"...keeping you great"
HEADLINES:
Stories for Fortune Needed -- what are you doing to streamline your organization - implementing Lean, utilizing more checklists, giving your team permission to stop stupid stuff, cleaning out processes? Let us know and we'll interview you for the column - more details below, but first...
Most Important Book 2014 -- Kenneth Cukier and Viktor Mayer-Schonberger have written the most important (and readable) book for biz leaders in 2014 titled Big Data: A Revolution That Will Transform How We Live, Work, and Think. Read chapters 1 and 7 immediately, then read the rest of the book. Then come hear Cukier (via London), along with Ben Horowitz, Keith Ferrazzi, Liz Wiseman, etc. keynote Fortune's Growth Summit in Vegas Oct 28 - 29. GazellesPro and book club members will receive a copy of Cukier's book next week.
Zillow's CEO Wins through Learning -- With the stock price up 7-fold since going public in 2011, and on the verge of purchasing rival Trulia for $3 billion, Seattle-based Zillow is on a roll. Adam Lashinsky notes in his latest Fortune article, "Spencer Rascoff is the rare chief executive who relishes not having all the answers." Instead, he's connected his management team to the teams of other leading online media firms, so they can garner best practices and learn from their peers. Choose a half-dozen firms you respect and do the same for your team (most are at the Summits). Take 2 minutes to scan the article for details.
Traits of the Inc. 500 CEOs -- the latest list is out and Leigh Buchanan reports on Gallup's latest research that compared the scores of 2,700 entrepreneurs on 10 personality traits with those of the CEOs of the Inc. 500 winners. In general, the winning CEOs simply blew away the scores of the general entrepreneur population - focus, delegation, knowledge seeking, relationship building, and the other 6 traits. Take a few seconds to scan down through the article and find the chart with the ten traits and scores. FYI, though the winning CEOs had higher relationship building scores, the entire group scores low in this category. Entrepreneurs aren't "social" beings in general. They crave independence above all else.
Head to Canada (or Australia) -- speaking of independence, the world's most livable cities list is out and seven of the top ten are in Canada and Australia with neighbor New Zealand picking up an 8th. #1 was Melbourne - the Barcelona of Australia. For US citizens, take a lead from Burger King this week and move to Canada. Dan Sullivan, co-founder of Strategic Coach, has always exclaimed the best of both worlds is living in Canada and making money in the US.
Inversion Deals -- Burger King and other large corporations are buying foreign companies, like Tim Horton in Canada, as a tax strategy. Rather than lambast these firms as President Obama is doing, the US should fix the problem and dramatically lower or eliminate corporate taxes - they are regressive, anti-competitive, and job killers. KPMG calculates that corporate tax costs are 46.4% lower in Canada than the US. Here's a list of corporate tax rates throughout the world. Yes, US corp's have various tax breaks and these should be eliminated as well. My full views are best articulate by Brett Arends in his recent column in Forbes.
Auckland (2 Sept), Melbourne (3 Sept), Sydney (4 Sept), Singapore (5 Sept), and Jakarta (8 Sept) -- I'm leading a series of workshops highlighting the new book Scaling Up (Rockefeller Habits 2.0) which publishes Oct 21. Hope to see you there.
Auckland, Melbourne, Sydney
Singapore
For Jakarta email to [email protected]
Fortune Stories Needed -- Many companies are seeing growth opportunities now -- but are still cautious about hiring, given rising costs and high taxes. For my next Fortune column, I am looking at how companies are scaling up while staying lean. Have you taken a close look at your processes to keep them efficient so costs don't rise dramatically as you grow? Have you found better ways to launch your products or new stores that don't require a massive hiring spree? Please email [email protected] and include the name of your company, the city where it is based, what it does, your annual revenue and if the company is profitable. (Fortune requires financials).
COACHING:
Need help implementing the Rockefeller Habits?