With Darwin: How Great Companies Innovate at Every Phase of Their Evolution."

His new volume, aimed mainly at corporate strategists, cuts across all industries and geographies.

The book's central question is: How can companies innovate continuously?

"Evolution requires us to continually refresh our competitive advantage, sometimes in dribs and drabs, sometimes in major cataclysms, but always with some part of our business portfolio at risk and in play. To innovate forever, in other words, is not an aspiration; it is a design specification. It is not a strategy; it is a requirement."

BOTTOMLINE: Discipline V. Innovate Purposefully, embraces Moore's concepts. Dealing with Darwin is full of caveats about the difficulties in executing these strategies. It's left to readers to customize them to fit their own situations. So this is less a cookbook than a detailed menu of meals that can be prepared to turn your competitors into dinosaurs.

Secrets To His Success

Whether you like his controversial commercials aired during the Super Bowl, it's hard to argue with his success.

Bob Parsons, the serial entrepreneur who started LeaseAmerica, Parsons Technology, and most recently, Go Daddy.com, offers his 16 Rules To Live By:

Some really great ones in there!

Ten Ps of Productivity

Thom Quinn, over at the QLog, presents his well-crafted list of the "Ten Ps of Productivity":

1. Purpose
2. Passion
3. Positive
4. Possible
5. Prepare
6. Plan
7. Prioritize
8. Persistence
9. Performance
10. People

Read all about them here.

Organizational Change and Transformation

The newest McKinsey Quarterly online survey (subscription required) sheds new light on what drives a successful transformation in organizational performance.

Their premise?

• Transformations appear to produce the best results when executives mobilize organizational energy and communicate their objectives in a clear, comprehensive, and engaging way.
• Certain change mechanisms also were correlated with executives' satisfaction with transformation.

The survey, which covered a range of contexts from turnarounds to restructuring, highlights the mixed emotions felt by those on the receiving end of deep-rooted change.

Respondents with the most successful transformations reckon that their company was conspicuously more effective than the others at raising expectations about future performance, addressing short-term performance, engaging people at all levels of the organization, including a clear and coordinated program design, and making the change visible—through, say, new IT tools or physical surroundings.

Emotions play a leading role in a performance transformation. Overall, the respondents report negative and positive moods in roughly equal proportions, with anxiety (mentioned by 46 percent of all respondents) as the most common negative feeling, well ahead of confusion, frustration, fatigue, and resistance. Among the positives, a sense of focus, enthusiasm, and feelings of momentum occur roughly equally. Not surprisingly, more of the top performers report experiencing the positive emotions—especially focus and enthusiasm.

Changing Behaviors And Processes

"Fixing or otherwise improving a process usually involves changing it in some way."

But....Which Comes First: Process or Behavior?

"One failing is a tendency to develop ideal processes on paper, without addressing elements of human behavior. I suspect it’s a by-product of being trained in a highly data-driven methodology (like Six Sigma). We expect that if we can use good data to demonstrate that a process change will result in an improvement, then people will automatically change their behavior."

BOTTOMLINE: For any change to take place, behaviors (habits) need to change before processes can successfully be changed.

• To grow your business... something needs to improve.
• To improve performance... something needs to change.
• To change effectively... it needs to last.
• To make it last… you need Six Disciplines™.

State of the U.S. Workforce

From the 2006 Employee Review by recruiter Randstad (as reported by Management-Issues) we see the following trends about the U.S. workforce:

• 75% of employers said that staff development was important, but only 50% of employees felt that their organization delivered on it.
• Almost 90% of employees said that feeling valued is an critical factor in job satisfaction, but barely 30% of them felt that they were valued by their own employers.
• only 25% of employees felt that their organizations felt any loyalty towards their staff and barely more than half (56%) felt any loyalty to their organizations in return.
• While the majority of employees and employers agreed that the top source of productivity gains was increased employee efficiency, only half of employees of all ages said that leadership practices in their organisations fostered employee development.

BOTTOMLINE: "The survey shows a widening gap in employee expectations and respective employer delivery," said Genia Spencer, managing director of operations and human resources for Randstad USA.

Why Change Efforts Can Fail

In his best-selling book Leading Change, John Kotter points to lack of urgency as one of the most significant factors in failed change efforts.

While your senior leadership team may be on board and in agreement with moving in a new direction, you need to invest some time and energy in getting buy-in from the rest of the organization.

Complacency with the status quo turns out to be one of the most powerful barriers to change initiatives -- even when leaders confront it head on.

"If you keep doing what you've always done, you'll get what you've always got."


BOTTOMLINE: If you're initiating a change effort within your organization, create a sense of urgency:

• To grow your business... something needs to improve.
• To improve performance... something needs to change.
• To change effectively... it needs to last.
• To make it last… you need Six Disciplines™.

The Challenge of Processes

Ann Michaels, over at Manage To Change, offers some great insight into the challenge of processes.

Her assertions?

• Process and rules applied correctly are invaluable. They insure resources are allocated effectively. They create consistency. They allow everyone to know what they’re supposed to do and when and how to do it.
• In order to accomplish all of this, they’re often very inflexible.
• Process is created to support specific values and assumptions. When those change, the processes that support them must change as well. Otherwise, they will exert pressure to keep things exactly the way they are.

BOTTOMLINE: "What can you do about it? When evaluating the potential impact of change, don’t forget to evaluate established processes and rules. If your change effort is challenging values or “best practices,” chances are, it’s going to be in conflict with some of your established processes. Identify them. Highlight where and how the conflict exists. Decide how you’re going to handle it."

Small Business Success: What It Takes

Dave Lorenzo offers this list of core competencies required to be successful in starting (and running) a successful small business:

There are ten personality traits that successful business owners possess – at least to some degree. Read the list below and see how many of them apply to you:

• Willingness to Sacrifice
• Service Orientation
• Leadership Ability
• Business Intelligence and Creativity
• Management Ability and Organization
• Optimism
• Persistence
• Competitive Nature
• Sales Orientation
• Confidence

BOTTOMLINE: "If one or more of these traits is not second nature to you, don’t fret. During the next two weeks we will be discussing each of them in detail. We’ll talk about ways to leverage your current skills, knowledge and experience to make up for a lack of strength in one or more of these areas."

A Reviewer Talks About Six Disciplines

Scott Young is one of the most prolific and detailed bloggers out there on topics like goal setting, time management, discipline, and personal development . He has an obsessive passion for personal development.

Recently, he was able to spend some time and read Six Disciplines for Excellence.

Here's what he had to say:

"I finished the book a few days ago. The book is great with a lot of excellent ideas. Unlike a lot of the books I've read which tout theories this actually goes into specific detail for implementing ideas. Being heavily biased towards implementation myself, I appreciated a more detailed look at how to run a small business that wasn't just platitudes and feel-good messages."

Scott also added:

"Unfortunately the precision in the book is also the reason I wont be able to publish a review. I hold myself to a strict standard of not promoting ideas I haven't been able to test. Although there are hundreds of excellent ideas here I won't be able to test them until I am in the position of running a small business."

Why the hesitation/reluctance?

You see, as amazing as it seems, Scott just recently graduated from high school! I encourage you to visit his blog and spend some quality time there.

Be Excellent™ Mentioned in USA Today

Jim Hopkins, the editor of USA Today's Small Business Connection blog, includes a mention and link to Be Excellent™ in his article "Trying to sell to female entrepreneurs? Better listen up!"

"For one thing, they recognize that female entrepreneurs really want to be listened to -- and that once heard, their wishes will be respected. Blogger Skip Reardon ranks "listen to learn" No. 1 on a list of seven essential skills to become a greater leader. In my interviews with women, they tell me that -- more than men -- their management style is to sound out employees, listening carefully for ways they can build consensus on major decisions."

Thanks for noticing, Jim!

Core Components of Performance Management

What does performance management mean to you? What’s the difference between managing performance and driving performance?

What does it mean to create a performance-driven organization?

Mark Stiffler, CEO of Synygy Inc. offers these insights:

A unified approach to performance management—one that ties together the organizational and individual aspects— consists of the following components:

• Align the objectives, resources and budgets of the different parts of the organization and the goals, opportunities and quotas of individuals.
• Measure organizational and individual performance.
• Reward individuals for performance.
• Report organizational and individual performance.
• Analyze organizational and individual strategy execution..

BOTTOMLINE: "For many organizations, becoming performance-driven might cause a cultural upheaval that, at least in its early stages, results in turmoil, a perception of chaos and a lot of discomfort. It can trigger turnover of long-time employees who do not like to be held accountable for goal achievement and who feel entitled to a certain level of pay regardless of their performance. And it might cost money as you make the initial investments.

But with the leadership and commitment of senior management, becoming performance-driven will lead to dramatic improvements in performance in financial terms, with respect to employee productivity and morale and in the flexibility to quickly adapt to change. The effort will be well worth it."

Comparing Entrepreneurs and Small Businesses

Seth Godin, a marketing genius (who has the ability to make very complex things - simple), offers this explanation of the differences between entrepreneurs and small business owners, in his article: "So, what's wrong with small business?"

According to Seth, entrepreneurs:

• Think big thoughts and do big things
• Try to make money while they sleep, and does it with someone else's money!
• Build a business bigger than themselves, that scales for a long time, that is about processes and markets

On the other hand, small business owners:

• Settle, working their way through the day to day
• Are basically freelancers with support
• Someone who understands the natural size of their business and wants to enjoy the craft of doing it every day.

BOTTOMLINE: According to Seth, "The more I see both, the happier it appears that small business people are. They often make more money, take fewer risks, sleep better and build something for the ages, something they believe in and can polish and be proud of. Growth for growth's sake makes less sense every day."

Collin Powell On Leadership

Colin Powell’s principles of leadership described in the book The Leadership Secrets of Colin Powell include the following:

• Being responsible sometimes means honking people off.
• The day soldiers stop bringing you their problems is the day you stopped leading them. They have either lost confidence that you can help them or concluded that you do not care. Either case is a failure of leadership.
• Don’t be buffaloed by experts and elites. Experts often possess more data than judgment. Elites can become so inbred that they produce hemophiliacs who bleed to death as soon as they are nicked by the real world.
• Don’t be afraid to challenge the pros, even in their own backyard.
• Never neglect details. When everyone’s mind is dulled or distracted the leader must be doubly vigilant.
• You don’t know what you can get away with until you try.
• Keep looking below surface appearances. Don’t shrink from doing so (just) because you might not like what you find.
• Organization doesn’t really accomplish anything. Plans don’t accomplish anything, either. Theories of management don’t much matter. Endeavors succeed or fall because of the people involved. Only by attracting the best people will you accomplish great deeds.
• Organization charts and fancy titles count for next to nothing.
• Never let your ego get so close to your position that when your position goes, your ego goes with it.
• Fit no stereotypes. Don’t chase the latest management fads. The situation dictates which approach best accomplishes the team’s mission.
• Perpetual optimism is a force multiplier.
• Powell’s Rules for Picking People: Look for intelligence and judgment, and most critically, a capacity to anticipate, to see around corners. Also look for loyalty, integrity, a high energy drive, a balanced ego, and the drive to get things done.
• Great leaders are almost always great simplifiers, who can cut through argument, debate and doubt, to offer a solution everybody can understand.
• Part I: Use the formula P=40 to 70, in which P stands for the probability of success and the numbers indicate the percentage of information acquired. Part II: “Once the information is in the 40 to 70 range, go with your gut.
• The commander in the field is always right and the rear echelon is wrong, unless proved otherwise.
• Have fun in your command. Don’t always run at a breakneck pace. Take leave when you’ve earned it: Spend time with your families. Corollary: surround yourself with people who take their work seriously, but not themselves, those who work hard and play hard.
• Command (leadership) is lonely.

(Tip of the hat to George Ambler at The Practice of Leadership)

Top Reasons For Business Failure

From Entrepreneur Magazine and Yahoo!, comes this list of the top reasons for business failure:

Here they are, in order of their importance:

1. Lack of direction. Business owners often fail to establish clear goals and create plans to achieve those goals, especially before starting out, when they fail to develop a complete business plan before launching their company.
2. Impatience. This occurs when business owners try to accomplish too much too soon, or expect to get results far faster than is truly possible. A good rule to remember is that everything costs twice as much and takes three times as long as expected.
3. Greed. When entrepreneurs try to charge too much to make a lot of money in a short period of time, failure isn't far behind.
4. Taking action without thinking it through first. An entrepreneur acts impetuously and makes costly mistakes that eventually cause the business to fail.
5. Poor cost control. An entrepreneur spends too much, especially in the early stages, and spends all their startup capital money before achieving profitability.
6. Poor product quality. This makes it difficult to sell and difficult to get repeat business.
   Insufficient working capital. An entrepreneur expects--and requires--immediate, positive cash flow that doesn't occur, leading to the failure of the business.
7. Bad or nonexistent budgeting. An entrepreneur fails to develop written budgets for operations that include all possible expenses.
8. Inadequate financial records. An entrepreneur fails to set up a bookkeeping or accounting system from the beginning.
9. Loss of momentum in the sales department. This leads to a decline in cash flow and the eventual collapse of the enterprise.
10. Failure to anticipate market trends. An entrepreneur doesn't recognize changes in demand, customer preferences or the economic situation.
11. Lack of managerial ability or experience. An entrepreneur doesn't know or understand the important skills it takes to run a business.
12. Indecisiveness. An entrepreneur is unable to make key decisions in the face of difficulties, or decisions are delayed or improperly made because of concern for the opinions or feelings of other people.
13. Bad human relations. Personal problems and conflict with staff, suppliers, creditors and customers can easily lead to business failure.
14. Diffusion of effort. An entrepreneur tries to do too many things, thus failing to set priorities and focus on high-value tasks.

Improve Your Business Reviews Six Disciplines for Excellence

Manny Sequeira, over at Improve Your Business, has published his review of Six Disciplines for Excellence.

Here are some excerpts from Manny's review:

"In his book "Six Disciplines for Excellence", Gary Harpst details a roadmap for small businesses to learn, lead and last. The result is a book which is lays out a systematic approach for building and sustaining a successful business - driven by excellence. This systematic approach is what Harpst has termed The Six Disciplines."

"Gary Harpst and his team have put a tremendous amount of work into detailing the steps within each of these disciplines so that this book can really be used as a small business owner's manual. They have succeeded in developing a practical methology for those of us who spend too much time "working in the business, instead of on the business."

"I like the approach and would recommend the book, as it is uniquely tailored for small businesses; it is well written with a lot of substance; and gives business owners a practical tool that they can use to implement business improvement for sustainability, growth and excellence."


Read the entire review here.

Qualities of a Leader

Over at Whitespace, there is a great collaborative listing of what 75 (and counting....) people think are the Qualities of a Leader.

Some of the better leadership qualities listed?

• Consistency
• Integrity, principles, sincerity, ethics
• Respect, trust
• Sacrifice (servant)
• Humility, diplomacy
• Flexibility
• Responsibility
• Accountability
• Passion, enthusiasm
• Confidence, decisiveness, competence
• Vision
• Clarity, focus
• Execution
• Communication (speaking and listening)
• Wisdom

Want to add your own thoughts here?

Seven Essential Skills to Become a Great Leader

Dr. Peter J. Dean offers his The L.E.A.D.E.R.S. Method - the essential skills necessary for any effective leader to practice:

1. Listen to Learn
2. Empathize with Emotions
3. Attend to Aspirations
4. Diagnose and Detail
5. Engage for Good Ends
6. Respond with Respectfulness
7. Speak with Specificity

BOTTOMLINE: "When individuals practice good leadership skills and acknowledge change, the entire organization benefits. Management is easier when leadership resides throughout all organizational levels with each person utilizing his or her sphere of influence in a positive way.

These skills allow individuals to develop expertise earlier in their careers and demonstrate greater productivity, resulting in a more enjoyable and positive work environment. People can be excited about going to their place of employment because they are developing their repertoire of leadership skills.

By allowing leadership skills to develop early, both the individual and the company grow and profit."

Reasons for Formal Process Improvement

The QualityGuru suggests the following Reasons Why You Know You Need A Formal Process Improvement Structure:

1. Fragmented processes causing delays and defects:
2. Customer Complaints: For every customer that complains about your product or service, there are 16 more that won’t tell you directly. Word of mouth can kill you!
3. Supplier Complaints: Do your suppliers complain about the last minute delays imposed on them?
4. Employee’s Whining: What’s stopping your employees from doing a good job? “I could do my job better if ____”.
5. Blaming People: The problems are in your processes, not your people.
6. Knee jerk Reactions: Managing by Gut feelings. “
7. Margins are low, expenses are high, and our growth is stalled.
8. Field failures.
9. Too many inspectors: You cannot inspect quality in, but you can build it in.
10. Absenteeism and turnover: Employees don’t want to do a bad job.

BOTTOMLINE: The need for formal process improvement can be any one or a combination of these symptoms. And, there are many different business process improvement methods to adopt. Only Six Disciplines is designed specifically for smaller organizations, focuses primarily on execution vs. theory, and is optimized for use over the Internet.

Tom Peters: On Excellence

Want to see what Tom Peters says about Excellence?

Check out his PowerPoint from a recent 2006 presentation - where he focuses on Excellence.

WOW!

Putting Values To Work

Fortune Magazine/CNN/Money features an article about business executives putting their values to work building their businesses.

The premise?

• Some companies become more socially responsible to protect their brands, to engage their people or to appeal to a certain set of customers who care about reputation.
• But business is personal, too.
• More than the bottom line is driving all these efforts. They are all personal.
• Each of these leaders care passionately about the causes their companies are engaged in.

In a new book called "True to Yourself: Leading a Values-Based Business."author Mark Albion argues that the personal side of business must come first. Only then will profits follow.

"Values-based leaders focus on their impact on people and the planet," he says. "And when they do it well - building a company or division that reflects their values - it results in more meaningful lives and financial health."

Particularly in a startup, Albion writes, the leader's values are crucial. "The day you launch your company, you are its first product," he notes. "You must sell your values, your mission, your uniqueness to others."

BOTTOMLINE: "The way you really make change is by capturing the hearts and minds of your people," says Albion, paraphrasing Jack Welch, the former CEO of General Electric.

Measurable Progress Toward Excellence

Skip Angel, over at Random Thoughts, poses this thought-provoking entry: "Measurable Progress Toward Excellence"

His premise?

"A strength is defined as a pattern of behavior, thoughts, and feelings that produces high satisfaction and pride; generates mental and/or financial reward; and presents measurable progress toward excellence."

Listen For Yearnings: Like an internal magnet, yearnings pull us toward one thing (strength) instead of another, beginning in early childhood and continuing throughout life. One's life work often begins in yearnings from childhood. Friendly advice can derail us from our strengths when we confuse it for a yearning.

Watch For Satisfactions: Great emotional and mental rewards come from activities we "get a kick out of doing." Satisfactions are not fleeting pleasures, but form our intrinsic motivation. Both satisfactions and yearnings cluster around strengths. Competencies and satisfactions don't always align. If it doesn't feel good, it's probably not a strength.

Watch For Rapid Learning: If you catch on to something quickly, you're probably good at it, and will say, "I feel like I've always known how to do this." A strength is always characterized by initial rapid learning that continues throughout one's lifetime.

Glimpses of Excellence: We see signs of strength in glimpses of excellence within a performance, such as singing a song, writing a letter, giving a speech. A performance is a series of "moments" which provide clues to greatness.

Total Performance For Excellence: The behavior flows and there are no conscious steps in the mind of the performer. The performer is acting on automatic -- time has stopped. Total performance is much more than a glimpse; it is the complete extension of an activity. It happens consistently, and is repeatable.

BOTTOMLINE: Measurable Progress Toward Excellence is a series of activities that are systematic, cyclical, consistent and repeatable.

The New Rules for CEOs

The Six Sigma master, Jack Welch, was once the undisputed authority in management.

But Fortune Magazine is now finding that today's smart CEOs are following a different set of rules.

The New Rules for CEOs:

1. Agile is best; being big can bite you.
2. Find a niche, create something new.
3. The customer is king.
4. Look out, not in.
5. Hire passionate people.
6. Hire a courageous CEO.
7. Admire my soul.

(Tip of the hat to BusinessPundit for this one!)

Reasons for New Executive Failure

Candidates for executive positions frequently experience “organ rejection” – being rejected by companies if they don't fit in with its culture, according to research from Salveson Stetson Group, a full-service retained executive search firm.

“Lack of cultural fit is one of the biggest reasons why newly recruited executives fail,” according to Sally Stetson, co-founder and principal with the 10-year-old executive search firm. “Assessing the suitability of candidates to an organization’s culture can significantly improve the success rate of new hires.”

John Salveson, co-founder and principal with Salveson Stetson Group added, “Candidates may have outstanding technical skills, accomplishments that match the job requirements, and have worked at the ‘right’ companies, but their leadership styles, interpersonal skills, and approaches to making decisions may not mesh with the way the company works. A candidate who was enormously successful in one company can fall flat on his or her face with another due to culture fit issues.”

BOTTOMLINE: To increase the success rate of newly recruited executives:

• Consider using behavioral assessments (such as those offered by Six Disciplines Leadership Centers)
• Consider using candidate 360 feedback surveys (such as those offered by Six Disciplines Leadership Centers)
• Assess your own organization's culture (consider attending a training session called "Building Company-Wide Accountability" - offered by Six Disciplines Leadership Centers)
• Assess your own organization's hiring process (consider attening a training session called "Finding and Keeping The Right People" - offered by Six Disciplines Leadership Centers)

How To Read A Business Book - Part II

About 3,000 new business books are published each year in the U.S. (according to the Economist). That’s roughly 57 new books each week when, for most of us, reading even one a week feels like an accomplishment.

How do you keep up? How do you read a business book?

Andrew Hargadon offers his tips here:

1. Read wisely.
2. Don’t read.
3. Read efficiently.
4. Read skeptically.
5. Finally, read the reviews.

The CEO's Job - Creating Lasting Value

What is authentic leadership for the small business CEO?

We need to spend more time developing the next generation of authentic leaders within our companies.

Failure to develop outstanding successors has forced far too many organizations to look outside for the next chief executive.

Typically, CEOs don’t design anything, make anything or sell anything. Their job is to create the strategies for building the business and to create the kind of positive environment that enables our employees to do these vital jobs.

The only way to build lasting value in our companies is to focus on our missions, our customers and our employees.

BOTTOMLINE: So what will create lasting value?

• Building your business by pursuing your mission with a passion.
• Connecting every day with your employees.
• Being out with your customers looking for great ideas for growth.
• Being true to your core values in every decision.
• Building an enduring organization of authentic leaders from top to bottom.
• Getting results for all your stakeholders, not just the shareholder of the past five minutes.

Passion Is Why

"To live is to choose. But to choose, you must know who you are and what you stand for, where you want to go, and why you want to get there….”

In business, our Mission and Values statements spell out who we are and what we stand for.

Our Vision statement gives where we want to go, and our Strategy gives us the how.

But the why is missing.

Passion is the why.

Read the entire article on Beyond Motivation - Passion

Four Questions Every Leader Must Ask

Ed Brenegar, over at Leading Questions, offers up his Impact Leadership Survey.

Rather than focusing on SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats), Ed increasingly talks with his clients about how they understand their impact.

The four questions?

1. Over the past year, what has been your IMPACT?
2. WHO have you Impacted in the past year?
3. What OPPORTUNITIES do you have now that you didn’t have a year ago?
4. What PROBLEMS or OBSTACLES have You created?

Take the survey yourself ....here.

Productivity and Quality of Life

The Association of Executive Search Consultants (AESC) have revealed a sea-change in the attitudes of corporate high-flyers, with a growing number rejecting long hours and the scramble up the corporate ladder in favour of better quality of life.

Some of their recent findings:

• 53% of those questioned said they have not achieved a satisfactory work-life balance.
• 46% felt that their work-life balance had changed for the worse over the past five years.
• 60% complained that technologies such as the BlackBerry and mobile phone are further eroding the boundaries between work and personal life.
• 56% of the current generation said that they would strongly consider refusing a promotion if it negatively affected their work-life balance.

BOTTOMLINE: "Top senior executives are hard to come by, and this survey suggests that executives are beginning to carefully measure the cost of their personal lives against the value of their professional goals. Employers need to be more creative and nimble in today's market and some negotiating tactics may include being more sensitive to candidate work-life balance needs. If employers do not listen, their competitors surely will."

Ready for Q3?

April, May and June have flown by a-- nd Q2 ends today.

Did you meet your quarterly goals? And are you on track to meet your annual goals?

James Sagar over at Marketing M.O. provides a great list of things to do (even if you're not in marketing!)

BOTTOMLINE: If you were working from an Individual Plan (IP) as described in Discipline IV. Work the Plan, you'd know exactly where you were toward meeting your goals.

Creating An Engaged Workforce

Accenture (the large management consulting firm), revealed in a recent survey of business executives, that 72 percent of these leaders consider employee engagement to be critically important to the competitive success of their companies.

Accenture's research found that workforce engagement can be measured using the following characteristics:

• Satisfaction
• Understanding
• Contribution
• Alignment
• Retention

Accenture also found the following 10 approaches to be effective for improving employee engagement:

1. Rewards and Recognition
2. Human Capital Infrastructure
3. Learning Management
4. Knowledge Management
5. Performance Appraisal
6. Workplace Design
7. Employee Relations
8. Career Development
9. Human capital strategy
10. Recruiting

BOTTOMLINE: Small businesses can create an engaged workforce -- in fact, small businesses have a distinct advantage over much larger businesses to do so. Many of these approaches for e effective for improving employee engagement are part of the Six Disciplines Methodology.

How To Think About Performance Appraisals

Employee reviews, performance appraisals...they're enough to raise the hair on the back of your neck...unless...

While I didn't meet John Porcaro while I worked at Microsoft, here he offers his 15-year Microsoft-centric view on approaching reviews (from his own perspective):

1. Take time to reflect
2. Think of your review as a living resume
3. Be thorough
4. Go with metrics
5. Make it about YOU
6. Don’t worry too much about missing an agreed-upon deadline
7. Don’t forget the “extra credit.”
8. If there’s something negative to say, bring it up yourself
9. Sometimes mistakes can be the best thing
10. Realize that half the equation is perception
11. Don’t sweat the review
12. Ask your manager to edit some of their negative comments
13. Don’t put it off until the last minute

BOTTOMLINE: What if...you used an intuitive Internet-based tool (every day) that made the entire process of doing weekly status reports, monthly performance updates, and annual performance appraisals -- a "no-brainer"? The Six Disciplines People Suite offers small businesses a practical way to approach this important HR activity.

(Thanks to Max at SuccessFactors for the tip)

Decker Marketing Reviews "Six Disciplines for Excellence"

In his review, "Six Disciplines for Excellence -- Strategic Prioritization, "Sam Decker, blogger of Decker Marketing, singles out the implementation focus of Six Disciplines:

"Here’s what differentiates this book: it bridges concept and principles to execution.

Most books focus 80% on principles and 20% on implementation. This book is 80% implementation."

BOTTOMLINE: Sam sums up his review: "For pragmatists and those who love execution, I give this book a strong recommend. Buy Six Disciplines of Excellence."

More On Management Fads

FastCompany is looking into the reasons why management trends (fads, new ideas) don't last long.

Their assessment?

• Consultants offer services in which they lack expertise
• New ideas come and go faster and faster
• People try to apply the same idea to too many dissimilar problems
• New practices and processes don't work for every organization

Take the FastCompany poll here.

Leadership Pitfalls

The Top 10 Leadership Pitfalls revealed in a recent survey by Quality Digest:

• 35% - Past and habits
• 29% - Economic climate or budget
• 23% - Company culture
• 20% - Way they work together
• 18% - Senior management team
• 18% - Customers
• 14% - CEO/president lack of confidence
• 13% - Technology
• 11% - Middle management
• 9% - Reputation
• 7% - Human resource management or employees

BOTTOMLINE: Respondents also indicated that the most important things to ensure successful strategy execution include:

• Creating a clear strategy
• Adding a specific plan
• Communicating what the plan is
• Rewarding employees for following the plan
• Continuing employee communication

However, even when companies do the alignment process well, their past and culture can derail execution, as the alignment of people and strategy isn’t enough for long-term success.

High-Performance Workforce Research

Accenture just released its latest findings on the High Performance Workforce. The research, Accenture High Performance Workforce Study, is conducted approximately every 18 months to measure workforce management trends among executives in large corporations in the United States, Europe and Australia.

Among the most recent research findings:

• Only 20% of respondents said the vast majority of their employees understand their companies’ strategy and what’s needed to be successful in their industry.
• Just one in 10 respondents reported being very satisfied with the performance of his or her human resources (HR) and training functions (11 percent and 10 percent, respectively.)
• 42% of respondents described capturing and sharing knowledge as a challenge or a severe challenge for their companies.
• 60% of respondents reported that, over the next five years, they expect to begin feeling the impact of the aging workforce and the impending retirement of baby boomers.

BOTTOMLINE: “A company’s ability to manage its workforce strategically and develop its capabilities will set it apart from its competitors. Some companies focus well on one or two aspects of human capital management, such as learning or internal communications, but the best take a broad view of managing their workforce. These are the companies that vastly increase their chances of being industry leaders.”

The World Cup of Leadership

The World Cup is perhaps the greatest sporting event in the world, and truly a global championship. Every four years, after exhaustive qualifying rounds, the top 32 nations in the world compete against each other for the right to be called world champions for the coming four years.

Every match matters. Every win and loss counts towards becoming a true world champion. The team that wins will have some great players, but the team with all the best players does not always win.

As in business, great leaders know these six rules:

1. LONG-TERM SUCCESS, SHORT-TERM RESULTS
2. CHOOSING THE RIGHT TEAM IS CRITICAL
3. WINNING AS A STATE OF MIND
4. PASSION, PLANNING AND EXECUTION
5. POSITVE LEADER RELATIONSHIPS
6. NEVER SATISFIED WITH THE STATUS QUO

Read the entire article here.

Leadership Lessons from Jack Welch

Leadership lessons from Jack Welch (former CEO of General Electric)

• Lead More, Manage Less (lessons 1-10)
• Build a Winning Organization (lessons 11-15)
• Harness Your People for Competitive Advantage (lessons 16-20)
• Build the Market-Leading Company (lessons 21-25)

(Thanks to Phil at Make it Great for the tip, and to George Amber at the Practice of Leadership)

Vision, World-Class Organizations, and Six Disciplines

According to thought-leader Ken Blanchard, all world-class organizations are driven by three critical factors:

1. Clear vision and direction championed by top management
2. Trained and equipped people focused on implementation of the agreed-upon vision and direction
3. Established recognition and positive consequence systems that sustain the behaviors and performance that the vision and direction require

BOTTOMLINE: If you map the Six Disciplines Methodology to these three factors of world class organizations, you'll find very similar views:

1. Clear vision (Discipline I-D Renew The Vision) and direction championed by top management (Discipline II - Set Goals That Lead)
2. Trained and equipped people (Discipline II-D Engage The Team) focused on implementation (Discipline IV - Work The Plan) of the agreed-upon vision and direction (Discipline III-F Align People)
3. Established recognition and positive consequence systems (Discipline V-D Recognize Contribution) that sustain the behaviors and performance that the vision and direction require

SMB Trend Wire: Podcast About Six Disciplines

Anita Campbell, the Visionary, TrendSpotter, Futurist, and Editor of Small Business Trends E’Zine, Small Biz Advisor - along with Steve Rucinski of Small Business CEO fame, get together on SMB TrendWire for a podcast interview with Six Disciplines CEO and founder, Gary Harpst.

According to Anita:

“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."

BOTTOMLINE: Listen to the very insightful interview here.

Small Business CEO: "There is Always Waste, Find it Now!"

"There's more wasted activity in your organization than you imagine."

These jarring words are part of the advice Gary Harpst received from another CEO that eventually prompted him to found Six Disciplines Corporation.

According to the Steve at Small Busines CEO:

"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."

BOTTOMLINE: Listen to the entire interview on Small Business CEO: "There is Always Waste, Find it Now!"

Top Ten Innovation Killers

Discipline V. Innovate Purposefully, is unlike the other five Disciplines, because it primarily provides principles and tools that are used in day-to-day execution of the steps in the other disciplines. Innovating purposefully...is a mindset that permeates the culture of an excellent organization." (page 180)

A recent Harvard eLearning Alert stated “70% of all business initiatives fail.”

Joyce Wycoff articulates the Top 10 Reasons for Innovation Failure:

1. Not creating a culture that supports innovation
2. Not getting buy-in and ownership from business unit managers
3. Not having a widely understood, system-wide process
4. Not allocating resources to the process
5. Not tying projects to company strategy
6. Not spending enough time and energy on the fuzzy front-end
7. Not building sufficient diversity into the process
8. Not developing criteria and metrics in advance
9. Not training and coaching innovation teams
10. Not having an idea management system

BOTTOMLINE: While it's probably impossible to compute the exact percentage of business initiatives that fail, it is widely acknowledged that most do. After years of research and observation, it is clear that the same reasons for any change initiative failure tend to be the same culprits that make innovation initiatives fail.

Six Disciplines Leadership Center of Central Indiana Names GM

Six Disciplines Corporation today announced that it has named Chip McLean to take the leadership role of General Manager and owner with the newly added franchise of Six Disciplines Leadership Center of Central Indiana, 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 Six Disciplines Leadership Center of Central Indiana 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

Read the entire release here.

Advantages of Small Businesses

Compared to small businesses, large corporations have more money, name recognition and benefits to attract the best and brightest employees. But bigger doesn't always mean better. And small-business owners smart enough to lure them are finding hires eager to help them build their companies.

What are the advantages? Here are lures that are working for small business owners:

• The chance to make a difference
• The freedom to make decisions
• The sense of teamwork and camaraderie
• The flexibility to balance work and life
• The room to grow

Check out the rest of this June 2006 article from MyBusinessMag.com

Leadership in Sports: Pat Riley

For Pat Riley, head coach of the World Champion Miami Heat, the NBA championship is a promise fulfilled from 11 years ago to Miami Heat fans. He now has a championship ring for all the fingers on hand; the third-most among NBA coaches.

In the waning moments of difficult games, the Heat seemed to indeed get stronger and summon the very best from all their players. The Heat went on to win three more (four consecutive NBA Finals games), becoming only the third team in league history to win despite an 0-2 deficit.

Read more about this "master of motivation" here.

Dealing With Poor Performance

According to a survey by Sirota Survey Intelligence, a company’s failure to deal effectively with its few workers who are consistently poor performers may decrease the extent to which other employees are engaged in their jobs and their companies.

Key findings:

• Only two out of five employees (slightly more so for management) who feel their companies are doing much too little to correct poor employee performance are favorably engaged at work.
• 33% of management and 43%of non-management employees think their companies are not doing enough to deal with poor performers.
• A very small percentage of employees at a typical workplace – usually around only 5% – are ‘allergic to work,’ and do as little work as they possibly can.

Strategic Planning and the Learning Organization

Harvard Business review's excerpt of "The Origin of Wealth, Eric D. Beinhocker" reveals a radical new of economics as a highly dynamic and evolving system with implications for companies and organizations everywhere.

His assertions?

• Rather than thinking of strategy as a single plan built on predictions of the future, we should think of strategy as a portfolio of experiments, a population of competing Business Plans that evolves over time.

There are some general lessons that can be learned from a portfolio-of-experiments approach to strategy.

1. Management needs to create a context for strategy. Constructing a portfolio of experiments requires a collective understanding of the current situation and shared aspirations among the management team.
2. Management needs a process for differentiating Business Plans that results in a portfolio of diverse Plans.
3. The organization needs to create a selection environment that mirrors the environment in the market. Fourth and finally, processes need to be established that enable the amplification of successful Business Plans and the elimination of unsuccessful Plans.

This shift in perspective implies a major redesign of the strategic planning process:

• First, the process should be focused on structuring in-depth discussion and debate among principal decision makers.
• Second, the process must be fueled by facts and analysis
• Third, there must be other forums clearly designated for decision making.

BOTTOMLINE: "If the strategy process becomes overburdened with near-term decisions on budgets, setting targets, and allocating capital, then learning goes out the window. The decision-making forums should be linked to, but separate from, the strategic learning process. Again, the focus of the strategy forum should be setting context to inform the design and management of the portfolio of experiments."

Leadership Challenges

Management-Issues published a study of more than 1,400 leaders and managers by global consultancy the Ken Blanchard Group, which revealed the following:

• 41% felt inappropriate use of communication or listening was the biggest mistake leaders made when working with others.
• More than 25% felt the major failing was in under or over-supervising people, providing a lack of, or too much, direction and delegating, either too little or too much.
• A lack of management skills was cited by 14%.
• A lack of or inappropriate support by 12%.
• A lack of accountability by 5%.

• 43% cited the most critical skill a leader could possess was communicating and listening (followed by effective management skills, emotional intelligence and empathy, values and integrity, vision and empowerment.)
• A whopping 82% said that of the top five things leaders and managers failed to do when working with others, the one that came up the most was not providing appropriate feedback.
• 81% said failing to listen or involve others in the process was nearly as big a failing.
• 76% felt leaders failed to set clear goals and objectives

BOTTOMLINE: "It seems that many leaders out there do not have even the most basic, critical leadership skills they need to do their job properly and this is bad news for business. We all know leaders hold the key to organizational success. Bad leadership leads, ultimately, to low organizational vitality, high staff turnover and poor customer loyalty."

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."