Zuckerberg’s 2018 Goal; Facebook’s Theme; TentCraft’s 70+ Videos; Super Bowl Lessons

Published by Verne Harnish at February 8, 2018

"…insights for scaleups"

HEADLINES:

At the end of the day we viewed him as free consulting – painful, but free consulting.
	Indra Nooyi, the C.E.O. of PepsiCo, on how to deal with … activist investors who want you to split up the company

Fourth Quarter Comebacks — my newly adopted team, the Eagles, managed to thwart the Patriots expected fourth-quarter comeback in the Super Bowl. Nevertheless, there are some powerful management lessons to learn from the Patriots the power of perfect and consistent practice. Notes this article in The Ringer:

Patriots players who've also played elsewhere said that many teams take conditioning far less seriously or fail to apply it as specifically as New England does. Every team trains for football scenarios. Everyone focuses on explosion and being able to run short distances, but no one does it with more consistency, rigor, and smarts than the Patriots. It's a microcosm of the organization's philosophy as a whole: taking a simple thing and doing it better than anyone. None of the Patriots I spoke with have played for a team with the practice consistency of the Patriots – the same practices in September as December.

The article further notes:

In large part, the Patriots' tendency to do some of the wildest things the sport has ever seen is due to the simplest thing in athletics.

Please take 3 minutes to read this insightful article – then identify what are the simplest things in your business and perfect them! Thank you to Gazelles Certified coach Tom Meyer for pointing me to this article.

2 Second Improvements (Gazelles case study) — taking a page from Paul Aker's 2-Second Lean book and videos, Matt Bullock, President of Traverse City, MI-based TentCraft, drove a "Make it Better!" theme. Note's Matt:

Every single person in the company made a video in December, so we now have 70+ improvements that we were able to Celebrate, Accelerate and Cross-Pollinate.

Check them out. I particularly liked "Scott – Sales – Coffee Walks" (or maybe it was just his t-shirt!). Matt concludes:

Going forward we'll have each person make 1 video per quarter. I want people to help us make the place better by fixing what bugs them in their individual station. Great feedback so far. We show the videos at our morning huddles, and everyone is pretty fired up about them.

Thanks to their Gazelles Certified Coach Andy Bailey for passing along these fun videos.

Mark Zuckerberg's Personal Goal for 2018 — famous for his annual personal goals including "eating only what he killed" and "reading a book every other week," Facebook's founder has articulated his focus for 2018, as shared in this CNNtech post:

"The world feels anxious and divided, and Facebook has a lot of work to do — whether it's protecting our community from abuse and hate, defending against interference by nation states, or making sure that time spent on Facebook is time well spent. My personal challenge for 2018 is to focus on fixing these important issues."

What is your personal improvement goal for 2018?

Facebook's 2018 Theme — And Zuckerberg has set a related 2018 theme for Facebook:

To make sure Facebook isn't just fun but also good for your well-being and for society.

January's initiative aligned with this theme was to show more high quality, trusted news and include more local news. Notes Mark in this update:

Local news helps us understand the issues that matter in our communities and affect our lives. Research suggests that reading local news is directly correlated with civic engagement. People who know what's happening around them are more likely to get involved and help make a difference.

Lessons? Pick a 2018 theme for your company. Then make progress every two weeks, the length of a typical "sprint" in Silicon Valley – that's 26 improvements for the coming year! That's how you make consistent, steady progress, the equivalent of a Jim Collins' 20-mile march every two weeks.

PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi — I love Nooyi's quote highlighted above – a great way to view a taxing situation! Do you need to reframe a tough situation you're facing? In Freakonomics Radio's third episode in its six-week series "The Secret Life of CEOs" Stephen Dubner talks to PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi for the full 48 minutes about how she overhauled the company's junk-food portfolio, stared down activist investors, and learned to "leave the crown in the garage." Grab your favorite beverage this weekend and enjoy the interview which includes the audio (downloadable) and edited transcript.

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COACHING:

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TECHNOLOGY:

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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.

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