Dear ScaleUps,
Hope it’s been a productive and purposeful week. Here are some insights/opportunities to help you outlearn/outthink the competition.
Almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you.
Anne Lamott from Tim Ferriss’s Blog
Core Competencies: A Critical Understanding About Your Business --
Below I riff on this important aspect of your business strategy, but first…
CEO Boot Camp March 10 – 13, 2020 --
We’ve added an additional CEO Boot Camp hosted in Marathon, FL. The website includes a short video by CEOs who have participated.
Never Use Airport USB Charging Ports – Or Cords Laying Around
This Forbes article details how hackers are targeting travelers using public USB charging stations. In addition, never use a charging cord or random USB storage device you may find laying around – chips hidden inside can hack your computer and steal your data. This intel courtesy of X-Force Threat Intelligence at IBM Security. Thank you, Matt Giltner (our team member Missy Giltner’s son), for sharing this important article/warning as we travel.
Going Global – 75% of the Global Market Outside US
This year the global GDP is estimated to be $88 trillion, up from $34 trillion the end of 1999. This one chart cleverly shows the distribution of this GDP (from 2017 – latest actual numbers).
| For businesses based in the US, please note that the US is less than a quarter of the global economy now (used to be 60+%). Thus, if you DON’T go global you’re missing out on 75% of the opportunities. And for firms in other countries, the opportunity is even larger! Plus, the best defense is offense – get in other markets before your competitors get in yours. Yes, there are barriers, but this is an advantage if you can figure it out. It’s why Scaling Up is in 16 languages with coaches on six continents. Here’s a link to that chart. |  |
5 Ways to Foster a Global Mindset --
The best way to go global is to find an existing customer doing business in other countries and see if you can support them there – this way you have immediate revenue to support your next overseas activities. And it’s helpful to foster a global mindset within your organization/culture. This July HBR article details 5 ways to do this. Written by Nataly Kelly, VP of International Operations and Strategy at Hubspot, these are the two most important in my experience:
- Brand your global initiatives i.e. let’s get “global ready” – make it a theme
- Hire people with international expertise and exposure – and travel yourself
At our fall ScaleUp Summit (Oct 15 – 17, Anaheim) we’ll be hosting a ScaleUpX talk by a firm that helps place international interns in companies. And for those of you in CEO organizations, take advantage of your global networks and attend their “universities” so you meet members from other countries. Thanks to Steve Hall for pointing me to this article and reminding all of us to “think global” – and hope your vacation travels take you to faraway places like Sitges, Pula, and Halifax, where I visited the last couple of weeks! All beautiful.
Core Competencies --
Taking a line from Wikipedia “A core competency is a concept in management theory introduced by C. K. Prahalad and Gary Hamel.[1] It can be defined as "a harmonized combination of multiple resources and skills that distinguish a firm in the marketplace" and therefore are the foundation of companies' competitiveness.”
Most companies only have one or two. What Hamel warned was confusing "what we're good at" for core competencies -- though the #1 brand promise often points to the core competency. Apple's core competency is design. Honda's is engines. FedEx’s is logistics. And you can discern a core competency often from a core product as well. I found this article to be helpful.
In the article it uses this additional definition "a core competency refers to a company's set of skills or experience in some activity, rather than physical or financial assets." When I was working with 3M, it was just two -- innovation (now they are calling it "science") and partnering with distribution partners.
The other thing that's critical is that an organization, like 3M, can decide it needs to become competent in a specific thing -- and as the literature states, this is something that takes years of prioritization, process improvement, and resource allocation i.e. you decide its critical and you invest time and attention. Toyota did this when it fully embraced Dr. Deming's methodologies and has been refining them ever since into what we call Lean. Back to 3M, they continue to refine what it means to do "science" right.
So, for growing firms is more "we need to become competent at something." I feel like that's what we've done with our online learning. Daniel Marcos’s team has continually refined "how" to deliver online education that is practical and useful -- the hybrid model -- and the results of their years of efforts are starting to show. A major venture firm is rolling out our online MBD to the 800 firms in their portfolio. Hilton, which was named the "Best Place to Work" this year (surprisingly) for their investment in education, has been using some of our online courses. London Business School switched from Coursera and went with our learning platform for their John Mullins' “cash” course. We knew we needed to gain a competency in online education two decades ago if we were going to make it convenient for firms all over the globe to access the top thought leaders.
What are your one or two core competencies? And what core competency do you need to continue to hone to give you a competitive advantage in the marketplace? Take time to explore this during your weekly “council” meeting.
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. Aug 20 - 23, 2019 (Sold Out); Jan 14 - 17; Jan 21 - 24; Mar 10 - 13, 2020.
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 Verne Harnish at verne@scalingup.com
WRITE AND PUBLISH A BOOK to Grow Your Business and be THE Authority in your space. My publisher and friend Adam Witty at ForbesBooks has streamlined the process. forbesbooks.com/scalingup for more information and to take their Authority Assessment
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? The Scaling Up team is prepared to support you. We have helped 40,000 other organizations over the past 30+ years, in scaling up their organizations through coaching, workshops, online training and more.
We would like to offer you a complimentary, personal follow-up from our Scaling Up team to share how we can support you in scaling your organization.
YES! I WOULD LIKE TO LEARN MORE ABOUT COACHING & RECEIVE A COMPLIMENTARY FOLLOW-UP (CLICK HERE)
For questions or more information contact us at coaching@scalingup.com
TECHNOLOGY:
Create Accountability - Drive Execution with Align, cloud-based software designed to scale up your Rockefeller Habits implementation. www.alignwithscalingup.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.