Quotes from Verne Harnish

At 5% pretax profit, your business is on life support. • At 10% pretax profit, the business is doing well but has some untapped potential. • At 15% pretax profit, the business is in great shape. • Anything above 15% indicates that you should earn it while you can. The market will figure out what's going on, competition will show up, and you will eventually get pushed back.

So how do you figure out an X-Factor? Start by asking: What is the one thing I hate most about my industry? What is driving me nuts? What is the choke point constraining the company? It could be a massive cost factor. It could be a massive time factor. The challenge is that you're often too close to the situation and as blind as everyone else to the real problems that have been accepted as industry norms.

1. A framework that details your corporate vision. 2.   A common language with which to express that vision. 3.   A well-developed routine for keeping the vision current.

Create a Great Organization by Building a Strange Workforce

Many people have dreams. However, a vision is a dream with a plan:

Do you have the "right people doing the right things right" inside the organization?

For Gazelles, some earlier Key Thrusts/Capabilities included international expansion outside of the US and Canada; the launch of a software-as-a-service offering to support our methodologies; the creation of a high-end membership organization; a significant global expansion of our coaching organization; and the creation of an online learning platform.

Leaders have to balance two often competing demands on the business — People and Process. This

SWT Instead For senior leaders, we propose replacing the SWOT with the SWT: an updated approach that identifies inherent Strengths and Weaknesses within their firms while exploring broader external Trends beyond their own industry or geography.

Jeff Bezos asks his team each week is what competitors have entered their market in the last seven days!

Jim Collins, author of Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… And Others Don't

Individuals or organizations with too many priorities have no priorities and risk spinning their wheels and accomplishing nothing of significance.

Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity, and cash flow is king." You

As a winding river must follow the contours of the landscape on its way to the ocean, a business must navigate the undulations of the marketplace on the way to its Everest.

At rapidly growing companies, the team is often so busy chasing new opportunities that the existing clients feel ignored. If companies were able to hold on to the customers they now lose from neglect, it would fuel at least half of their growth.

Goals without routines are wishes; routines without goals are aimless.

Cash is the oxygen that fuels growth. And the cash conversion cycle (CCC) is a key performance indicator (KPI) that measures how long it takes for a dollar spent on anything (rent, utilities, marketing, payroll, etc.) to make its way through your business and back into your pocket. In

You can get by with decent People, Strategy, and Execution, but not a day without Cash. Cash becomes even more critical as the business scales up, since "growth sucks cash." The key is innovating ways to generate sufficient profit and cash flow internally, so you don't have to turn to banks (or sharks!) to fuel your growth.

It's always helpful to learn from those who have already been Where you're about to go.

We have the answers, all the answers; it's the question we do not know.

think of Amazon's "two-pizza rule" — no team should be so big that it can't be fed with two pizzas).

If more than one person is accountable, then no one is accountable

The best leaders have the right questions, but turn to their employees, customers, advisors, and the crowd to mine the answers. Every business is more valuable to the degree that it does not depend on its top leader.

KEY QUESTION: Are the stakeholders (employees, customers, shareholders) happy and engaged in the business; and would you "rehire" all of them?