The Agile Scaleup

Zuckerberg's Priorities; Elon Musk Vision; Bad Meeting Habits; India Tour; YPO Workshop

"...keeping you great" HEADLINES:   Road to London -- German-based Keller Sports has a "150-days-goal-theme" - more below, but first... Mark Zuckerberg's 2012 Priorities -- take 30 seconds and read this excerpt from FORTUNE's "Inside Facebook" cover story. If you ever think some of the most successful entrepreneurs in history don't understand the importance of priorities and focus and discipline, Zuckerberg's gathering under the "big white tent" provides another concrete example that these fundamentals remain important even in this new era of hyper-growth. We're approaching the start of another quarter for most firms. Does your team know the priorities for the next 90 days and for 2012? Elon Musk -- From PayPal to electric cars to rockets, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk wants his company, SpaceX, to build America's next manned spacecraft. Please set aside 14 minutes and watch this piece on Elon - and prepare to be hugely inspired (yes, showed this to my two oldest children as well). And watch how raw and real Elon speaks - and his ability to crank up the drama!! Thanks to Bill Becker, BDI, for sharing this video clip. "Bad Meeting" Survey Data: The daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual meeting rhythm is so important. And I love what Sam Parker and his team at GiveMore.com are creating to help leaders kick off and support their meetings. Their material has been helping leaders at some of the world's top organizations get people excited, committed, and focused on what needs to be done. They recently did a survey asking people 'What frustrates you most about meetings at work?' Over 1600 people responded. Click here for the Top 10 reasons people hate meetings and for tips on how to have better meetings. Print out the list and review at your next meeting! Seriously!! Crowdfund Investing Passes!! Entrepreneur Woodie Neiss and his team proved that with enough focus and persistence you can change the course of history! The JOBS bill passed and is just waiting for a final White House signature. Most significant to growth firms in the US, to quote this NY Times summary of the legislation, "through crowd-funding, or the sale of small amounts of stock to many individuals, companies could solicit equity investments through the Internet or elsewhere, raising up to $1 million annually without being required to register the shares for public trading with the Securities and Exchange Commission." This is how Ben and Jerry's funded their venture; now we all have an easier task both raising and investing in growth firms! Attention YPOers -- next YPO International "Making the Rockefeller Habits Rock" 2.5 day workshop is open for registration. Limited to the first 15 YPO executive teams. October 18 - 20, Dallas. Notes YPOer Dan Knox, GSM Systems "We have implemented many of your Habits from the YPO International workshop last October and they are truly transformative. It has genuinely changed the game for us." Road to London -- Jakob Keller, CEO of Keller Sports, sent me the following note "I want to share with you our current '150-days-goal-theme' named 'Road to London.' Together with our partner Mizuno (manufacturer of sporting goods) we have set up a competition and the winner will be rewarded with a free travel to London for the Olympic Games. Free tickets, free flights, no hotel costs etc.!" Running Track -- continues Keller "We have set up a running track (as running is one of our two sports) with small figures for every of our employees (currently 21). For each priority that has been fully reached (key = critical number of each priority) during the 1st and 2nd quarter 2012 they will earn 70 points (as we have max. 4 priorities per quarter => 560 points maximum in both quarters). We also wanted to stress the importance of our core values so we said that also the performance of "how much our employees live our core values" will be taken into account. For every core value we give a maximum of 20 points per quarter => 120 max per quarter = 240 max in both quarters. As we have the "core value evaluation for every employee as a normal part of our quarterly employee talk this doesn't cause more work." Raffle -- concludes Keller "for each 100 points an employee earns, they get a chance in the hat - this way all employees have a chance to win. The more points the more chances to win the trip - and along the way we'll award a series of minor prizes - lunches, movie tixs, dinner for two, tennis balls, etc. - then have the grand drawing for the trip - this keeps it exciting up to the very last minute." Rockefeller Habits in India -- I'm back in India with one-day workshops - Mumbai April 25; Bangalore April 26.

12 Greatest Entrepreneurs; The Advantage - Lencioni; Three People to Fire; Sad Story

"...keeping you great" HEADLINES:     "I wanted a happy culture. So I fired all the unhappy people."   A very successful CEO (who asked not to be named) Need Stories for Next Fortune Column -- topic is "recharging your batteries" - full request below, but first... The Advantage: Why Organizational Health Trumps Everything Else In Business - this is the book I've been waiting for from Patrick Lencioni, the famous author of eight of the greatest business fables of our time including his all time classic Five Dysfunctions of a Team. Released this week, Pat's latest isn't a fable but a comprehensive "how to" implementation guide that integrates the best of all his frameworks and shows why a healthy company trumps a smart company every time. Real world (sad) example at the end of the insights. Three Biases -- Skip right to the first two pages of Chapter 1 "The Case for Organization Health" and learn why you must Stoop to Greatness (love his opening story) and the three biases that get in the way of organizational health - the sophistication bias; the adrenaline bias; and the quantification bias. Then Pat jumps right into execution -- building trust, clarity, and accountability throughout the organization. Book Club members will be getting a copy next week. I know I've pounded you with three books in the last three weeks including Abundance last week (you did order it), but these are three important books out of the 8000 biz books expected to be published in 2012. These Three People Destroy Health -- The Victim, The Non-Believer, and the Know-It-All. Mike Maddock describes the three people you must fire immediately in the most tweeted column in BusinessWeek history. These three mindsets both destroy organizational health and innovation. Mike is the co-author of the first book we sent out three weeks ago, Free the Idea Monkey, and he contributed the opening quote above. Latest FORTUNE Column is Online and On the Newstands -- "5 Ways to Healthier Employees" - consider this important KPI (key performance indicator), Productivity/Healthcare Dollar. There is no question that healthcare costs are skyrocketing so we might as well get a huge bang from these increased bucks. What's sad is when all this expenditure on healthcare (really "sickcare") fails to support healthier, more productive employees. If it did, then these costs could be seen as an investment vs. an expense. Blunt the Blow -- please take three minutes and review the five ideas outlined in my FORTUNE Venture column for getting more outcomes from your healthcare dollar - whether it's finding a way to upgrade to a better healthcare plan for the same expenditure or focusing on improving the general health and energy of your employees. As business leaders, if we can increase productivity faster than healthcare costs, we'll be ahead of the competition - so it's time to become proactive. It's all about energy management vs. time management this century! 12 Greatest Entrepreneurs of Our Time --Steve Jobs and Bill Gates come in at #1 and #2. Take another 4 minutes and click through the dozen entrepreneurs FORTUNE chose - and the quick advice of each (highlighted at the front of each description, so in literally one minute you can click through and pick up some great tips) i.e.advice from Fred Smith, FedEx: Rely on "first level" managers. I couldn't agree more which is why the development of your managers is crucial!! Ideas: Recharge Your Batteries -- my next FORTUNE column will focus on how to recharge your battery. As a leader, it's important to step out of the fray at times and find ways to energize yourself, so you can bring fresh and innovative thinking to your business. Other than vacation, what are some of the most effective ways you have found to "reboot?" Are there particular activities or practices that help you? Materials you read or programs you watch or listen to? Events you attend? People you see? What is the most surprising and counter-intuitive way you have found to get energized? When you respond, please include some background info on your company, such as what it does, how long it has been in business and size (revenues if you can share) - [email protected]. Sad "Organizational Health" Story -- this brilliant local entrepreneur in Barcelona, whom I dearly love, has an equally brilliant #2. For reasons I don't fully understand, they have added to their inner circle a 3rd executive who thinks he's brilliant but has a "Topgrading" track record that fails to show any pattern of success worthy of the serious efforts of the organization. Worse, this "bad apple" has singlehandedly poisoned what was a healthy culture and infected it with politics, mistrust, and confusion - and the other two don't see it for some reason. That's the amazing thing to me. I'm curious how this will play out over the next six months (yes, I've shared my thoughts but maybe I need to be more forceful).

Peter Diamandis; Abundance; TED Presentation; Most Admired Companies

"...keeping you great" HEADLINES:   Peter Diamandis -- just signed on as the Celebrity CEO Keynote - FORTUNE Leadership Summit May 15 - 16, Atlanta. I'm stoked! Perfect Entrepreneurs' Book -- looking for great news about our future? Peter Diamandis, the famous founder and CEO of the X PRIZE Foundation and space entrepreneur, just co-authored a smash hit called Abundance: The Future is Better Than You Think which I devoured on my flight to Australia. This is exactly the research-based "juice" we need to counter all the negative news bombarding our brains. And his book is full of hundreds of concrete ideas that will impact every one of our industries and businesses - a credible look into the near future - stay informed! TED, SXSW, Dell -- Peter already has one of the most watched online presentations from the February TED conference - 16 minutes I plan to show my children during our Sunday family meeting. And I caught up with Peter between his South by Southwest conference keynote and a private presentation for Dell. With degrees in molecular biology and aerospace engineering from MIT and an M.D. from Harvard Medical School, Peter has some serious horsepower upstairs! He's the co-founder and Chairman of Singularity University with inventor Ray Kurzweil, and co-founder of International Space University, besides founding more than a dozen space and high tech companies. Four Emerging Forces -- co-authored with Steven Kotler (bestselling author and science journalist), Abundance explores how four emerging forces are combining to solve our globe's biggest problems. These four forces: Exponential Technologies (infinite computing, 3D printing, robotics, digital medicine, AI, sensors, synthetic biology) The DIY (Do-It-Yourself) Innovator - Burt Rutan, Chris Anderson, etc. The Technophilanthropist - think Bill Gates, Jeff Skoll, Pierre Omidyar, Elon Musk The Rising Billion - the new middle class and a huge market Surprisingly, many of the solutions already exist to solve our food, water, and energy challenges. And I didn't know we already have 3D printers that can "print" a small functioning kidney! Celebrity CEO Keynote -- anyway, I was so excited about his TED talk and book I immediately contacted Peter (thanks Joe Polish and Daniel Marcos for the hookup) this week to be the celebrity CEO keynote for the upcoming FORTUNE Leadership Summit with Jim Collins - and he agreed!!! I couldn't be more thrilled. Book club members will be getting TWO copies of his book (I want you to give one to a friend or family member) next week. Here's a link to order from Amazon for everyone else. Most Admired Companies -- FORTUNE published their latest list of the Most Admired Companies and Apple topped the list for the fifth straight year. Apple also set a new market cap record of $530 billion this week! Google, Amazon, Coca-Cola, IBM, FedEx, Berkshire Hathaway, Starbucks, P&G, and Southwest Airlines rounded out the top 10. Here's a link to the entire list. Crowdfund Investing Update -- now it's time to call YOUR Senator - looks like the JOBS bill is coming to the Senate floor for a vote. Your phone calls are making a difference - and several of you have reported back that the staff of the Senators seemed to be attentive. Lon Bason, Director of Sales, Mar-Key Media, sent this link to an excellent overview article in Forbes entitled "Why Crowdfund Investing Is The Path To Economic Recovery." And here's a crowdfunding 101 primer. Please make those calls.

Best Website; Ultimate Question; Good Profits; Australian Growth Summit Next Week

"...keeping you great" HEADLINES:   My Latest Favorite Company Website -- several of you thought my last choice wasn't so great, so let me suggest another website -- listed below, but first... The Ultimate Question 2.0 Online Seminar -- the Net Promoter Score (NPS) has become the global standard for measuring customer advocacy and satisfaction. Apple, GE, P&G and countless other major companies, in addition to many of the leading growth firms like Rackspace and Coastal Contacts, use Fred Reichheld's simple question and NPS formula to effectively manage their businesses. Fred, who keynoted our Growth Summit a few years ago, has significantly updated his book (lots more mid-market company examples - many Gazelles clients) and produced an online seminar for our Growth Institute just released today -- always a full money back guarantee if you don't find it useful. BOWA Scores a 97 -- an average company achieves a raw NPS score of 15; great companies in the mid-60s; and the elite, like Apple, who have customers rabid about their products, exceed 80. Topping the charts is DC-based BOWA, a Gazelles200 construction and remodeling firm that has won every award a company can achieve in their industry, including Remodeler of the Year for the entire US. They routinely receive back one-third of their surveys (vs. the typical 3% if it's a longer standard customer satisfaction survey) and have historically achieved a NPS of 93 and most recently they are averaging a 97 in 2012. Congrats to Josh Baker and Larry Weinberg, co-founders of BOWA. What is your score? Good Profits vs. Bad Profits -- one of several other powerful ideas of Reichheld is the notion of good profits vs. bad profits. Are some of your policies profitable but damaging to customer relationships? In an environment where customers have access to instant feedback from other customers, short term gains at the expense of customer loyalty and advocacy might harm the business long term. Southwest Airlines, shunning change fees, is one example of a leading firm opting for good profits over bad. Details in Calculating NPS -- with new navigation capabilities, Fred's 1 hour online presentation presents the details in how to gather the data, calculate your NPS, how to respond to the results, discusses good vs. bad profits, and highlights several case studies of mid-market growth firms implementing this important metric. Watch on your own (I often listen while doing email) or highlight parts of the presentation during a monthly management meeting. One online seminar per month will "keep you great" and out-learning the competition. Fred Reichheld in Australia -- FYI, Fred will be joining Jim Collins and Jack Daly as faculty in Sydney next Tuesday and Wednesday for our annual Growth Summit. Fred will keynote Tuesday and then lead a detailed workshop on Wednesday. Best Company Website -- back to BOWA, check out their new website, especially the simple, direct messaging guiding people through the remodeling process - and check out their video and blog highlights on the homepage. Working with Bob Bloom, former CEO of global ad agency Publicis and author of The Inside Advantage (who was the early ad guy behind Southwest, BMW, Perrier, etc), Josh, Larry, and their team worked hard to highlight their "inside advantage" over the competition. Why the Changes -- Notes Weinberg, "Although the old design was aesthetically pleasing and solicited numerous compliments, it did not speak to our inside advantage. It did not demonstrate what we did that was different and better than our competitors. Anyone visiting our site would see beautiful pictures and read incredible testimonials that would lead them to believe that we are a very good builder. But being a good builder is only a small part of our value proposition and not enough of a differentiator between us and everybody else. For BOWA, we add an incredible amount of value by being the single point of accountability throughout the whole process. Hence the front page of our website demonstrates to potential clients how we are "Your Guide through Every Step of the Remodeling Experience." And you can easily click through the various steps, proposed as questions, starting with "What is my first step?" to "What happens after the project?" Bob Bloom -- BTW, you access the insights of a million dollar marketing genius for a fraction of the price now that Bob is retired and consulting almost as a hobby! Here's his email address [email protected]. Clients rave about his work - I know, because they send me emails!

China's Biggest Challenge; No Contracts with Suppliers; Why Buffett Hopes Stock Underperforms

"...keeping you great" HEADLINES:   China's Biggest Challenge...at least for growth firms, is employee retention which is running around 6 months for many firms. I'm here with a large group of CEOs and executives of growth firms and have heard from almost everyone the challenges of recruiting and retaining talent. Some positions are rotating every three months; leaders are hiring anybody they can just to fill positions; and workers know they are in the driver's seat so they show up late for interviews, display a carefree attitude, and then leave jobs early to go on more interviews. And headhunters are running rampant. Apple's Factories Double Wages -- over the last 36 months, wages have more than doubled at the China Foxconn factories, from 900 yuan/month to 2200 yuan/month ($144 to $352). Since Apple has fatter margins than Dell or HP, this is putting huge price pressure on Apple's two competitors. And while Foxconn factories have thousands of potential employees lined up outside their recruiting center, other smaller factories have been suffering for labor since the beginning of the Chinese New Year. All of this craziness will put upward pressure on inflation globally since the US and other developed nations have relied on inexpensive Chinese goods to bolster the purchasing power of their citizens. 350+ Referrals and 100 Offers -- all with 10 days to spare. Take 4 minutes to read the latest "Growth Guy" column on Talent Acquisition and the case study of how Singapore-based QuEST recruited 100 engineers in the US in less than a month - and it was over the holidays! Almost every client I talk with is in a hiring mode, so take a page or two from QuEST and engage everyone in the firm to help out and resulting in more, and a wider range of, candidates. Notes Ajay Prabhu, COO, "One particularly interesting referral was a high-school science teacher, someone we might have never found." Looking for a career change, she had made it to the last round of interviews at the time of this writing. No Contracts with Suppliers -- Notes Reed Holden in my favorite pricing blog, McDonalds works "with their key suppliers without contracts, instead with a simple handshake. As you would expect, trust is a key component of that relationship-and it is mutual trust. Everyone works for the betterment of the customer, the franchise, and the company." And I wasn't surprised to read that Steve Jobs' deal with the music industry was contracted on a single page. I personally can't stand lengthy contracts - writing them, reading them, defending them. Take 3 minutes to read the details behind McDonalds' relationship and pricing structure with suppliers - then figure out a way to cut your contracts down to a simple page. Why Buffett Wants Stocks to Underperform -- last Saturday Warren Buffett released his latest 22-page letter to the shareholders of Berkshire Hathaway. If short of time, go to the bottom of page 6 and read why Buffett hopes IBM's stock, of which it owns 5.5%, languishes for the next five years. It's a powerful lesson in investing. And then read the rest of the letter for more insights. Australian Growth Summit March 14 - 15 -- after China this week, I'm off to Australia. Jim Collins, Fred Reichheld, Jack Daly, and some outstanding Australian gurus headline the program.