Most Disappointing Leader; World’s Greatest; Founders are Best; Forum Equity Partners; 7 Minutes to Success

"…insights for scale-ups"

HEADLINES:

No one is worthless, they can at least serve as a bad example.

Scaling Up Club — delivering 7 minutes of curated and practical executive education to your desk every week, below is the first selected video clip based on Salim Ismail's powerful and groundbreaking book Exponential Organizations, but first…

Most Disappointing Leaders — Fortune has named 19 leaders around the world that had terrible a 2015. And they ask you to vote for the most disappointing – how fun is that! BTW, I don't think Tony Hsieh, Zappos, should have made the list – and happy to see he's at least in last place for worst leader in the voting. And #1 right now? Rick Snyder, Governor of Michigan (Flint water situation). Fortune's commentary on why each failed is instructive – worth 3 minutes to scan down through the list.

Founders Make the Best CEOs — USA Today also studied 19 leaders, CEOs of the S&P 500 who were the original founders and still at the helm, including Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook) and Reed Hastings (Netflix). Over the last three-year period, the founders drove their stocks up 97.5% vs. 31% for the hired guns – the magical 3x ratio we see between good and great firms! And it seems Pandora is reading the trends, which announced on Monday that they are replacing their current CEO with the original founder, Tim Westergren. The article goes on to detail results of companies that bring back their founders, like Starbucks did. It's worth 2 minutes to scan the article and glance at the charts.

World's 50 Greatest Leaders — Fortune's annual list has a new #1, Jeff Bezos (age 52) at Amazon (and as owner of The Washington Post and sole owner of rocketship company Blue Origin). Angela Merkel, Paul Ryan, an NBA basketball player, and an Australian marathoner are four of the other World's 50 Greatest Leaders. Notably missing were most of the other heads of state, including Obama, and the candidates for US President! Adam Lashinsky's piece on Jeff Bezos and 2-minute video are worth the time – and the big hint to Bezos's success? Delegate heavily – he's moved from being at the center of a hub and spoke org structure to becoming a "great leader of leaders"! Spend your spare 6 minutes reading through the Bezos piece.

Forum Equity Partners' 30ft 3D Mural (Gazelles case study) — Toronto-based Forum Equity Partners has financed many "P3" deals-public-private partnerships-such as arts centers, student housing, courthouses, prisons and an $82.5 million pedestrian tunnel to Toronto's city airport. After founder & CEO Richard Abboud attended my 2.5 day YPO Scaling Up program in 2012, he brought on Gazelles Certified Cboach Les Rubenovitch, adopted Topgrading for getting the right talent on the bus, has executed on a series of quarterly themes, and introduced two new lines of business. Given the rapid growth since, they recently moved into spectacular new offices with electronically controllable standup desks. And to emphasize their company values they installed a 30-foot high 3D mural in their new space. Take 1 minute to scan through the details in this Huffington Post piece and take a look at the photo of the mural.

7-Minutes Per Week — The Impact of Doubling Patterns — thank you to the hundreds that signed up for the Scaling Up Club last week. This week's 7-minute clip (see below for how to access) is from Salim Ismail's groundbreaking book, Exponential Organizations. If you want to understand the impact of doubling patterns, you'll want to watch the below clip. Salim focuses on specific and practical examples of disruptive technologies that are impacting both your business and industry. The full course, Exponential Organizations, gives you a guideline for how to leverage specific business attributes in order to grow, disrupt, and lead your industry.

Have 7 minutes? See slides 7 to 21 (minutes 3:20-10:36). Only have one minute? Still valuable to check out slides 78 and 79 that detail the 10 attributes that drive Exponential Organizations.
To access both clips: Scaling Up Club Members go here, Non members can join here to enjoy!

Heading Down Under — my annual tour of Australia has just been posted, leading one-day workshops in Sydney (12 Sep), Brisbane (13 Sep), and Auckland (14 Sep). For more info.

Bethlehem, PA (12 Apr), Mexico City (14 Apr), Edmonton (28 Apr) — and our Certified Coaching Partners continue to host one-day Scaling Up workshops throughout the year – these three in April.

COACHING:

Have you ever wondered if your company would be a good candidate to work with an executive growth coach? Click here to watch Gazelles International President Keith Cupp describes the four most important attributes of successful clients.

And if you're interested in becoming a world-class certified Gazelles International coach, please contact Jean Carpenter at [email protected] / (360) 798.9471.

Align Software puts everyone on the Same Page – Literally! See, in real time every person in your organization and how they are progressing on their priorities – alongside how they Align to the Company Priorities! Scale Up your Rockefeller Habits implementation with www.aligntoday.com – on your computer and on your phone.

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.