The Agile Scaleup

Elvis Lives

"...keeping you great" Ten Minutes with the Growth Guy

HEADLINES:

Jack Welch's advice to CEOs -- Mark Lancaster, CEO of Employment Group, shared with me some advice from Jack Welch, the retired CEO of GE. When asked if he had any final advice for CEOs, Welch said "you're the last person to know!" This is why it's SO critical for top executives to proactively talk to customers and employees on a weekly basis. BTW, Mark also just sent me the latest photo from his 4th Quarter "Rockin" theme -- his team dressed as Elvis! I'm hoping they'll repeat their performance in Vegas next week at the Summit!

People Formula -- with 100 corporate employees and 350 self employed drivers, Michael Caito, CEO of Restaurant on the Run, has a formula for his people process: job description (accountabilities, metrics, and competencies) + Topgrading + On-Boarding (90 day training plan, 90 day goals, mentor team) + performance review + development plan!

Caito's Corporate U -- Michael's firm has also recently launched a corporate university which contains the curriculum that drives the development plans of his people. It especially focuses on leadership development.

Virtual Bench delivers Director of People -- using the Topgrading process for building a "virtual bench" Caito had in his talent pipeline for 2 years Robin McNatt, who is his new Director of People. In charge of Business Development for Executive Education at the University of California Irvine, when Caito was finally able to hire this position, he contacted Robin to apply. She not only applied but referred in other applicants. Going through an exhaustive Topgrading process Robin ended up being their clear cut favorite.

Planning to hire someone in the next 12 months? Once-a-year Geoff Smart leads a one-day Topgrading public workshop -- November 6 in Denver -- why Denver? That's where he lives. It's the best way for us to get a day out of his busy schedule. Here's a link to the workshop.

313 CEOs -- Geoff Smart, at his workshop, is going to share information from his two year "StreetSmart Hiring Study" -- see detailed information about this study which included analyzing the performance of 313 CEOs in attracting and retaining A-Players under DETAILS below.

Keep them fed -- Mike Faith, CEO & President of Headsets.com, followed up my earlier Insight about firms serving employees breakfast noting "We've had organic fruit and bagels delivered for about 7 years now, for all our staff to enjoy. We use www.fruitguys.com -- they're making the food delivery model work."

$2k in fruit per week -- Rob Robson, CEO of Australia's only national freshcut provider (ready to eat fresh salads, stirfry, watermelons, mangoes, etc) OneHarvest shared with me during my Rockefeller Habits tour down under last week that he employs roughly 600, many of whom are Samoans battling a high incident rate of diabetes. To deal with this challenge, he began providing unlimited fresh fruit for his employees to eat. The added benefit -- they won't eat bad, aging fruit, which reinforces the need for them to produce high quality food products for their own customers! Win-Win.

DETAILS:

• ghSMART has been working on the "StreetSmart Hiring Study" for 2 years. We hope you will find it extremely valuable and entertaining. It is the largest study ever done to identify a solution to every manager's #1 problem-unsuccessful hiring, an affliction which we call "hiringitis."
• Whether you are a private equity investor, CEO of a Fortune 500 company, or front line manager, you or somebody you manage is suffering from hiringitis. It is costing you career and financial success.
 
• We interviewed over 20 billionaires (the most billionaires we ever interviewed for one study), over a dozen Fortune 500 CEOs, about 30 private equity investors, and completed a project with a University of Chicago research team which analyzed the performance of 313 CEOs-all to find out how to dramatically improve your ability to hire or invest in A Players. How to find them? How to screen for them? How to pick out an A Player out of a pool of similar-looking candidates? How to seal the deal? The stories, advice and actionable insights are extremely powerful.
 
• Some early highlights of the study are featured for you in this  article, which we published in the May 28, 2007 issue of Buyouts magazine.
 
• The entire "StreetSmart Hiring Study" is now for sale. It is $5k for an enterprise license of the study to circulate to your companies. 100% satisfaction guaranteed. As an owner of this StreetSmart Hiring Study, you will automatically receive early release copies of our forthcoming book StreetSmart Hiring: A Solution to Every Manager's #1 Problem when it launches in 2008. Be the first person on your block to benefit from the insights in this Study and book, and work to solve your #1 problem affecting your career and financial success. Randy Street is taking orders now for the "StreetSmart Hiring Study" and/or pre-orders of our book at [email protected]. Thank you!

Fantastic Planning Idea

"...keeping you great" Ten Minutes with the Growth Guy

HEADLINES:

Use your customers' board rooms for quarterly/annual planning -- Elton Swarts, Executive Director of Western Australia Business News, noted in an email to me this week "we have just booked our next two quarterly management team off sites in the boardrooms of two of WA Business News' key clients and invited them to join us for lunch when we break bread. This beats sitting in a hotel room by a country mile, the client is all enthusiastic and the cost to us is half (we organize the catering)...the idea was born from your repeated push for us to talk to our customers." This is an idea many of you can utilize. Gazelles did the same for our planning session, using the board room of a Rockefeller Habits "fan" in Atlanta.

Priorities listed on every door! -- Jack Williams, President of Stone Mountain, GA-based The SURVIS Group, sent me some photos of the small combination cork and white boards his 30 staff have mounted on their doors for listing their weekly priorities. He also included pictures of the enlarged copy of two pages from the "Overview" section in my book that they have displayed in their main conference room -- a way to remind everyone of the three "Rockefeller Habits" they've been practicing since June of this year. Here's a link to the photos.

"Change" requires "Stability" -- many of you have heard me quote Robert "Jake" Jacobs on this point. This is what setting weekly priorities is doing for The SURVIS Group. Notes Jack Williams "we've been in the process of transitioning from being a staffing firm that focused exclusively in the telecommunciations industry (given all the consolidation in this sector) to an IT Staffing business. As we diversified, we also began to makes changes in our Associate team based on the new skill sets required for IT. Some of these new Associates were young with limited business experience."
   
Short term laser focus -- continues Williams "It was obvious that we knew what we wanted to do and where we wanted to go but there was so much on our to do list that it seemed we were "shooting up there amongst them" to quote the famous Southern comedian Jerry Clower. We used this tool to create a short term laser focus on what needed to be done this week and only this week. We established 90 day goals as well and the weekly priorities needed to be in alignment with the quarterly priorities which were published and posted in our "gathering room"."
   
Priorities with "teeth" -- In the beginning, Williams had to make sure that everyone listed priorities that had teeth instead of some "warm and fuzzy" activities that would not contribute to the overall transition effort. Explains Williams "as we continued, getting relevant priorities was no longer an issue and people began to see the value of the process. We then asked each person to list one of those priorities as a Commitment. That item was going to get completed regardless of what occurred. That began to allow our Associates to really incorporate the concept of tackling the one item each week that will have the most impact on the business or their specific area of responsibility."
   
Focusing tool -- concludes Williams "this focusing tool has been extremely helpful. It's kept our team focused on the important and short term things that we need to accomplish without getting caught up with some of the other "noise" that surrounds all businesses. We are making steady progress in our transition steps and hope to have a breakout year in 2008 as we come out of our transition mode the last half of 2007. It's really great to see our Associates mark off the items on their list after they've completed them. It's been a great tool for our newer less experienced Associates as well to help them understand the discipline needed to be successful."

Where All the VCs Will Be

"...keeping you great" Ten Minutes with the Growth Guy

HEADLINES:

Looking for stories -- Adriana Gardella, Editor of FORTUNE Small Business magazine, is working on a story about advisory boards and is looking for companies that have come up with innovative ways to woo/attract/keep board members -- and examples where the right/wrong board member saved/ruined their company! Email her at [email protected]. The article I wrote on Advisory Boards is reprinted below under DETAILS, including a sure-fire way of hooking the best to volunteer.

Year for India -- Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO) is hosting its Global University in New Delhi, India February 6 -- 10, 2008; FORTUNE Magazine is hosting its annual FORTUNE Global Forum in New Delhi October 29 -- 31, 2007; and I'll be keynoting The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE)-Indian School of Business (ISB) "Connect" conference in Hyderbad November 14 -- 16, 2007. Three great events that should bring you to India!

Why India Can Beat China -- John Elliott, FORTUNE's India correspondent, has an excellent blog. I particularly enjoyed his recent blog on why India can beat China. Here's a link and consider adding him to your list of blogs you follow.

FORTUNE's new India page -- here's a link which includes a list of the Indian firms that made the Global 500 list. There are several outstanding business stories including the battle between Pizza Hut and Domino's; the challenge of infrastructure in India; and an article on Infosys U -- what they call the Taj Mahal of corporate training centers. Take five minutes and poke around on the site.

One of the most powerful business organizations on the planet is The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE). I'm honored they've invited me to keynote this annual conference held in conjunction with the largest graduate school of business in all of Asia -- the Indian School of Business. Here's a link to their conference.  Most of the VCs investing in India will be attending.

Rockefeller Habits Mumbai, India -- November 15 I'll also be leading a one-day workshop in India hosted by our partners Knowledge Capital. Here's a link to the event  -- I hope to see many of you in India over this next year! (and in Las Vegas Oct 23 -- 24!!)