The Agile Scaleup

Top 5 Biz Books 2018; Fortune’s Top Books; Personal Development Book

"...insights for scaleups"

HEADLINES:

Fortune's Top Biz Books for 2018 -- here's a link to Fortune President Alan Murray's list of best books for 2018. I hear John Doerr's Measure What Matters is a good book but haven't read it (up next for me). BTW, Murray's "CEO Daily" blog is a must read for me - gives me a quick update on what is happening globally in the world of biz. I highly recommend you sign up for it - it's free - and it takes me just one minute each day to scan. There is a link to sign up in the link above.

My Top 5 (and #1 of 5) Biz Books for 2018 -- With artificial intelligence, machine learning and other technologies transforming the business world, it's never been more important to get in front of change. These top 5 books from 2018, aligned with our 4 Decisions Scaling Up framework (People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash), will help you master the forces that are shaking up the landscape for middle market companies, so you can take advantage of the best new opportunities to scale. BTW, authors for 4 of the top 5 keynoted our Summits this year, which is why we invited them.

People -- Outrageous Empowerment: The Incredible Story of Giving Employees Their Brains Back by Ron Lovett.

This is my top pick for 2018. Lovett went from private security guard, to the rich and famous, to founder of his own security company with 1,500 employees (which he recently sold for 24x earnings). His secret: Getting rid of all middle managers and letting frontline employees think through decisions for themselves. Employees don't quit companies. They quit bad bosses. And the best way to fix this problem is to eliminate all the bosses! Lovett will help you find the courage to pare away that non-essential layer of bureaucracy, which is costing you 30% of your payroll, and free your team to excel. Lovett's firm embodies what I consider the organizational structure for the 21st Century. For more details, and a glimpse into one of his many frontline employee stories, watch this excerpt from his presentation at our ScaleUp Summit

Strategy -- Prediction Machines: The Simple Economics of Artificial Intelligence by Ajay Agarwal, Joshua Gans and Avi Goldfarb.

Artificial Intelligence was the #1 biz topic of 2018. Yet how do "mere mortal" mid-market firms think through how to put it to work in a practical way? The key is in the title of this powerfully practical book: prediction. Where in your company would knowing something more quickly make or save you significant money/time - like when you're about to lose a big customer or your best employees are ready to jump ship? Once you read it, head to the authors' 2-day workshops in Toronto. They're the best insurance policy you can find against being disrupted out of existence by a 22-year-old in Silicon Valley (or Toronto!).

Execution -- Great at Work: How Top Performers Do Less, Work Better, and Achieve More by Morten Hansen

It's no accident that Hansen, a leading management thinker and professor at UC Berkeley, was also the co-author of what I consider Jim Collins' best book, Great by Choice. Now Hansen has written a book of his own, delivering a significant update to the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People in. Every company needs not just a few top performers producing but everyone knocking it out of the park. This book will show leaders how to educate everyone on their team to execute better.

Cash -- Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies by Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh

Blitzscaling details the "hacks" you need to grow really, really fast to capture a market quickly with a paradigm shifting idea. And because of this need for speed you need a really strong culture. There are blitzscaling opportunities in every company. Put together a team of two or three people, spending a few days a week, to identify and exploit a blitzscaling opportunity within your own firm. You'll have a shot at unleashing massive growth this year with a side project that could generate more cash value than your core business.

The One I Missed -- Why Greatness Cannot Be Planned:  The Myth of the Objective by Kenneth O.O. Stanley and Joel Lehman

Published in 2015, I just discovered this jewel of a book, which is challenging my own business thinking more than any recent book. If you really want to scale your business, you have to let go of some of your business objectives and allow serendipity to take hold. Stanley and Lehman have made a compelling case that too much adherence to objective-setting can blind you to the real opportunities to scale-and that medium-term goals can be dangerous to your business. Nonetheless, they haven't thrown out short-term goals. You need to know your next step. If you're looking for a book that challenges the conventional wisdom and will shake up your thinking, you won't want to miss this insightful read.

Personal Development Book -- and I would be remiss if I didn't encourage everyone to read Rabbi Stephen Baars outstanding 2018 book WIN.: Change Your Thinking, Change Your Destiny. His 2-minute YouTube video on "how to deal with the village idiot" is a classic view of what it takes to succeed.
CLICK HERE

Happy Holidays - I'll be back after the first of the year with these insights.

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. January 15 - 18; March 12 - 15; Jun 4 - 7, 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://coaches.scalingup.com/.

TECHNOLOGY:

Create Accountability - Drive Execution with Align, cloud-based software designed to scale up your Rockefeller Habits implementation. www.alignwithgazelles.com - on your computer, tablet or phone. Click here to watch an introductory video.

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.

Dell Public; 3 Keys to Intuition; Park Square Doubles; Instead of Bonuses; Jan 23 Scaling Up

"...insights for scaleups"

HEADLINES:

Scaling Up Master Class -- our latest coached online class just sold out, so we're launching another Jan 23. More details below, but first...

Dell Public Dec. 28 -- a year later than his ten-year plan, Michael Dell and his firm Dell Technologies will be back public the end of this year, via a stock swap with VMWare shareholders (so not an IPO). This CRN article details "5 Things You Need to Know" about Dell going back public. With revenues of $87.5 billion, it's been a substantial pivot from products to services - and Dell expects to be over $100 billion by 2022. Congratulations Michael - job well done!!

Intuition Can Only be Trusted If... -- Daniel Kahneman, best-selling author of Thinking, Fast and Slow, emphasizes in this Think Advisor article that people need to be very careful when they trust their intuition. Three things must exist:

1. There has to be regularity in the world - so this greatly limits intuition
2. There has to be lots of practice
3. And immediate feedback must be present

I realize listing these aren't helpful, so please take 3 minutes to scan this article - the examples really flush out his important points. Where are you saying you "trust your intuition" when you have no reason?

Park Square Builders Doubles in One-Year (Scaling Up case study) -- this Professional Builder article highlights how an Orlando-based family owned business is using the Rockefeller Habits to drive revenues up and employee turnover down. Notes co-CEO Vishaal Gupta:

Our company doubled in size in the past year alone - we hired nearly 50 employees and expanded into a new market. Plus, we reduced employee turnover from 25 percent to 15 percent because we made our employees' well-being a priority. Keeping people is key in the construction industry.

After attending our CEO Boot Camp, Vishaal hired Scaling Up Certified partner Petra Coaching to support implementation. In the article, Vishaal details 3 ways the Rock Habits helped by:

1. Involving the whole team in the efforts
2. Improving communications at all levels
3. Making trade partners part of the team, too

Please take 2 minutes to read the details of each to glean lessons, especially around the importance of a regular meeting rhythm, for your own company and culture.

Grant Wishes Instead of Bonuses -- this Moneyish article details how Acceleration Partners and the Schweiger Dermatology Group are using the "Dream On" program created by partner John Ratliff (John co-teaches the CEO Boot Camp with me) to significantly drive up employee engagement and dramatically drive down employee turnover. And what are some of these wishes? Notes the article:

(Bob) Glazer (Acceleration Partner CEO) has spent the past two years asking his 130 remote workers about their life goals, or the most important relationships that they want to grow or rekindle in their lives. He then reads through their submissions with his advisory board and chooses 10 wishes to grant each year. Last year, he called in a favor at MIT to give one woman the opportunity to speak about performance marketing there, as she's always wanted to lecture at a university. His company also paid for lessons in race car driving, flying, skydiving and guitar-playing for workers, and even sent employee John Crooks and his wife to Copenhagen for a week.

At Schweiger Dermatology Group, which also retitled HR to "director of employee experience," the article shares:

...Dream On has helped turn things around with gifts great and small, including: new tires for an employee's car; a new mattress for a worker who had back surgery; sending someone to the Philippines to see their dying grandmother; helping pay off student loans or put a down payment on a car or a house; etc. Schweiger Derm has spent about $45,000 granting 25 dreams to date, and there are 149 more dreams on file - and turnover has dropped to just 19%.

Please take 2 minutes to read details on how to structure this program and some of the heart-warming stories that result. Tis the season. Others are helping

$9.7 million, 5-Year Grant IV C for Cancer Treatment -- The University of Iowa Holden Comprehensive Cancer center received a significant grant to pursue three of the deadliest cancers -- pancreatic cancer, non-small cell lung cancer, and glioblastoma multiforme, an aggressive type of brain cancer. This article provides the details.

Scaling Up Master Business Course -- The first cohort has sold out! I'm so glad there has been so much interest in my course and there are still a lot of great executives that did not make it into the first cohort. So, we've decided to open a second class that will start January 23, 2019.

If you want to know how this course can help you and your team, I invite you to find out directly from one of my former students and now partner, John Ratliff, the former CEO of Appletree Answers (Dream On fame). Learn how he used the methodology to scale his company to an exit valuation five times the industry average. Watch my interview here.

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. January 15 - 18; March 12 - 15; Jun 4 - 7, 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://coaches.scalingup.com/.

TECHNOLOGY:

Create Accountability - Drive Execution with Align, cloud-based software designed to scale up your Rockefeller Habits implementation. www.alignwithgazelles.com - on your computer, tablet or phone. Click here to watch an introductory video.

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.

2 Best Chapters; EX Priority 1; Brands to Watch; $250 Deposit Deadline

"...insights for scaleups"

HEADLINES: (anyone going to "Date with Destiny" this week?)

Anything that sets employees up for success or improves our culture should be a part of EX.
	Mark Levy, global head of employee experience (EX) Airbnb

$250 Deposit Only -- tomorrow (Friday, 07 Dec) is the last day you can book seats for our Spring ScaleUp Summit with just a $250 deposit per seat. This lets you grab better seats (earlier with bigger teams gets best seats) and preserve cash. More info below, but first...

Successfully Competing Against Amazon? -- Fortune writer is looking for companies to include in a new book. Are you competing successfully against Amazon? More below, but second...

Best Two Chapters I've Read in 2018 -- go right to Chapters 5 & 6 in Denise Lee Yohn's new book Fusion: How Integrating Brand and Culture Powers the World's Greatest Companies. Finally, a book that details how to pivot the HR dept. into a true Employee Experience (EX) function and includes practical approaches, rituals, and artifacts. Denise is keynoting our Spring ScaleUp Summit in Atlanta May 21 - 22 and she's going to go narrow and deep into this critical topic.

Airbnb's Fusion -- fusing brand and culture, Airbnb's EX initiatives are highlighted. To quote Denise's book:

In 2016, the company (Airbnb) adopted the slogan "Belong Anywhere" to express it's brand identity and launched the "#belonganywhere" brand campaign. But it's leaders believed...the concept of belonging needed to apply inside the company as well.

Mark Levy, who was Airbnb's global head of employee experience, went on to explain to Denise:

We need to create a place where our employees feel they belong...belonging starts here. We have to figure out internal belonging first, then we can break down the walls with customers.

And Airbnb did, with simple ideas any of our scaleups can adopt. How aligned are your brand and culture?

EX is Priority #1 -- I couldn't agree more that EX is priority #1. To help, Denise created an Employee Experience Architecture Template which she details in Chapt 5. She will guide executive teams through it at our ScaleUp Summit. She also has a broader assessment to see how closely your culture and brand align - take 10 minutes to complete which will give you a feel for the content in her book.

Brands to Watch in 2019 -- and to wrap up my enthusiasm for Denise's insights, this week she released her annual "Brands to Watch" list, one for each letter of the alphabet (spoiler alert, A is for Amazon). It's a quick scan and you'll pick up some biz insights.

G-Squared's Habits (Scaling Up case study) -- Gene Godick, founder of G-Squared, a firm providing CFO services to private equity and VC-backed firms, is using the Scaling Up tools with the support of Scaling Up Certified coach Eileen Wainwright (consultants need coaches too!), to drive 20% annual growth the past four years. This blog post details how Gene and his team have particularly focused on the recruiting, hiring, and onboarding process for professional talent. And I appreciate Gene's comment that his focus is on "winning the next game" i.e. be clear on the end goal (BHAG) and next step - the rest is a WAG -- wild-ankle guess! Does your team have a clear priority for the month of December?

Request for Stories from Companies Competing with Amazon -- Hi, I'm a Fortune magazine contributor and I'm writing a book that in part is examining how to compete with Amazon. I would like to interview CEOs and entrepreneurs about their experiences dealing with the online giant and strategies that have helped them survive the Amazon jungle. I'm particularly interested in how both brands and retailers handle Amazon's pricing algorithm that can undercut your product at a moment's notice, what to do when Amazon decides to make a private label version of your product, and how to survive selling online without using Amazon. I'm looking for both success stories that can help us understand this new world and case studies about mistakes made that can serve as cautionary tales. I'm happy to talk on the record or on background. My email is [email protected]. Thanks, Brian

$250 Deposit to Hold Better Seats -- notes Dustin Brown, Partner and Head of Strategy at Elemental:

The ScaleUp Summit blew my expectations out of the water. It was two days of inspiration, amazing diverse speakers and a lot of interesting insights that could apply to my (or any) business. I will see you at the next one.

Join me, your peers, and bring your team to 2 days of inspiring content at our ScaleUp Summit in Atlanta, GA 21-22 May, 2019. And register by tomorrow with only a $250 refundable deposit per team member. Click here to register with only a $250 refundable deposit. Deadline is tomorrow, December 7th.

Heading to Tony Robbins -- one of our core values is "practice what we preach." I'm looking forward to investing in my own executive development over the next six days attending Tony Robbins "Date with Destiny." Let me know if any of you are going to be there [email protected]  

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. January 15 - 18; March 12 - 15; Jun 4 - 7, 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://coaches.scalingup.com/.

TECHNOLOGY:

Create Accountability - Drive Execution with Align, cloud-based software designed to scale up your Rockefeller Habits implementation. www.alignwithgazelles.com - on your computer, tablet or phone. Click here to watch an introductory video.

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.