The Agile Scaleup

Meet Marshall Goldsmith; Top Ten Articles; New Favorite Photo; Mojo

  "...keeping you great"

HEADLINES: 

Marshall Goldsmith is Keynoting!! Considered one of the top ten executive coaches in the world (probably number 1), I'm so excited that Goldsmith agreed this week to keynote our Fortune Leadership Summit May 10 - 11, Houston, TX. Clients of Goldsmith include Alan Mulally, CEO of Ford, and over 120 other CEOs and executives of Fortune 500 companies. You'll be spending time with one of the true giants of executive development.

What Got You Here Won't Get You There -- this is the title of Goldsmith's huge #1 bestseller, named the Best Business Book the year it was released. Subtitled "How Successful People Become Even More Successful", Goldsmith highlights 20 bad habits that can derail an already accomplished executive -- exactly the message we want to highlight at our first Fortune Leadership Summit.

Mojo: How to Get It, How To Keep It, How to Get It Back If You Lose It -- this is the title of Goldsmith's latest book. Leaders of growth firms intuitively understand the importance of gaining and maintaining momentum. It's the force that helps you bust through the barriers that present themselves as you aim to dominate your niche. Not enough attention is given this important intangible in business.

Top Ten Articles -- take four minutes and choose one of Goldsmith's top ten articles and read it this week. I chose Goldsmith's "Try Feedforward Instead of Feedback" and plan to use it with my team during our January 10 planning session. Here's a link to his top ten articles.

3% of Payroll -- looking to prepay some expenses before the end of the year? Planning to bring your team to hear Goldsmith at the Leadership (May 10 - 11) and attend the Growth (Oct 25 - 26) Summits and want to get great seats (G200 and 10k members are seated upfront) while saving over $700 per seat? For $10,000 ("great" companies budget 3%-5% of someone's salary on executive education), you can pre-purchase 8 seats to any of our future Summits - this locks in the best price per seat of $1250 vs. the single price at $1995 and the 4 or more at $1495. And there's no time limit -- you can use one seat per year, we don't care!! And the return is better than you'll get from banks! Here's a link to sign-up.

CEO's Family World Tour -- two weeks ago, Larry Weinberg, CEO of BOWA, the award-winning remodeler I've highlighted many times, took off with his wife and two children for a 9 month trip around the world, starting in Panama with a visit to an orphanage. As Larry mentioned in one of his first blogs, they are taking this trip to "burst the McLean bubble" of privilege their children have lived in all their life -- for them to learn what it's like in the rest of the world. Here's a link to a photo Larry sent me as he tries to juggle coconuts.

My New Favorite Photo -- speaking of photos, Tijmen Bos, my new Dutch friend and Managing Partner of Amstel Valley, a European Business Accelerator for US Growth companies wanting to access the European market, sent me this photo. Never too young to start mastering the Rockefeller Habits!

CORRECTION -- there was no link to Pat Lencioni's excellent quarterly newsletter last week -- my apologies -- here's the link.

4 Trends; Wacky Practices; Tiger's New Coach; Real-Time Marketing

  "...keeping you great"

HEADLINES: 

Real-Time Marketing & PR -- the highest rated speaker, by far, at our latest Fortune Growth Summit was David Meerman Scott. His presentation is now available online for a nominal fee (full money back guarantee if not useful). Marketing is THE function to pump up for this next decade -- reacting in real time to current news about your clients, competitors, and marketplace is key to getting noticed. Gather your team around a computer, watch his presentation (again, if you attended the Summit), and plan your marketing strategy for 2011.

4 Trends Shaping the Decade -- my latest "Growth Guy" syndicated column is out, heavily influenced by a recent speech by Dr. Hermann Simon. Please take 3 minutes to consider 4 trends shaping the next decade: accelerating globalization; increased government intervention; ultra-low price or super luxury goods (middle is gone); and mesh businesses. In the article I suggest specific ways to apply these trends to your business right now! Might stimulate some thinking at your next strategic planning session (or at your weekly "council" meeting)

Importance of Wacky Practices -- Pat Lencioni, of Five Dysfunctions of a Team fame, puts out a quarterly email on a single topic. This quarter he shares how it's the simple, wacky, homey stuff of highly successful firms that puts them ahead of the competition -- stuff that is seen as "beneath the dignity" of others like singing a corporate song -- a perfect blocking strategy. Another great article to ponder as you prepare for 2011.

What Sean Foley is Teaching Tiger Woods -- Tiger Woods has a new (permanent?) coach after his previous coach, Hank Haney, resigned. So what is Sean Foley teaching Tiger? Here's the best article I found that lays out Foley's approach to golf and life. As Foley suggests, you can't just coach the "golfer" -- you have to coach the person, taking into account the impact of love, hate, and fear on performance -- something I've found is true when coaching leaders of growth firms. Do you have a coach for 2011?

5 Business Killers -- Thank You To...Jana Eggers, CEO of Spreadshirt; Stephen Shang, CEO of Falcon Containers; Kim McConnell, founder of AdFarm; Niraj Balasaria, CEO of Petron Pacific; and Brian Scudamore, CEO of 1-800-GOT-JUNK; for their contributions to my latest Fortune magazine column entitled "5 Business Killers." Please take three minutes to read if you didn't last week

Naysayers Converted -- and this kind note from Beth Miller, CEO of Atlanta-based Executive Velocity, "I just returned from a strategic planning session with a client and decided to use the one page strategic plan. The session was a huge success and we accomplished everything on the agenda in record time. There was one participant, a known naysayer, who even praised the process as well as a representative from a private equity firm who wants some of this portfolio companies to use the process. This is going to be my standard process moving forward." FYI, Beth used to be a personal client over a decade ago; now she's coaching other CEOs of growth firms

5 Business Killers; Best Monthly Management Meeting; Geneva and India on Fire

  "...keeping you great"

HEADLINES: 

Please Mark Your Calendar -- Fortune Growth Summit, October 25 - 26, 2011

5 Business Killers -- my latest Venture column in Fortune magazine is out on the newsstand where I describe 5 "stop doings" -- please take one minute to scan my list of the 5 business killers you should stop immediately.

Stop Eating Alone -- this is one of my 5 "stop doings" in the Fortune column and one of the best practices I've adopted this past year. Since moving to Spain, where the two hour lunch is standard practice, I have built deeper business, social, and political connections in Barcelona in one year than I did in ten years living and working in the DC area.

Geneva Is Hot -- notes the NY Times yesterday "Companies from Europe and the United States, and more recently, Asia, are being drawn to the area (Geneva) by low taxes, generous write-offs and labor laws that are more flexible than much of the rest of Continental Europe. Then there's the central location and, of course, all that fresh air." Locating in Europe puts you six time zones closer to the phenomenal growth opportunities in Asia. If interested, here's a link to the article.

India On Fire as Well -- with 8.9% annual growth so far in 2010 and a stock market that has over doubled the past 12 months, I'm hearing nothing but upbeat news from my audiences in India this week. 25% to 100% growth rates seem to be the norm as our regular clients describe "expanding into two more countries" and "adding 20 more locations" as if these are normal, everyday expectations. I was particularly excited to catch up with Ashiana Housing, one of 39 Indian companies named to the Forbes 200 list of Asian Companies Under a Billion.

7% of Management Compensation -- this is what Ashiana Housing, the 480 employee New Delhi-based housing construction firm, calculates they spend bringing all 70 managers from around India together for their monthly management meeting, but it has already paid off 10-fold. Launched in January, it was difficult for them to imagine getting 70 senior and middle managers to find a day each month, let alone, go to the expense of hosting a Friday evening and all day Saturday meeting. Yet, they trusted I knew what I was talking about and hosted the first meeting.

Revenues tripled -- at the first monthly meeting in January, designed to help senior management "pass down their DNA" to the middle managers, they tackled a huge issue collectively -- sales. The market for housing, even in India, had slowed down in 2009, so they wanted to boost business. The challenge wasn't getting visitors; it was their conversion rate into sales. So the 70 leaders tackled the issue for several hours. The big idea that emerged was creating a "wow factor" at each of their locations. In addition, they improved the customer service approach of the guards greeting potential customers and increased the number of signs directing customers to the sales and rental offices -- all activities that could be implemented immediately because they had complete buy-in from the start. The result? Monthly sales tripled two months later and have been high ever since.

Huge Time Savings -- Ashiana also hosts a show and tell session where a team from construction and a team from maintenance highlight a best practice from the previous month. In one case, their new Pune construction team had innovated a way to construct a kitchen in 6 -- 7 fewer days for slightly less money as well. Immediately, the construction teams at their five other locations implemented these best practices. Cutting down construction time by a week improves cash flow and speeds sales -- another big win providing big returns in their monthly investment.

Breaking Down Barriers -- pulling all 70 managers together has also helped forge stronger relationships across functions and business operations. For instance, legal now understands better some of the challenges maintenance faces. In turn, having all 70 together creates some positive peer pressure as each manager shares "their number" at the beginning of the meeting Friday evening. Just 7 monthly meetings later, 85% of the 70 have a main Key Performance Indicator that definitively measures whether they've had a successful month or not.

Specific Meeting Agenda: Ashiana Housing provides a perfect case study for why the monthly management meeting, bringing together all the senior and middle managers, is so powerful. Their agenda:

Friday

6:30 - 8:30pm -- After a round of Good News both personally and professionally, all managers share "their number." In addition, the owners (3 brothers), review the mission, vision, and values and update the team on key targets for the year.

8:30pm -- ? Dinner and drinks give the team some important social time. And the personal good news the managers shared earlier fuels a lot of the conversations creating bonds among the team members.

Saturday

8am - 10am -- All the managers share their issues from the previous month while the senior team is looking for patterns and trends among the issues. The main benefit, from the owners' perspective, is that it gives the managers a chance to vent and verbalize their challenges -- and often other managers have constructive solutions which are shared later through private conversations.

10:30am - 12:30pm -- After a tea break, two hours of training is conducted. Recent topics include delegation, email etiquette, and executive health (Vishal Gupta, one of the brothers, lost 5kg in weight as a result). In addition, they are starting to use Gazelles' one-hour online seminars.

1:30 - 2:00pm -- After lunch two 15 minute "show and tell" presentations are made, giving the managers practice with their presentation skills and the opportunity to share best practices.

2:00pm - 5pm -- Last, the team collectively tackles one or two huge issues, like the sales issue, allowing the senior team to tap into the ideas of the middle managers and to "model the way" in terms of industry knowledge and their approach to decision making. To wrap-up the meeting, they share a round of "one phrase closes" where each leader expresses their reaction to the management meeting.

This is How It's Done and Why -- congrats to Ashiana Housing for having the discipline and making the investment in a routine that will continue to propel them ahead of their competition.