Quotes from Verne Harnish

In leading People, take a page from parenting: Establish a handful of rules, repeat yourself a lot, and act consistently with those rules. This is the role and power of Core Values. If discovered and used effectively, these values guide all the relationship decisions and systems in the company.

David Meerman Scott says, "You are what you publish.

KPILibrary.com

Routine sets you free

Success belongs to those who have these two attributes: • An insatiable desire to learn • An unquenchable bias for action

All executives and middle managers should have a coach (or peer coach) holding them accountable for behavioral changes. We

Managing Up: How to Forge an Effective Relationship With Those Above You, by Rosanne Badowski. She is Jack Welch's longstanding executive assistant and has written a book that we highly recommend all executive assistants read.

Yet few companies make proper use of this opportunity. Instead, the first days on the job often feel more like waterboarding than onboarding: no desk, no computer, no phone, the new boss is traveling, and the first assignment is shadowing an unenthusiastic colleague for two weeks.

As we've mentioned several times, the strategic planning process comprises two distinct activities: strategic thinking and execution planning. Strategic thinking is coming up with a few big-picture ideas. Execution planning is figuring out how to make them happen.

Then you need to evaluate all the key relationships surrounding the business. Would you keep all your existing customers? Are you happy with your investors/bank? Are your vendors supporting you properly? Are your advisors — accountants, lawyers, consultants, and coaches — the best for the size of the organization and future plans? The toughest decisions to make are when the company has outgrown some of these relationships and you need to make changes.

For us, a People department is less of a group of functional experts focused on engagement and employee wellbeing and more of an operational unit that serves the business and supports its strategy. All People practices, including compensation, need to create tangible value for the company's stakeholders, especially for its customers.

Remember, your company is a living organism that needs to survive in an environment that's always changing. To thrive, it has to be able to adapt. Charles Darwin found that survival is determined by the ability to adapt to circumstances.

successful companies held three to 10 times more cash assets than average for their industries, and they did so from the time they started. (We

There are roughly 28 million firms in the US, of which only 4% ever reach more than $1 million in revenue. Of those firms, only about one out of 10, or 0.4% of all companies, ever make it to $10 million in revenue, and only 17,000 companies surpass $50 million. Finishing out the list, the top 2,500 firms in the US are larger than $500 million, and the top 500 public and private firms exceed $5 billion. Data indicate that there are similar ratios in other countries.

1. Senior leaders need to be in the market 80% of the week, either figuratively or literally. 2. This routine must start on day one and continue through half a trillion in revenue!

The bottleneck is always at the top of the bottle!

Great growth firms are a lot like great jazz bands. While jazz is improvisational and entrepreneurial-like, the discipline underlying it allows even musicians who have never played together before to perform a rocking jam session.

Avoid checking up on whether someone did something the previous day. Team members will start feeling like they are being micromanaged. In general, looking forward is great management; looking backward is micromanagement.

Anytime somebody goes two days without reporting a constraint, you can bet there's a bigger problem lurking. Busy, productive people who are doing anything of consequence get stuck pretty regularly. The only people who don't get stuck are those who aren't doing anything or are so stuck that don't know it!! So, challenge the team member who reports, "Everything is fine!

How Fast Can Your Company Afford to Grow?" a Harvard Business Review article by Neil C. Churchill and John W. Mullins.

The 75 Measures Every Manager Needs to Know, by Bernard Marr.

The Business of Happiness: 6 Secrets to Extraordinary Success in Life and Work.

In the meantime, if you're experiencing some drama, maybe a simple checklist will help.

1 weakness of growth firms is marketing, the #2 problem is accounting.