Buffett’s New Heir Apparent; Strategic Preparation; Do More Faster; Next Week’s Elections

  "…keeping you great"

HEADLINES:

Next Week's Elections in the U.S. — thoughts below, but first…

NOTE: Date Change — the Fortune Leadership Summit is now May 10 — 11, Houston, TX. We changed the dates because April 19 — 20 is Passover. NOTE 2: We're replacing the Sales & Marketing Summit with the Leadership Summit and will integrate sales and marketing topics within both the Leadership and Growth Summits.

Free Help for One-Page Strategic Plan — there's a new interactive "vook" (video book) that guides you through completing the revised One-Page Strategic Plan. Just click on each box of the interactive plan and a short 30 to 60 second video pops up explaining what is to go into each box. You can also fill it in online and then print a completed copy. Here's a link — expand the "Strategy" section and you'll see the Vook. We're creating vooks for all the other one-page tools as well.

Strategic Preparation: Three Critical Steps — it's important that you survey your customers and employees going into your strategic planning session for 2011. Here's my latest 750 word "Growth Guy" column on the subject (publishes Nov 1) — review as you prepare for your annual 2011 strategy session.

Improved One-Page Tools — we've also redesigned the Word versions of all our one-page tools (People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash) so they are easier to fill in without messing up the formatting. Go to this link and expand each section to see the various one-page "growth tools."

Phoenix, Chicago, Seattle, Toronto, New Jersey, Portland — these are the locations of our upcoming Rockefeller Habits workshops in the U.S. — a great way to prepare your team for 2011. Here's a link to dates and information.

Do More Faster — Brad Feld's First Book — one of the top VCs and maverick's in the VC world (and founder of two EO chapters), Brad Feld and his co-author David Cohen share their combined 50 years experience in starting and funding growth firms. BTW, they are on a book tour stopping in Chicago today, San Antonio Monday, and San Diego Wednesday. Here's a link to the details.

Todd Combs, Buffett Heir Apparent? — the big news this week was Buffett's hiring of Todd Combs. Seems Buffett is looking for two replacements — one as CEO of Berkshire Hathaway and the other to manage the investment side of the business. David Sokol, who keynoted the Fortune Growth Summit last week, is considered the likely CEO replacement. However, there's been no one in the wings on the investment side until this week. Here's Fortune's article this week on why Buffett hired Combs.

In a Slump? Relax More! — Does it seem like the harder you push, the more the business is pushing back? Sales slumping? This piece in the Wall Street Journal relates how Jack Nicklaus dealt with his golfing slumps. The counterintuitive key? Stop working so hard and take some time to relax. Signs you're in a slump include a loss of confidence, over-thinking every move, dwelling on past failures, or working too much. Thanks to Jon Iveson, founder of Learning to Be a Champion (and Gazelles coaching partner), for bringing this to my attention.

Next Week's Elections — (warning, don't watch if you're politically sensitive) my thoughts are represented in this 4 minute video my 14-year old son put together this week — it's his generation that will really pay the price for our ineptitude as citizens. I helped him with the script and held the camera, but he did all the rest. My only other contribution was keeping him from brandishing his air gun in the video — boys will be boys.