Ignore Economic Predictions
Insulate Your Company Through Geographical Diversification It’s easy to fixate on what the pundits are predicting for the economy in 2014 at this time of year. My advice: Ignore them. The fate of most small to midsize firms doesn’t rest with the consumer confidence index or S&P 500. In fact, obsessing about indicators like this can give you a convenient excuse for failing to do what you need to make your company successful now. There’s plenty of business out there. The world’s GDP is currently about $72 trillion. Even if the economy shrank by $10 trillion, there would still be …
2 Critical Vision Decisions – Profit Per X and BHAG
By: Verne Harnish “Growth Guy” Nov 1, 2013 1:00:00 PM ET In an increasingly global economy, anyone with a laptop can become your company’s rival overnight, so it’s more important than ever to find a way to separate yourself from the pack. Viewing your market through a different lens than your competitors is an essential step in achieving a differentiated vision. Doing this requires you to answer two strategic questions: (1) What is powering your economic engine? You need to identify the single overarching Key Performance Indicator (KPI) that Jim Collins calls the “Profit/X.” It defines the essence of your business …
Moral Character Wins
By: Verne Harnish “Growth Guy” and Sebastian Ross Oct 1, 2013 1:00:00 PM ET Companies that build teams with strong moral character win. Their teams are happier, perform better and are more successful overall. This bold claim stems from the work of Jim Loehr, renowned performance psychologist and author of the book The Only Way to Win. Loehr´s research, which in part is based on his experience taking 16 world class athletes to number one in their sport and working with thousands of “corporate athletes,” shows that the satisfaction we get from achieving extrinsic accomplishments (number one in tennis, a new job, …
A Better Way to Measure Employee Happiness
By: Verne Harnish “Growth Guy” Aug 1, 2013 1:00:00 PM ET Successful leaders know they need to balance the needs of employees, customers, and shareholders to build a thriving company. Many firms excel at tracking key performance indicators (KPIs) like profits, as well as customer feedback on a weekly or daily basis, but they fall flat when it comes to monitoring employees’ morale – and it shows. New research by Gallup found that 52% of American workers are not engaged in their work, while another 18% are “actively disengaged.” Many CEOs think that they can keep an eye on morale with …
Everyone Needs a Coach: The Key to Peak Performance
By: Verne Harnish “Growth Guy” Jul 1, 2013 1:00:00 PM ET Kevin Sheridan, CEO of 80-employee Rutgers Permanent Painting in Vauxhall, N.J., was considering refocusing his business on selling a new, higher-quality product, yet he was hesitant to take the leap. What finally pushed him to jump was the coaching of Mark Green at Performance Dynamics Group. Green is one of over 120 global coaching partners we have associated with Gazelles International. Peak Performance As Andre Agassi has said, no one can experience peak performance without a coach. Star athletes understand this instinctively. The top leaders at major companies have this …
Scaling Up the Organization (Chart!)
By: Verne Harnish “Growth Guy” May 30, 2013 1:00:00 PM ET Remember the days when your start – up team was crammed into a single office like clowns squeezed into a Volkswagen? Now you may have 150 (or 1,500) employees and find it infinitely more difficult to know how to divide up into teams and set clear accountabilities. Worse, both customers and employees may seem confused about how to navigate your organization. The CEO can take a clue from nature to solve these problems. Human organisms are made up of billions of cells versus just a few specialized ones for a …
Market Myopia: Blame the Swot!
By: Verne Harnish “Growth Guy” May 1, 2013 1:00:00 PM ET We’ve observed for decades how market-leading firms eventually fall behind startups because they just couldn’t see the future, in what Harvard Business School Professor Clayton Christenson labeled the innovator’s dilemma. So why do leaders miss seeing sweeping global trends that are about to broadside them? I put a big part of the blame on the standard SWOT analysis used in strategic planning — the age old tool used to identify an organization’s Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats. It’s time to update this methodology. “Inside/Industry Myopia” Almost by definition, the SWOT …
Selling the Business: Games Buyers Play
By: Verne Harnish “Growth Guy” Mar 20, 2013 1:00:00 PM ET Entrepreneurs work years building up the value in their businessonly to give a big chunk of it away when it comes time to sell. Why? Savvy corporate acquisition teams have a prescribed method for wearing down the most seasoned entrepreneurs, backing them into a corner where they have to sell for a steep discount. Here are some of their dirty tricks. PROMISES, PROMISES The first step is counterintuitive, which is why it’s so effective. The buyer offers the entrepreneur an insanely large price for the business and suggests the deal …
Profit from Employee Ideas
By: Verne Harnish “Growth Guy” Mar 1, 2013 1:00:00 PM ET When Gabe Fasolino was hired as a plant manager at a $7 million manufacturing company, he heard rumors that there were problems with drug and alcohol use among the workers. Clearly, this was a sensitive situation. A heavy handed approach to cracking down on the abuse could easily put Fasolino into an adversarial relationship with his employees. Wisely recognizing this, he turned to the company’s safety team, made up of hourly production workers, for ideas. They came up with what he describes as “the fairest, simplest, easiest-to-administer substance policy I …
5 Big Ideas: Powering Your Business
By: Verne Harnish “Growth Guy” Feb 1, 2013 1:00:00 PM ET Your team is probably fired up about grabbing more market share this year. But if you want to achieve that goal, it’s time to look at your operation through a fresh lens. There are some great ideas brewing in the global community that will help you outdistance your competitors. One of the most important business concepts of the century is “return on luck” (ROL) which I discussed in my last column. As Jim Collins explains in Great by Choice, all business leaders are being bombarded with both great luck and bad …
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