More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
July 17 - July 23, 2020
Leaders are readers.
When Larry Page, CEO of Google was asked how he learned to run a company, he responded “I read a lot.”
Mark Cuban, the outspoken owner of the Dallas Mavericks, reads 3 hours per day.
(Warren’s) first priority would be reservation of much time for quiet reading and thinking, particularly that which might advance his determined learning, no matter how old he became.”
nothing interesting can come out of your brain that you don’t put in first.
Having a natural curiosity and thirst for learning separates the good from the great in our experience.
The key to scaling this curve: 1. Attracting and keeping the right People; 2. Creating a truly differentiated Strategy; 3. Driving flawless Execution; and 4. Having plenty of Cash to weather the storms.
Nassim Nicholas Taleb’s breakthrough book Antifragile: Things That Gain From Disorder
Michael E. Gerber’s The E-Myth Revisited
Eric Ries’ The Lean Startup.
“High-impact firms are relatively old, rare and contribute to the majority of overall economic growth. On average, they are 25 years old, they represent between 2 and 3 percent of all firms, and they account for almost all of the private sector employment and revenue growth in the economy.”
Steve Jobs, “I’m always amazed how overnight successes take a helluva long time.”
Senior leaders know they have succeeded in building an organization that can scale — and is fun to run — when they are the dumbest people in the room!
The best leaders have the right questions, but turn to their employees, customers, advisors, and the crowd to mine the answers.
Margaret Heffernan’s book Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril
Liz Wiseman’s Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter.
our tools and techniques focus on three deliverables: • Reduce by 80% the time it takes the top team to manage the business (operational activities) • Refocus the senior team on market-facing activities • Realign everyone else (onto the same page) to drive execution and results
three barriers to scaling
Leadership: the inability to staff/grow enough leaders throughout the organization who have the capabilities to delegate and predict
Scalable infrastructure: the lack of systems and structures (physical and organizational)
Marketing: the failure to scaleup an effective marketing function capable of attracting new customers, talent, advisors, and other key relationships to the business
Establish a handful of rules, repeat yourself a lot, and act consistently with those rules.
This is the role and power of Core Values.
First, what you’re planning to do really matters to enough customers; and second, it differentiates you from your competition.
driving Execution, implement three key habits: Set a handful of Priorities (the fewer the better); gather quantitative and qualitative Data daily and review weekly to guide decisions; and establish an effective daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual meeting Rhythm to keep everyone in the loop.
Those who pulse faster, grow faster.
In managing Cash, don’t run out of it!
Guided by a set of Core Values and a purpose, it chooses a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG®)* to achieve in the next 10 to 25 years. To break up the journey, the leadership team sets a series of three- to five-year targets divided up into annual goals. These are further broken down into specific actionable steps the business takes over the next few weeks or months, adjusting tactics as the market conditions dictate.
the end, it’s about keeping everyone focused on the summit (BHAG®) and then deciding the appropriate next step (quarterly Priority) while respecting the rules that keep you from being swept off the mountain (Values)
Bill Gates’ note that “most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.”
Everything in between this quarter and the next 10 to 25 years is a WA...
This highlight has been truncated due to consecutive passage length restrictions.
“Routine sets you free” is a key driving principle behind our methodologies and tools.
Goals without routines are wishes; routines without goals are aimless. The most successful business leaders have a clear vision and the disciplines (routines) to make it a reality.
In the long run, most product companies add on services to increase profitability and most service companies productize their offerings to make them easier to sell.
Albert Einstein: “Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”
1. Driver: Leaders drive implementation of the Rockefeller Habits with their teams. Execution is much easier if they and their teams engage in coaching, embrace learning, and encourage the use of new technologies to accelerate implementation of our tools.
Demands: Leaders have to balance two often competing demands on the business — People and Process.
3. Disciplines: To effectively execute, there are three fundamental disciplines (routines): Set Priorities; gather quantitative and qualitative Data; and establish an effective meeting Rhythm.
To scale the business requires getting four key decision sets — People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash — absolutely right,
We have the answers, all the answers; it’s the question we do not know.
With enough perseverance and grit they’ll find answers. Our concern is they might be working on the wrong question. Much of our work is helping leadership teams formulate the right questions.
KEY QUESTION: Are the stakeholders (employees, customers, shareholders) happy and engaged in the business; and would you “rehire” all of them?
Do you have the “right people doing the right things right” inside the organization?
One-Page Personal Plan (OPPP): Our personal and professional lives are intertwined — and best if aligned. This tool looks at four key decisions — Relationships, Achievements, Rituals, and Wealth — which mirror the four key decisions for the business: People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash.
“The bottleneck is always at the top of the bottle!”
Strategic thinking requires a handful of senior leaders meeting weekly (it’s not sufficient to do strategy work once a quarter or once a year) in what Jim Collins calls “the council.”
seven basic questions you need to answer if you want to accomplish anything: Who, What, When, Where, How, Why, plus Should/Shouldn’t. We’ve aligned these with standard strategic planning language like Core Values, Purpose, Annual Priorities, etc.
Improve the impact of your weekly meetings by taking a few minutes at the end and summarizing Who said they are going to do What, When.
1. The executive team is healthy and aligned.
2. Everyone is aligned with the #1 thing that needs to be accomplished this quarter to move the company forward.
