The Growth Guy

Jim Collins' Top 10 List; A Company's Ideal; Facebook IPO; Embarrassed

"...keeping you great" HEADLINES:   Another spectacular event (Fortune Leadership Summit) - thank you for consistently putting together such a world-class panel of experts to stimulate my thinking!   Bruce Powell, Managing Partner IQ PARTNERS Inc. Jim Collins' Top 10 List -- Jim led a highly insightful 3 hour opening session at last week's Fortune Leadership Summit in Atlanta (and beamed to 9 locations around the globe). He capped it off with a top 10 list for growth firms: Change "what" questions to "who" questions Double your question to statement ratio Embrace the "Stockdale Paradox" - keep getting up when knocked down Discover your personal "hedgehog" - what are you both passionate about and best at Be clear your Core Values, Purpose, and BHAG Establish a 20 Mile March Create a "Stop Doing" list Turn-off electronic gadgets one day every two weeks Focus on getting a huge return on your next "luck event." Strive to be useful (would the world miss you if you/your company was gone?) A Company's Ideal -- Jim Stengel, named four times the #1 Power Player in marketing and the former Global Marketing Officer of P&G, outlined the most important marketing decision a company must make - what he calls their "ideal" - and how you convert this into a handful of measurements that allow you to track progress. Take 3 minutes and watch my interview of Jim where we explore two examples - go to www.gazelles.com and click on the "Grow Author Jim Stengel" link. BTW, Jim doubled P&G's revenues during his 7 year tenure as GMO using these ideas, including taking Pampers from $3 billion to over $10 billion and increasing profit 5 fold! He now helps mere mortals like us do the same. Best Olympic Commercial -- Jim's legacy continues at P&G. Here's the video we showed just prior to his keynote - how a powerful ideal, themed around the upcoming Olympic games in a few weeks, continues to drive P&G brands. Take 2 minutes (and a tissue) and watch. Create Your Own X-Prize -- the second standing ovation of the day was for X-Prize founder and author of Abundance, Dr. Peter Diamandis. Best known for creating the $10 million Ansari X Prize which unleashed the private space race (I'm literally watching Elon Musk's SpaceX Dragon hook up to the International Space Station as I write this), Peter outlined how various smaller prizes have solved a myriad of problems and why all of us can do something similar. The beauty of a prize is you only have to reward the winner and not the other 349 teams that compete. And typically over 10 times the amount of the prize is spent winning the prize (maybe governments should pay heed to this approach before they waste our money betting on a myriad of companies!). Take 2 minutes and watch my interview with Peter as he describes one such prize, unknown to many, that unleashed 350 competing teams with one of the top teams coming from a meet up in a tattoo parlor! Go to www.gazelles.com and click on the Dr. Peter Diamandis video link. Facebook IPO -- kudos to Mark Zuckerberg and his team for not leaving a bunch of money on the table at IPO time - seems they priced it about right, which is why the rest of Wall Street is up in arms - they weren't able to steal billions from the company. In turn, the NASDAQ/Morgan Stanley debacle is another thing - and as is always the case, the small investor gets the short end of the deal. For an interesting look at where Zuckerberg gets his strategies, take a look at this May 18 NY Times blog. Hint, they claim he practices with video games! Kudos to Eduardo Saverin -- as if already paying hundreds of millions in taxes to the US Government isn't his "fair share," certain government officials continue to beat-up the most successful in our society. Brazilian-born Saverin has renounced his US citizenship after moving to Singapore in 2011 and now a bill has been proposed to bar him and other wealthy Americans from ever visiting the US if they renounce their citizenship - please know how embarrassed I am for such childish behavior on the part of some of our government leaders in the U.S. BTW, massive amounts of capital are flowing to places like Singapore and exiting places like France with a proposed top tax rate of 75%.

100th Coach; Most Profitable; Fortune 500+ App; Africa

"...keeping you great" HEADLINES:   It took some floundering to navigate the path of attempting to apply the Habits by ourselves but we then signed up for a Rockefeller Habits workshop and started working with your coach Ron Huntington. The results have been completely as expected - phenomenal. As a result of our success, I now actually have the time to work on my business (and myself). Thanks to Gazelles for being a huge part of our success at P2P!   Dan Rogers, President/CEO Point to Point Transportation Services, Inc. Gazelles International Signs 100th Global Coach -- and the 100th coach is from Africa (with our first coach in China certifying next week), more below but first... Exxon Back on Top -- the Fortune 500 was announced on Monday and Exxon Mobile is back #1 with revenues of $452.9 billion (and stock up over 20%). Rounding out the top 10: Wal-Mart ($447B), Chevron ($246B), ConocoPhillips ($237B), GM ($150B), GE ($148B), Berkshire Hathaway ($144B), Fannie Mae ($137B), Ford ($136B), and HP ($127B) - fun facts. Fortune 500+ App -- if you do business with any of the Fortune 1000 firms get the Fortune 500+ app (free access with your subscription to the magazine - you should be reading it!). Find and research the 1,000 biggest companies in America. Use LinkedIn to see who you know at each company-and who your contacts know. Build and share lists for sales calls, trips or meetings. Get instantly updated news and financials on every company. Map all 1,000 companies or just the ones you want to meet with. Here's a link to try the app until June 15 just enter the code FREE500ACCESS. The offer is only available in the U.S. but it's only $9.99 anyway. Exxon's GM Global Procurement -- Coolest feature of Fortune 500+ app -- with one click you link with LinkedIn and it shows you how many connections you already have with people inside each of the Fortune 1000 companies i.e. I have 126 connections with people inside Exxon, including a 2nd level connection with the General Manager, Global Procurement - who would have known? Top 10 Profits -- Revenue is vanity, profit is sanity. Here's the Top 10 in profit: Exxon (41.1B), Chevron (26.9B), Apple (25.9B), Microsoft (23.2B), Ford (20.2B), JP Morgan (19B), AIG (17.8B), Wells Fargo (15.9B), IBM (15.9B), and Wal-Mart (15.7B). Entrepreneurs Should Be Watching Africa -- this is the title of an article posted on Fortune.com yesterday. Notes contributor Tony Elumelu "Africa's workforce will soon be the largest in the world. According to McKinsey & Company, by 2040, Africa will be home to one in five of the planet's young people and a working population of 1.1 billion people." Demographics can never be ignored! Take 2 minutes to scan through his article and then find one of your existing clients (Fortune 1000 firm?) which is already doing business in Africa and see how you can be of help! Marketing Video -- BTW, my bad for pointing you to Amazon for Kevin's short 100 second video promoting his latest book Video Marketing for Dummies. Several iPad users noted that it was in flash, so they couldn't watch it (Amazon only supports flash), so here is the best location - YouTube -- which is where Kevin recommends ALL promotional videos should sit (again, Google owns YouTube, so helps with SEO). Here's a link to his video, with some additional footage he had to cut out for the Amazon video. And BTW, get his book! 100th Coach -- ...and he is Graham Mitchell, Johannesburg, South Africa. Plus Michelle LaVallee, founder of Shanghi-based Management Success China, is getting certified in the Rockefeller Habits next week - our first certified coach in China, though she both worked with a firm that implemented the Rockefeller Habits and has been coaching firms for years. Congrats.

Video Marketing for Dummies; Quick Idea; Pixability

"...out-learning the competition" HEADLINES: (quickie) You Are What You Publish -- David Meerman Scott has pounded this idea into our marketing heads - and he's right. And videos, since YouTube is owned by Google, are a more powerful way (7x) to move up the search engine rankings. We all need more videos - but ones that work! Video Marketing for Dummies -- Kevin Daum and his co-authors released their new book today on Amazon entitled Video Marketing for Dummies. Also author of bestselling marketing book ROAR: Get Heard in the Sales and Marketing Jungle, Kevin and his team have simplified and codified the process for creating marketing videos that work. Take 100 seconds and watch their promotional video for the book (scroll down the Amazon page) - and see what you DON'T have to do! Bettina Hein, Pixability -- Bettina, one of the other co-authors, has been producing corporate videos for years via her firm, Pixability. She understands how to create videos fast and inexpensively. Give to a Young Person -- IDEA: give a copy of the book to one of the teenagers of an employee who has an interest in video - and have them take the lead in producing some videos for you - just get started. Young people take to this naturally - and with some guidance, they'll amaze you with their output - plus they understand all the editing and uploading techniques. Kevin Daum Keynoting Fortune Leadership Summit -- and for those attending the Summit next week, you'll learn from Kevin directly. And Bettina will be there with her own crew filming the Summit - and showing how her team is able to turnaround a video of an event in 24 hours. She'll shoot footage Tuesday and we'll show her finished product Wednesday.

Biggest Leadership Challenges; Leadership Mash-up; Five Gurus, Pat Lencioni Online

"...keeping you great" HEADLINES: Challenge of Promoting from Within -- Scott Weiss's insightful blog post last week hits right at one of the toughest challenges in leading a growing firm - do you promote from within or bring in outside talent. He notes, "The key to all of it (promoting from within) is making sure that there's a sponsoring executive that is willing to spend a boatload of time coaching the budding leader." He then outlines four suggestions - please take four minutes to scan through his post where he has the four suggestions bulleted. Great Leadership Training -- one of Weiss' suggestions: "It helps to have some great leadership training. In my experience, most leadership training courses suck. You get two hours of useful information spread out over two weeks of mind-numbing presentations. We put together a rapid fire, two-day course and had our leadership team teach it. Interviewing, performance reviews, 1:1s, career planning, holding staff meetings, etc. We all got together and boiled down the best practices for all the important areas into short, punchy presentations/role plays. Every new manager went through it to give them some tools that were culturally consistent with what we were doing." Gazelles is following up and structuring a practical leadership course in addition to the Rockefeller Habits. To this point: Leadership Mash-up: Five Gurus -- in another "it takes a village of thought leaders" series, here's the latest Growth Guy syndicated column (May) featuring my mash-up for Leadership - a quick summary of the five gurus whose combined ideas will get you 90% of all the leadership tools you need. Master these techniques and you're ahead of 99% of the rest of the leaders. Take five minutes and scan through the column. The Five Gurus/Topics -- Everything in business begins and ends with leadership. And because it's a complex topic, no one expert (no matter what they say) has a complete formula for what makes a better leader - and it's no time for amateur hour when it comes to leadership or any topic. Here are the five: Pat Lencioni - his Five Dysfunctions of a Team framework is vital to maintaining a healthy leadership team. His latest book The Advantage fills in the gaps. Jim Kouzes & Barry Posner - their Leadership Challenge framework is celebrating its 25th anniversary. No one has come close to a better overall model for leadership action. Brad & Geoff Smart - recruiting and hiring the right talent IS the most important skill a leader must possess. Their Topgrading methods deliver a 90% success rate. Victoria Medvec - the second most important skill is negotiations. Her High Stakes Negotiation methodology gets the outcomes you want while building key relationships. Marshall Goldsmith - in the end, it's about getting out of our own way and knowing thyself. In turn, "self-help" is impossible. His peer coaching process is the very best way to improve as a leader - to Weiss's point about a sponsoring executive. Pat Lencioni Online -- based on his latest book, we produced a one-hour online seminar with Pat Lencioni, released yesterday. Like a book-of-the-month club, commit your leadership team (and mid-managers) to viewing one online seminar each month and use it as a platform to discuss and support each other in leadership development.

Tony Hsieh's Best Advice; Five Keys to Landing Big Clients; Hangover Heaven

"...out-learning the competition" HEADLINES: (another short insight - holiday in Spain*)   I spoke to a group of CEOs and told them they needed to attend a Rockefeller Habits workshop and if they did not love it I would pay for their attendance!   Dwight Cooper, co-founder, PPR Healthcare Staffing, G200 member Landing the Big Fish -- my latest FORTUNE "Venture" column is on the newsstands and online. Take five minutes and check out five ways to land (and keep) business with the FORTUNE 500. Thanks to Jimmy Spradley, CEO of Standard Functional Food Groups; Edward Sullivan, founder of Aria Systems; George Gendron, Board Member of Competitive Inner City; Ryan O'Hara, Dyn (check out their video in the article); and David Rich, CEO of ICC/Decision Services (who is moving his family to Barcelona for a year!) for sharing their best practices. -- speaking of big fish, BofA has signed on as the FORTUNE Premier Sponsor for our upcoming Leadership Summit in Atlanta with Jim Collins. With a record audience of 675 CEOs and executives of leading growth firms, it will be an energizing event - "more practical ideas per hour than any other executive educational event." See you May 15 - 16. Tony Hsieh's (Zappos) Best Advice Ever -- take 30 seconds and read about the best advice Tony ever received - hint, build relationships for relationship sake. And under Tony's accomplishments: in March, Zappos set the Guinness world record for Most Simultaneous High Fives! I love this short feature in FORTUNE. Hangover Help -- OK, if you won't do it for your health, do it for your hangover. A doctor in Las Vegas has launched a mobile clinic called Hangover Heaven, administering IV vitamins (C, B, etc) to help people more rapidly recover from a rough night out. One of the key ingredients is glutathione, something I receive via IV every few months. It pumps in 10,000 times more electrons than Vit C and is critical for revitalizing the liver - the equivalent of the oil filter for your body. FYI, the 2013 Growth Summit is heading back to Las Vegas (2012 in Phoenix). I'll look into having the clinic pull up to our JW Marriott for medicinal purposes! Thanks to Adrian Low in NZ for pointing me to this new service. 3rd May -- Des Moines, Milwaukee, Philadelphia Rockefeller Habits workshops -- with Austin May 9 - more cities listed below. Over 40,000 executives have benefited. 15th May -- Jim Collins beamed to Qatar, Dubai, Mumbai, Munich, Amsterdam, Barcelona, London, Cambridge, and Mexico City for local "Growth Summits". *It's always a holiday in Spain!

The Lost Tapes; Steve Jobs' Big Lesson; PayPal Founder; Registration Reopened

"...keeping you great" HEADLINES: (short insight - swamped in India this week) PayPal Founder on Creative Monopolies -- Peter Thiel, PayPal founder and early investor in Facebook, is teaching in the Stanford Computer Science Department. In this excellent David Brooks' NY Times Op-Ed piece (which includes a link to Thiel's course notes!), Thiel argues "we often shouldn't seek to be really good competitors. We should seek to be really good monopolists. Instead of being slightly better than everybody else in a crowded and established field, it's often more valuable to create a new market and totally dominate it. The profit margins are much bigger, and the value to society is often bigger, too." I couldn't agree more. Take two minutes and read at least the first half of this short column. Steve Jobs: The Lost Tapes -- Brent Schlender (I love how he writes) discovers a bunch of lost interview tapes with Steve Jobs and pens a highly insightful FastCompany article about the lessons Steve Jobs learned during what people have called his "wilderness years" - the time between when he was fired from Apple and when he took back the reins. This article is going to take you a good ten minutes to read, so take that needed break between a couple grueling 90 minute sessions on your computer and dive in. Learned Radical Focus -- one of the most important lessons Steve learned, from his time with Pixar, was the power of just working on one major project at a time. He took the lessons from film production and applied them to the creation of the iPod, iPhone, iPad, and the retail store - the idea that you bring a diverse team of skills together for a set period of time and you accomplish just one big thing - like you do when creating an award winning animation. Tom Peters was the first to suggest that Hollywood was the best model for how all work would be best accomplished in the future - and he's absolutely right! Favorite Paragraph -- for those who just can't spare the time to read the article, Schlender notes about the wilderness years "The lessons are powerful: Jobs matured as a manager and a boss; learned how to make the most of partnerships; found a way to turn his native stubbornness into a productive perseverance. He became a corporate architect, coming to appreciate the scaffolding of a business just as much as the skeletons of real buildings, which always fascinated him. He mastered the art of negotiation by immersing himself in Hollywood, and learned how to successfully manage creative talent, namely the artists at Pixar. Perhaps most important, he developed an astonishing adaptability that was critical to the hit-after-hit-after-hit climb of Apple's last decade. All this, during a time many remember as his most disappointing. Favorite Sentence -- "Of the three companies Jobs helped create, Pixar was the purest corporate and organizational expression of his nature. If NeXT was a travail of spite and malice, Pixar was a labor of love." I also liked the insights about incentive structures Steve learned - worth reading the article just to glean these ideas - and how Brent outlines the biggest mistakes Jobs made along the way. Thanks to Paul Dunn, founder of Buy1Give1 (a cool website for doing micro-giving activities - over 10 million tracked) for pointing me to this important article. Registration Reopened and the Group Room Rate extended for the FORTUNE Leadership Summit - it's why we enjoy working with Marriott. They have extended our $169 group room rate until this Friday, April 27, and arranged for a larger ballroom (now expecting over 700!) so we can clear our extensive waitlist and admit a few more.

Three Key Questions; City Bin Theme; India Tour; Hotel Cut-off

"...keeping you great" HEADLINES: Mumbai 25th, Bangalore 26th -- I'll be leading one-day workshops in India next week, more below...but first Cut-off for Group Rate Tomorrow -- those signed-up for the FORTUNE Leadership Summit have until tomorrow, April 20, to book hotel rooms at the group rate of $169 - here's a link for details Sh*tCan It -- OK, so this isn't exactly the name of Galway-based The City Bin Co.'s latest theme. They've chosen the more appropriate title "Bin It", but the idea is the same. Notes CEO Gene Browne, "Most of the time we're adding to our subordinates workload with new initiatives, ideas etc. (recently I discovered that my assistant was updating a spread sheet each morning just as I asked her to do three years ago. The only problem is that I stopped needing it two years ago!). Most of the time, particularly in service businesses, employees just assume someone somewhere requires the output of what they are doing." Here's the visual they are using for the theme" Three Key Questions -- continues Browne, "Our theme seeks to root out these wasteful activities. They're usually small but when added up across the firm they waste a lot of time, energy, money or space. Now we are rewarding employees to eliminate activities that waste time, money, energy or space. Basically there are three criteria: Question every activity you do that involves time, energy, money or space. Ask yourself, who would be negatively impacted if you weren't doing this? If the answer is nobody, then stop doing it." Fun Rewards -- wraps-up Browne, "They fill out a 3x5 card and hand it to their manager for immediate approval or an explanation of why it's needed. We reward based on the number of approved cards. 5 = Two Cinema Tickets. 10 = Shopping Voucher, 15 = Meal for Two etc. It's been a great success so far. We will make this theme a permanent feature going forward." There is no better time to start spring (or fall for our Southern friends) cleaning. If you haven't picked a theme for April - June, shamelessly steal The City Bin's. Andreessen on Taxes -- in the what-its-worth category, with all the talk about taxes and the Buffett Rule this week in the US, I thought VC Marc Andreessen, founder of Netscape (and Ben Horowitz's partner), had the most rational thoughts on the matter (because I agree with him!).

Freedom & Fun; Attracting Talent; Top Industry Valuations; April 26 Webcast

"...keeping you great" HEADLINES: April 26 Complimentary Webcast -- 1pm ET, focus on "KPIs that Link Strategy and Execution - more details below, but first... FORTUNE Stories Needed - hiring is heating up, so my next Fortune column is seeking tips on recruiting, attracting, and keeping talent - any best practices? More details below, but second... Seattle, Denver, Milwaukee, Philly - these are some of the many locations of upcoming 1-day Rockefeller Habits workshops starting next week - here's a list of locations and dates (and listed below under EDUCATION). $85 Million Increase in EBITDA - Peter Whiting, Chairman of the Board and CEO of PTC Alliance, emailed "10 years ago I took my senior team to one of your seminars. At the time we were struggling to turn round a technically insolvent business with a very messy ownership structure, $156 million of debt and around $20 million of EBITDA ($7 million the day I took over the company). Today we have two shareholders including myself, no debt and $92 million of EBITDA. In many ways I trace our success back to that one seminar." Real long-term outcomes are achieved attending the Rockefeller Habits workshop. 5 Time Winner - Notes Greg Diamond, President of Bethesda-based Clovis , "Over the last 5 years I have run Clovis based on the principles of rhythm and alignment I learned by attending multiple Rockefeller Habits workshops. We continually grade ourselves using the best practices checklist and are still striving to perfect the system. Between 2006 and 2011 Clovis was recognized five times as an Inc500 fastest growing company (Hall of Famer now) and five times by SmartCEO Fast 50 -- and I give the credit to The Rockefeller Habits." Our most successful clients attend workshops multiple times. Top Industry Valuations - continues Diamond, "In April of 2011 we completed a private equity transaction and one of the key reasons our deal was at the top of industry multiples was our accountability matrix and quarterly planning concepts that supported our 30%+ year over year growth through the deepest recession we have seen since the great depression. I have since informally evangelized the book to no less than 10 CEO's in my network and they love what they have read and are implementing various components of the Rockefeller Habits systems." Our clients consistently achieve top industry valuations using the Rockefeller Habits. Increased Freedom and Fun - notes Kim McConnell, co-founder of Canada-based AdFarm, "I am pleased to report that I have 'graduated' from running the day-to-day operations of our agency (thanks in part to the great business advise that I have received from Gazelles over the years) and today I get to play every day --- I made this decision when I turned 50 and it is a wonderful place to be. I still have an office and connection to the agency, work on special client and agency projects I agree to accept, and have the opportunity to mentor three growing entrepreneurial businesses and a number of younger AdFarmers. Life is really great." Routine sets you free - and this is what the Rockefeller Habits achieve for leaders like Kim. Speed Team Implementation - Gene Towle, Managing Partner of Mexico-based Softec, shared "I was frustrated that I would have to translate all the material so my team at Softec could really benefit from it. I applied some of the concepts but was limited as far as getting my group (who speaks little English) on board with the presentations and written material. I was very excited to meet Alnoor (Gazelles coach in Mexico) and find out that the Gazelles program is available in Spanish in Mexico. Alnoor did a spectacular job in helping our company get back on track using the methodology of the Rockefeller Habits workshop. Softec is in need of a transformation, as our primary market, housing, is in a serious crisis." Implementation is magnitudes faster and easier if you get your team to a workshop. Sign-up -- Most Important Day For Your Company - I receive dozens of notes each month from leaders of growth firms attesting to the impact of bringing their team to a Rockefeller Habits workshop - something we've been offering for over 15 years. It wouldn't survive if it didn't positively impact companies. Attend (or re-attend) a Rockefeller Habits workshop this spring April 26 Webcast -- The best companies track their strategy weekly and make critical adjustments faster than their competitors. Join Patrick Thean, CEO of Gazelles Systems, for a free webcast on April 26th @ 1:00 ET. The Most Important KPI's to Drive Your Strategy Faster Than Your Competition (for companies with at least $10M in annual revenue). You will learn about the right KPI's you need to track to make sure you are executing on your strategy weekly. Executing on your strategy is not an event (gathering once or twice a year), it is a process. FORTUNE Stories Needed - The next topic I'll be tackling is how to attract top talent. It looks like hiring is heating up, so there will be more competition for great people. Have you changed the way you handle vetting and interviewing candidates by tapping into technological innovations? What does your company do to keep talent in the pipeline, so you know whom to contact when you have an opening? Where do you look for talent? Do you use social networks like LinkedIn to find people? If so, how do you use them? And once you find candidates, what interview strategies are most successful for you? What do you have to offer the very best candidates these days to get them to come on board? Email me at vharnish@gazelles.com.

 

Reverse Innovation; Gatorade's Real Back Story; Mike Maddock; Favorite Paragraph

"...out-innovate the competition" HEADLINES: (32 seats left for the Fortune Leadership Summit)   You can't read the label when you are sitting inside the jar.   Mike Maddock, Free the Idea Monkey Reinvention: The New Reality -- my April Growth Guy syndicated column is published, but first... Free the Idea Monkey -- Mike Maddock's one-hour online seminar outlining practical ways to unleash innovation in all departments in your firm is available (100% money back - no risk to watch), but second... Huge Opportunity for Growth Firms -- a groundbreaking book is being released today entitled Reverse Innovation: Create Far from Home, Win Everywhere by Vijay Govindarajan and Chris Trimble. Both profs at Dartmouth, Vijay served as GE's first Professor in Residence and Chief Innovation Consultant. Vijay sent me an advance copy to preview and I immediately booked him to keynote our fall Growth Summit. Reverse Innovation is exactly how growth firms compete with the giants. Here's a link to a website describing the book in detail. Gatorade was a Reverse Innovation -- get a copy of the book and go right to the Introduction and read the opening story about Gatorade. Yes, it was formulated by doctors associated with the University of Florida "Gaters" football team, but they found the formula in a British medical journal that documented a centuries-old treatment used in Bangladesh to rehydrate patients suffering from cholera. Next read in the Introduction the sidebar story of Mahindra and Mahindra's success against Deere tractor. Book club members will get the book early next week. Most Important Paragraph -- my favorite paragraph in Vijay's book "GE was playing a traditional market-share game in India, China, and other developing nations. The company was trying to sell lightly modified global products into markets that instead needed fresh ideas -- breakthrough innovations engineered for local realities. Consequently, it was my opinion that if GE expected to tap into these trillion-dollar opportunities in a significant way, it needed to play a market-development game, not a market-share game." Concluded Jeff Immelt, CEO of GE "For GE to win in the U.S., it must win in India and China." Harvest Innovation from Emerging Countries -- in reality, most large firms will struggle with reverse innovation (Vijay and Chris have contributed a new biz term). This provides a huge opening for growth firms to beat them to the punch. Book a trip to India (I'll be there the week of April 23) and explore how emerging market solutions might be brought back to your own markets. In turn, figure out how you would deliver your products and services to a market where you have ten people who can spend a dollar vs. one person who can spend 10 dollars (another favorite line from the book) - then bring those solutions to the developed world and crush your competition. Two Books Featured -- my latest Growth Guy column (750 words) highlights both Vijay's Reverse Innovation and Mike Maddock's Free the Idea Monkey books. Take two minutes to read the short column for some practical tips from both books (three guiding principles of Reverse Innovation and three strategies for preventing innovation myopia) - and how Gazelles has already benefited from reverse innovation ourselves. This is your most efficient overview of these important books. Innovation: Quarterly Theme -- if you're struggling for a theme this quarter, have everyone in your firm execute one innovation that will make what they do better, faster, or cheaper. Watch Mike's online seminar (his firm is one of the G200 participating companies as well); choose Reverse Innovation for your book-of-the month; then ignite everyone's imaginations and see what they come up with. Use the guiding principles and strategies outlined in my column. Get the innovation train running full steam inside your firm in 2012 and meet Mike at the Leadership Summit and Vijay at the Growth Summit.

80 Seats Left; Saving Massive Amounts of Time; Four Short Interviews; EO Ft Worth

"...keeping you great" HEADLINES:   Just 80 Seats Left - "You deliver more value per $ than anyone else in the business!" notes YPOer Henry McGovern, founder/CEO of AmRest (billion dollar restaurant chain). He'll once again have his team, from Poland and the US, at the FORTUNE Leadership Summmit - will you? More below...but first:   Saving Massive Amounts of Time - my own team at Gazelles, experiencing overload, huddled and reviewed three critical rules:   Everyone must set aside one 90-minute uninterrupted session/day to focus on one big thing (this doesn't mean catching up on email); two 90-minute focused sessions per day for our head of operations (others must protect her); and as CEO I must get three 90-minute focused sessions per day. No problem-solving without getting ALL the affected parties on the phone - and in most cases, many of the effected parties are on our Monday calls. If key people are missing (like a supplier), invite them to participate for a few minutes on the call. It drives me nuts (not a far drive!) when people try to solve problems via email over days and weeks! No long emails - and only one subject per email with the subject line matching the topic. It also drives me crazy when the email topic changes but people are too lazy to update the subject line! And, again, no problem solving using email, just confirmation of decisions. In addition, taking a page from Jim Collins, we must always ask a "who" question first i.e. "who already has the solution so we don't have to waste time figuring it out ourselves." Four Practical Tips - please take 2 - 4 minutes to watch each of four Short Interviews I conducted at our recent Growth Summit in Sydney. Jim Collins also beamed in for two hours and delivered a powerful four-part framework for thriving in turbulent times - what he'll share in Atlanta. The four quick interviews:   Fred Reichheld - author of the Ultimate Question 2.0, discusses an important name change - NPS doesn't just stand for Net Promoter Score anymore! Remain current on the latest biz lingo. And tune-in to Fred's latest one-hour Growth Institute Online Seminaras well Jack Daly - he's well-known for his sales and sales management training, but what is the third critical ingredient to high performance sales teams? Jack explains in his short interview. Halley Bock -- as president and CEO of Fierce Inc., Halley contributes a very insightful idea - that "conversation is the workhorse of organizations" - and that conversations drive relationships which drive culture. Lucy Cornell -- designated LinkLater Voice Coach describes the four keys to commanding more attention and power when you voice your thoughts in any situation. You have a voice; learn to use it properly. Thank you to our Australian partner, The Growth Faculty , for co-hosting a first class Growth Summit with Gazelles.   Changing Face of Massive Wealth - Wall Street isn't the best way to a billion. NY Time's Dealbook Spring Edition Spring Edition has some interesting articles today, including how the heirs to old money are plunging into high tech.   Missing Rhythm - and this recent note from Tymen Selman, serial entrepreneur "I think it's incredible what the Rockefeller Habits and EO have done for me. I started as an entrepreneur in 2001 with a software company. If I look back, it's so clear that one key element that was missing was the meeting rhythm. I basically had all these engineers running around but now clue what they were doing. When I started Guidion in 2006, we did it completely different."   Zero to ?25 Million - continues Selman, "We used the one-page strategic plan, the meeting rhythm, everything. The company has grown to Euro 25MM in sales in five years with strong double digit net profit margins. I'm not working in the company on a day to day basis now but the team is still doing the daily huddles, the rocks, the one page plan etc. and is still growing like crazy."   Latest Venture - Selman concludes, "I started another company two years ago and with a tiny team we again use all the stuff. In the photo below you see a picture from my desk here in Spain with the one page plan in the back. Underneath the left computer screen you see a small piece of paper glued to the screen. Those are the five annual goals. Just looking at it every day makes it almost inevitable that they will be met. The team in Amsterdam has it as well and we refer to it at least weekly. Living here in Spain now, I can say its life changing stuff!" New EO Chapter - speaking of the power of EO, Jeremy Brandt, founder of X5 Ventures, is heading up the launch of a new EO chapter in Fort Worth, TX. Contact Jeremy and visit their new chapter website. Join Henry's Team in Atlanta -- "More practical ideas per hour than any other executive education program, guaranteed." We've had several clients, including Henry McGovern, attend competitive events and confirm we score at least 3:1 on this critical practical idea metric. And we already have the largest audience ever for the FORTUNE leadership Summit, May 15 - 16, Atlanta. Over a dozen top business books represented by our faculty -- Jim Collins, Peter Diamandis, Jim Stengel, Brad Hams, Brian Souza, and Kevin Daum. "Outlearn the competition" and grab the last remaining seats for your team.