Marissa Mayer Unauthorized; 100 Fastest Growing Firms; Nassim Taleb’s Advice; “Undercover Boss” at Summit
September 5, 2013
Top 40 under 40; Power of Hyper-specialization; favorite sales tip; Oisin Brown’s book; Oct 10 Topgrading
September 19, 2013

Zuckerberg’s Challenge; No Managers, Just Coaches; 5 Tips Driving Revenue; 1pm ET Webinar with Hostage Negotiator



We just finished our second retreat with David Chavez (Gazelles coach). I
have to say that David is awesome. He says it's all us and not him, but
that's a load of crap. Very few people could get this group to focus for 10
minutes, let alone two-plus days.


 


Preston Law, Chief Consultant





Atlas Development Corporation



Zuckerberg's Bizarre Self-Improvement Goal


— each year Mark Zuckerberg, CEO of Facebook, sets some interesting challenge
for himself – learn Mandarin, wear a tie for a year (show he's serious about
business), or only eat meat from animals he's killed! "This year, my challenge
is to meet a new person outside of Facebook every day," he said Wednesday at the
TechCrunch Disrupt conference. According to Zuckerberg's own rules, he needs to
have a face-to-face conversation with the person, not just shake hands or chat
online according to Heather Kelly in this

CNN/Money piece
. Take 2 minutes to read why Zuckerberg pursues these
challenges, how he chose this latest challenge (I've been saying that
entrepreneurs have challenges with people!), and what he's learned in the
process. Then pick a challenge for yourself and see if you can stay focused on
achieving it.


Finding it Difficult to Get Through to Someone?
Zuckerberg isn't the only one. Dr. Mark Goulston, #1
international bestselling author of six books, a former FBI hostage negotiation
trainer, contributor to

HBR
and

Business Insider

and a UCLA professor of psychiatry for more than twenty five years, is hosting a
free one-hour webinar entitled How
to get through to anyone
TODAY (Friday) at 1pm ET hosted by Citrix which
already has more than 6000 registrants – sorry about the late notice. One of our
keynote speakers at the

Fortune Growth Summit 2013
, Goulston notes, "If you like TED talks, you will
love this presentation."

5
Ways to Boost Revenue



my latest Venture column in Fortune is out
.
The most important tip is shared online – refocus the sales manager (though you
have to be a subscriber to the magazine to read the rest of the column).
Specifically, he or she needs to spend at least 50% of their week on coaching.
And to reinforce this primary job of the sales manager, retitle them Sales Coach
– I'm serious!

Coach
vs. Manage

— …in fact, let's start a worldwide movement to get rid of the word
manage/manager and universally replace it with the word coach. This is what
every frontline to senior leader should be doing 50% of their time anyway; the
other 50% is gathering ideas from talking with customers, garnering best
practices, executive education, or being a player/coach themselves. Consider it
– Customer Service Coach instead of Customer Service Manager, etc.

Key
to Peak Performance

— and to continue this theme, my
recent Growth Guy syndicated column
focuses on the power of having a coach.
Kevin Sheridan, CEO of 80-employee Rutgers Permanent Painting in Vauxhall, N.J.,
is having his most profitable year in four years having pivoted the company with
steady pushing by his coach, Mark Green. Jeff Berstein, CEO of IMAGEFirst, used
his coach Patrick Thean to help him cascade daily huddles throughout the company
and implement better hiring practices like Topgrading which has increased its
percentage of "A" players from 52% to 70%. Notes Berstein, "We weren't going to
be able to do this on our own. It's much more effective when you bring in an
outside person to keep you focused." Take 4 minutes to read how Sheridan and
Berstein are working with their coaches to drive performance (and pay for the
fees many times over).


Hiring is Back

— seems the once hot BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China) are
experiencing downturns while the western countries are seeing an uptick. This
means hiring is back and the new online Topgrading Class is proving popular as
the war for talent continues to heat up. A new Topgrading Master Practitioner
Class Launches Oct/10. For details including:

a.    

Two
case studies (Healthcare and Services)

b.   

Review
the full outline of the class including learning objectives for each of the six
sessions

c.    


Experience the class discussions



Visit:

http://growthinstitute.com/topgrading/
. Online class includes one-to-one
coaching; 9 hours of online learning; and peer group sessions via webinars – the
next hybrid model of education that saves travel time and money. Price is
$1997/leader. For more information contact Juan Gonzalez at

[email protected]
or call him at 1 800 975 5108 x.2.



COACHING:




Need help implementing the Rockefeller Habits?

Verne Harnish
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.