Businessperson of the Year; 215 Lives Saved; 13.5% Productivity Gain; getAbstract Interview

Published by Verne Harnish at November 16, 2017

"…insights for scaleups"

HEADLINES:

When I thought about it afterwards, I realized that it was all about flow. If you eliminate these narrow choke points that occur along the way, you can get people seen and evaluated sooner by the correct specialist.
	Dr. Kevin Menes, treating 215 gunshot wounds in Las Vegas

Businessperson of the Year — Fortune just announced their surprise winner. Not well known but he's leading the AI revolution with his products – Jensen Huang, co-founder and CEO of Nvidia. More on him and the list next week, but first…

Hundreds of Lives Saved — this article, detailing the night a small hospital in Las Vegas received and treated 215 penetrating GSWs (gunshot wounds), is riveting – and holds many lessons for business. First, visualizing and preparing for worst case scenarios ahead of time. Second, utilizing the "theory of constraints" to identify and eliminate bottlenecks to maintain flow. It's mindboggling that Dr. Kevin Menes had the foresight and insight to save so many lives from the worst mass shooting in Vegas history. Thanks to Anne-Marie Faiola, founder & CEO of Bramble Berry and Soap Queen, for sharing this story.

Power of Working from Home — granted, even though this well-designed research study was conducted with 500 call center employees in China, the results are impressive. Notes this TED talk article:

It was unbelievable. Ctrip saved $1,900 per employee over the course of the study on office space, and we knew this would happen," Bloom says. "But to our amazement, the work-from-home employees were far from goofing off – they increased productivity by 13.5 percent over those working in the office. That's like getting an extra day's work from each employee." The people working from home also reported shorter breaks and fewer sick days and took less time off.

And attrition rates were 50% lower. The fun fact that surprised me? In the US, the number of employees who telecommute has tripled over the past 30 years, although it's still only 2.4 percent. I would have thought it was a lot higher. I don't think they are counting solo entrepreneurs.

Huge, Inc.'s Five Minute Meetings — this WSJ article details how:

Annoyed by a calendar clogged with hour-long meetings, Aaron Shapiro, chief executive of Huge Inc., a 1,500-employee New York digital agency, has started holding five-minute meetings. Rather than booking a conference room for 30 minutes, he makes minor decisions in five-minute huddles with colleagues. When employees ask to meet with him, he conducts deskside "drive-bys" with each one.

This excellent article shares many examples of companies using daily huddles, underpinning the power and importance of this simple routine – a critical habit our competitors fail to support resulting in lost time and opportunity for clients. Thank you Jocelyn Lortie, owner of Canada-based Paguette Textiles, for sharing this article.

#1 on Fortune's New Future 50 List — these are 50 companies poised to define the future – and atop the list is SalesForce.com. Read Adam Lashinsky's insight article about why Fortune ranked Marc Benioff's firm #1. It includes a list of the six people Benioff most admires and what he's learned from each (worth the read) – and I like this summary of the three "chapters" of the company's history (three BHAGs?):

…the cloud (1999-2009), the customer (2009-2017), and the Age of Intelligence (2018-).

How would you frame each of your last ten years as a way to frame the next? It's a lengthy read, so maybe a Sunday morning thing! Enjoy.

How Coca-Cola, Netflix, and Amazon Learn from Failure — written by Fast Company magazine co-founder Bill Taylor (I mention, because I love most everything Taylor writes), this HBR article highlights that a success rate that is too high is dangerous. And there are proper ways to fail. What I found most fascinating, reports Taylor:

Smith College, the all-women's school in western Massachusetts, has created a program called "Failing Well" to teach its students what all of us could stand to learn. "What we're trying to teach is that failure is not a bug of learning it's the feature," explained Rachel Simmons, who runs the initiative, in a recent New York Times article.

Anyway, it's worth the 2-minute read as a reminder to fail more and faster!

My 10-minute Interview with getAbstract — one of the ways I find and decide which books to read is by reading getAbstract's summaries of leading biz books. And like all their abstracts, the one they did for Scaling Up is excellent (might be worth sharing with employees who don't want to read the entire book). Recently they interviewed me for my latest thoughts on scaling up – enjoy.

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:

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TECHNOLOGY:

Create Accountability – Drive Execution
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Verne Harnish

Verne Harnish is founder of the world-renowned Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) and chaired for fifteen years EO’s premiere CEO program, the “Birthing of Giants” and WEO’s “Advanced Business” executive program both held at MIT. Founder and CEO of Gazelles, a global executive education and coaching company with over 150 coaching partners on six continents, Verne has spent the past three decades helping companies scale-up. The “Growth Guy” syndicated columnist, he’s also the Venture columnist for FORTUNE magazine. He’s the author of Scaling Up (Rockefeller Habits 2.0); Mastering the Rockefeller Habits; and along with the editors of Fortune, authored The Greatest Business Decisions of All Times," for which Jim Collins wrote the foreword. Verne also chairs FORTUNE Magazine’s annual Leadership and Growth Summits and serves on several boards including chairman of The Riordan Clinic and the newly launched Geoversity. He is an investor in many scale-ups. A father of four, he enjoys piano, tennis, and magic as a card-carrying member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians.

Dangerous Habit; Trillion Dollars; Changing Minds; Jan 30 – Feb 4 Geoversity

YPO BHAG; YPO and EO Join Forces; Operation Toy Story; Happy Thanksgiving

Verne Harnish

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