The Agile Scaleup

Brad Feld; Bandwidth; 50s better than 30s; Workday Millennials

"...insights for scaleups"

HEADLINES:

Look for the one thing that you couldn't take away from your customers without them screaming at you...(then) make that one thing better
	Brad Feld and David Cohen, authors of Do More Faster

Business Icon Brad Feld -- serial entrepreneur, VC, co-founder of TechStars, author of a dozen books (containing such practical wisdom as evident by the above quote), and one of the most popular bloggers is one of our "celebrity CEOs" keynoting the fall ScaleUp Summit Oct 16 - 17, Denver. His classic book Do More Faster: Techstars Lessons to Accelerate Your Startup is applicable to all firms scaling up. It's being sent to the SPro and book club members. At least read the "Theme 2: People" section. Brad will be touching on a wide range of topics including his investment in Fitbit - he owned almost 40% of the stock when it went public. He'll also address the topic of depression - he's been one of the most open leaders to touch on this important aspect of living and leading.

#GiveFirst -- Brad will also share ideas from his forthcoming book (June 2019) titled #GiveFirst: A New Philosophy for Business in The Era of Entrepreneurship. Notes the description:

...if business is built on the strength of relationships, one must base those relationships on a culture of help and reciprocity. By giving first and expecting nothing in return, you'll build the type of relationships that matter. The more you invest in relationships, the more you will get help when you need it...

Brad will share the four actionable principles of a give first mentality that will drive whatever success you wish to achieve.

Bandwidth -- and if you're looking for a fun summer read (Northern Hemisphere) Brad, in his June 25 blog post, recommends Eliot Pepers' near-future science fiction technothriller titled Bandwidth . Brad highlights the NY Times review of the book (rare for any book to get this) in his blog post. Enjoy reading Bandwidth, which I'll be doing this weekend - a real glimpse into the future.

50-Year-Old's Twice as Likely...to have a runaway tech success as a 30-year-old. This CNBC post notes:

A new study found the average founder of the fastest growing tech startups was about 45-years-old - and 50-year-old entrepreneurs were about twice as likely to have a runaway business success as their 30-year-old counterparts.

And I've found this is the general case in all ventures. Please take 1-minute to read through the reasons why this is the case - including the David Duffield example. He launched Workday when he was 65 in 2005 and today the company has a market cap of $25.6 billion. Thank you to Steve Watkins (Entrex) and Dan Hoffman (Circl.es) for sharing this piece with me.

...And Workday is a Great Place for Millennials -- seems the 77-year-old co-CEO of Workday knows how to attract and keep Millennials. This Fortune article details what makes the company attractive to this younger generation that represents 53% of its 8600 employees. And how? Notes the article:

"What I've been able to get at Workday is continuous learning and new opportunities," Yang says. "I've never felt that I wasn't learning something new."

Please take 2 minutes to dig further into the details and then borrow a couple ideas for your own firm.

Bloomberg Breakaway Summit (Verne's 22-minute keynote) -- Last week many of our Scaling Up Breakaway members joined Bloomberg Breakaway members and entrepreneurs for Bloomberg's Breakaway Summit. The theme of the event focused on the paradoxes that leaders face, and leading in an age of disruption. Keynotes included Martha Stewart, Michael Bloomberg, Ursula Burns (former Xerox CEO), Wells Fargo's CEO Tim Sloan, and myself. Here's a link to my 22-minute presentation that shares practical ideas addressing the three barriers to growth.

Interested in joining our 2018/19 delegation of Scaling Up CEOs for the Bloomberg Breakaway Network? Please join me and your fellow CEOs in this invitation-only membership comprised of both established industry leaders and emerging disruptors who are looking to increase the competitive distance between themselves and their peers. Click to view member benefits or to apply for membership.

Breaking Cycle of All-Male Leadership -- Bev Perdue, former Governor of North Carolina, penned a Fortune article noting:

Despite decades of initiatives to increase diversity among corporate leaders, the percentage of female leadership hires has remained relatively stagnant.

So why is this? Please take 2 minutes to read through Perdue's insightful conclusions. Hint - it has a lot to do with the fact that we like to hire people like us, which is why the standard interviewing process is flawed.

CEO-BOOTCAMP: spend 3.5 days with Verne, serial entrepreneur John Ratliff, and 6 other CEOs in a beautiful retreat setting, addressing the constraints holding back you, your business, and your industry. October 2 - 5; January 15 - 18, 2019.

EXITING: Thinking about selling the business for $40 million or more? Want to get 25% to 200% more than you thought? Request the whitepaper from the Exit Strategies Summit at Harvard from Denise Richmond at (610) 299-6466 or email at [email protected]

COACHING:

Have you ever wondered if working with a coach might accelerate your company's growth, exponentially? Do you have what it takes to move the dial from good to great? Contact us at [email protected] for more information or visit https://scalingup.com/coaches.html.

TECHNOLOGY:

Create Accountability – Drive Execution
Click Here to Watch a video example.

Align is your cloud based business operating system designed to keep you on your path to executing your goals. See, in real time every person in your organization and how they are progressing on their priorities - alongside how they Align to the Company Priorities! Scale Up your Rockefeller Habits implementation with www.alignwithgazelles.com - on your computer, tablet or phone. $5.00 per month gets you started.

Better Book Club -- What's your team reading? Increase your books read per team member. Easy, Proven, and in the Cloud at http://www.BetterBookClub.com.

Leader Schedules; 72% Meeting Time; 43% Priority Time; 3% Customer Time; ExO Course Next Week

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"...insights for scaleups"

HEADLINES:

12-Year Study of CEO (Applies to all Leaders) Schedules -- Harvard strategist Michael Porter and colleague Nitin Nohria recorded and analyzed the schedules of 27 CEOs over a period of 12 years (2006 - 2018). Notes this Fortune article:

The subjects spent 43% of their time, on average, on activities that advanced the agenda they set with the study at the beginning of each quarter. That percentage varied significantly between CEOs, though, and the ones that spent the most time advancing their agendas said they felt better about the use of their time.

It reinforces the idea of a #1 priority for each quarter and the importance of a leader aligning their daily activities around this priority i.e. Steve Jobs spending three hours each day for six-months working on his new retail concept. Please take 2 minutes to read more of the details.

61% Face-to-Face Time -- the Fortune article summarized a much more in-depth HBR article. Noting that these CEOs spent 61% of their week in face-to-face meetings, Porter and Nohria note in HBR:

Face-to-face interaction is the best way for CEOs to exercise influence, learn what's really going on, and delegate to move forward the multiple agendas that must be advanced. It also allows CEOs to best support and coach the people they work closely with. How a CEO spends face-to-face time is viewed as a signal of what or who is important; people watch this more carefully than most CEOs recognize.

72% in Meetings -- one key recommendation coming out of the study, given that 72% of these CEO's workweek was spent in 37 meetings lasting an average of an hour, is to cut the time of these meetings in half or more. Most meetings can accomplish as much or more in 30 minutes or even 15 minutes than they can in an hour so look at setting up much shorter meetings.

Only 3% of Week Spent with Customers -- and the biggest reveal was that the CEOs were dismayed to find they only spent 3% of their week with customers - and agreed this was too low. Notes the HBR article:

Some CEOs systematically schedule time with customers. The CEO of a financial services firm in our study, for instance, aims to meet face-to-face with one customer a day. A manufacturing CEO allocates two days a month to customer visits. Other CEOs try to build customer visits into their travel. A habit of some type seems to be the most reliable way to ensure enough customer time.

There are many more insights about family, sleep, and alone time worth reviewing by all leaders. The HBR article will take you 7 minutes to read and digest, so maybe a good read for the weekend.

Fun Fact -- yesterday the 10 millionth patent was issued to Raytheon for a process improving lasers. This Fortune article provides the details plus a look at the first patent signed by George Washington in 1790 and issued to Samuel Hopkins for improvements in "the making of pot ash and pearl ash." Yet the patent numbering system was reset in 1836, so there is a different patent #1! Worth 1 minute to see what it was for plus the new patent cover design.

ExO 10x Course Starts Next Week -- a mindset of 10x growth is much more expansive (easier?) than the incremental thinking that goes with contemplating 2x. Salim Ismail is one of my favorite business minds and has studied a hundred of the most influential organizations, learning how they reached the top of the mountain. He and his team are now bringing all that information to Growth Institute with their ExO Master Business Course. The online program was built to help leaders achieve the 10x success they are looking for. If you feel like you are one of those leaders and want to create that very plausible scenario for your organization, apply for your spot here: Don't wait, as the class starts next week!

Need More Copies of Scaling Up (Rockefeller Habits 2.0)? -- Amazon continues to premium price the hardcover book. If you need a box of 20, the books (paperback) are less than $10/each

CEO-BOOTCAMP: spend 3.5 days with Verne, serial entrepreneur John Ratliff, and 6 other CEOs in a beautiful retreat setting, addressing the constraints holding back you, your business, and your industry. October 2 - 5; January 15 - 18, 2019.

EXITING: Thinking about selling the business for $40 million or more? Want to get 25% to 200% more than you thought? Request the whitepaper from the Exit Strategies Summit at Harvard from Denise Richmond at (610) 299-6466 or email at [email protected]

COACHING:

Have you ever wondered if working with a coach might accelerate your company's growth, exponentially? Do you have what it takes to move the dial from good to great? Contact us at [email protected] for more information or visit https://scalingup.com/coaches.html.

TECHNOLOGY:

Create Accountability – Drive Execution
Click Here to Watch a video example.

Align is your cloud based business operating system designed to keep you on your path to executing your goals. See, in real time every person in your organization and how they are progressing on their priorities - alongside how they Align to the Company Priorities! Scale Up your Rockefeller Habits implementation with www.alignwithgazelles.com - on your computer, tablet or phone. $5.00 per month gets you started.

Better Book Club -- What's your team reading? Increase your books read per team member. Easy, Proven, and in the Cloud at http://www.BetterBookClub.com.

Kate Spade; Success and Suicide; WIN.ning; ExO Applications Open

"...insights for scaleups"

HEADLINES: (serious warning - discussing success and suicide)

Winners don't have more stamina or built-in genius, they have just learned how to think in ways that get them the results they want.
	Rabbi Stephen Baars, author of WIN.

Kate Spade -- according to her husband, entrepreneur Kate Spade suffered from depression and anxiety and was taking medication when she died from an apparent suicide. I recently learned that it's not appropriate to say someone "committed suicide" any more than it is to say someone "committed cancer." It's a disease -- and new research is uncovering signs someone will be more likely to succumb to this affliction than others i.e. successful at vs. just attempt suicide. Hint, it has to do with how they think about it. More below, but first...

Winners are not born. They learned how. You can learn how, too! -- Rabbi Stephen Baars has been sharing his wisdom with the executives attending our ScaleUp Summits for more than a decade. In his latest book, WIN. he notes that "Most of us believe that motivation creates success, but it's the other way around: It's knowing that you are going to succeed that creates motivation." Go back and read that again. "It's knowing that you are going to succeed that creates motivation" not the other way around.

Winners Make Hard, Easy -- Winners have learned how to make challenging goals easy, but easy doesn't mean lower. The trick is to take the goals you really want, and make THEM easy. Winners don't have more stamina. They just have better ideas. They don't have higher IQs. They just have great strategy. This book will change your thinking, just by reading it. SPro and book club members will receive this book next week. I encourage everyone to read this "quick read" three times - until the ideas come easily. These are simply powerful and powerfully simple ideas.

Entrepreneurs Have Higher Rates of Depression -- VC and serial entrepreneur Brad Feld has helped the entrepreneurial community open up and discuss depression. Notes this Fortune article, quoting Feld:

"As a founder, you are going to go through some rough spots. If those rough spots include a depression, that’s okay." He wants to end the perception that depression bars someone from being a successful founder or executive. "I reject that," he says. "More and more people are rejecting that." Instead, it's more analogous to a broken leg or diabetes-an undeniable impediment, but a manageable one if addressed.

Obvious is the link between depression and suicide. Keep reading.

Success and Suicide -- so how does one reconcile sharing a book about winning/success with depression and suicide. New research is shedding a light on signs someone is likely to die from suicide. Notes this Psychology Today article reporting on research looking at suicide notes:

The biggest difference was that the notes of suicide completers included much more detail about how they were a burden on other people and society at large compared to the attempters.

The article goes on to report:

In general, people do not commit suicide because they are in pain, they commit suicide because they don't believe there is a reason to live and the world will be better off without them.

That's the link between success and suicide. What is the envisioned future - better or worse?

The article goes on to detail a second sign someone is likely to commit suicide If you suspect someone you know might succumb to suicide, please read this article and then seek immediate help to change their thinking.

Howard Schultz Steps Down - Running for President? - and in other news, Starbucks' executive chairman stepped down from the company this week. Notes Howard Schultz in this Fortune blog post:

"For some time now, I have been deeply concerned about our country-the growing division at home and our standing in the world," he said. "One of the things I want to do in my next chapter is to figure out if there is a role I can play in giving back. I'm not exactly sure what that means yet."

Success or...for Starbucks and Schultz. Time will tell. Be careful what you wish for!

Exponential Growth -- a mindset of 10x growth is much more expansive (easier?) than the incremental thinking that goes with contemplating 2x. We hosted a great Exponential Organization webinar this week with Salim Ismail and the Growth Institute. He is one of my favorite business minds and has studied a hundred of the most influential organizations, learning how they reached the top of the mountain. In Tuesday's live webinar he and the Growth Institute team opened applications to their online program to help leaders achieve the 10x success they are looking for. If you feel like you are one of those leaders, and want to create that very plausible scenario for your organization, apply for your spot here:

Need More Copies of Scaling Up (Rockefeller Habits 2.0)? -- Amazon continues to premium price the hardcover book. If you need a box of 20, the books (paperback) are less than $10/each

CEO-BOOTCAMP: spend 3.5 days with Verne, serial entrepreneur John Ratliff, and 6 other CEOs in a beautiful retreat setting, addressing the constraints holding back you, your business, and your industry. October 2 - 5; January 15 - 18, 2019.

EXITING: Thinking about selling the business for $40 million or more? Want to get 25% to 200% more than you thought? Request the whitepaper from the Exit Strategies Summit at Harvard from Denise Richmond at (610) 299-6466 or email at [email protected]

COACHING:

Have you ever wondered if working with a coach might accelerate your company's growth, exponentially? Do you have what it takes to move the dial from good to great? Contact us at [email protected] for more information or visit https://scalingup.com/coaches.html.

TECHNOLOGY:

Create Accountability – Drive Execution
Click Here to Watch a video example.

Align is your cloud based business operating system designed to keep you on your path to executing your goals. See, in real time every person in your organization and how they are progressing on their priorities - alongside how they Align to the Company Priorities! Scale Up your Rockefeller Habits implementation with www.alignwithgazelles.com - on your computer, tablet or phone. $5.00 per month gets you started.

Better Book Club -- What's your team reading? Increase your books read per team member. Easy, Proven, and in the Cloud at http://www.BetterBookClub.com.