Email Mistake; Saban’s Advice; Walmart’s Response; AMC’s Record Results

Dear ScaleUps, 

Hope it’s been a productive and purposeful week. Here are some insights/opportunities to help you outlearn/outthink the competition.

Mediocre people don’t like high-achievers - & high-achievers don’t like mediocre people.
	Coach Nick Saban

$2.99 Kindle Version - Steve Mariotti
Favor?  If you’ve received at least $2.99 of value from my insights; if you think youth entrepreneurship education is worthy; and if you believe school teachers are important - please support my dear friend Steve Mariotti’s new book Goodbye Homeboy: How My Students Drove Me Crazy and Inspired a Movement. Steve founded NFTE, teaching entrepreneurship around the world to inner city youth. It’s a fun story and worth $2.99 to support Steve!  Please purchase or gift to someone - maybe a school teacher - thank you.

Happiness vs. Engagement --
It’s a critical distinction and one Santiago Jaramillo, founder of Emplify (a SaaS tool for measuring and managing employee engagement), details in his book Agile Engagement: How to Drive Lasting Results by Cultivating a Flexible, Responsive, and Collaborative Culture. Go right to Chapter 2 and understand that happy employees aren’t necessarily engaged and acting in the best interests of the organization. SPro and book club members will receive a copy of Santiago’s book - then come hear him and a dozen more biz thought leaders keynote our fall ScaleUp Summit in Anaheim Oct 15 - 16.

Walmart CEO’s Instagram Post --
It’s instructive to see how biz leaders respond in a crisis. Here’s Yahoo Finances’ post highlighting Walmart CEO Doug McMillon’s response to the shootings at their El Paso store. He notes “we’re a learning organization” and he promises to be “thoughtful and deliberate” in their decisions arising from this tragic act of violence.

Was Email a Mistake? - A Case for the Daily Huddle
This New Yorker magazine article by past Summit keynoter Cal Newport traces the history of asynchronous communication starting with the “tubes” at CIA headquarters. In short, what organizations are discovering is that email is a terrible way to address challenges and solve problems. Notes Cal:

Recently, the founder and C.E.O. of a publicly traded technology company told me that he spends at most two or three hours a week sending and receiving e-mails; he has replaced most of his asynchronous messaging with a “regular rhythm” of meetings, which allows him to efficiently address issues in real time. “If you keep needing to send me urgent messages, then my assumption is that there’s something broken about the way you’re doing business,” he said.

Cal goes on to describe how Silicon Valley discovered the power of a daily huddle:

The idea that a quarter of an hour of structured synchrony is enough time to enable a full day of work might sound preposterous, but, for more than twelve million software developers, it seems to be working.

Bingo! The Scaling Up daily huddle brings the power of this synchronous communication to the entire organization - something our competitors dismiss as too difficult to implement, thus allowing organizations to leave massive amounts of money and time on the table. A regular “meeting rhythm” has been at the heart of our performance platform from the beginning and will be forever - humans were designed to talk.

No Bad Industries; Just Bad Leadership --
In an industry which saw revenue drop almost 4% this past quarter, AMC Theatres, based out of Kansas City, saw revenue jump over 4%, profits 122%, and record-setting attendance according to this Forbes article. Not surprising to me given I spent over $150 last night taking my three sons to the movies (dine-in) to celebrate my youngest son’s 12^th birthday. And because I’m a member of AMC’s loyalty program, I don’t even think to go to any other theatre. Lesson? There are no bad industries; just bad leadership. Hope you’re leading your industry or give us a call!

Nick Saban on “A” Players --
The famed college football coach Nick Saban, in this 1-minute Facebook post, makes a great case for having all A Players on your team. His advice includes the quote above. Thank you, John DiJulius, customer service guru, for sharing this link with me when my sons and I visited his family this week outside of Cleveland.

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.

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 [email protected]

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.