12 Greatest Entrepreneurs; The Advantage – Lencioni; Three People to Fire; Sad Story
March 22, 2012
80 Seats Left; Saving Massive Amounts of Time; Four Short Interviews; EO Ft Worth
April 5, 2012

Zuckerberg’s Priorities; Elon Musk Vision; Bad Meeting Habits; India Tour; YPO Workshop

"…keeping you great"

HEADLINES:  

Road to London — German-based Keller Sports has a "150-days-goal-theme" – more below, but first…

Mark Zuckerberg's 2012 Priorities — take 30 seconds and read this excerpt from FORTUNE's "Inside Facebook" cover story. If you ever think some of the most successful entrepreneurs in history don't understand the importance of priorities and focus and discipline, Zuckerberg's gathering under the "big white tent" provides another concrete example that these fundamentals remain important even in this new era of hyper-growth. We're approaching the start of another quarter for most firms. Does your team know the priorities for the next 90 days and for 2012?

Elon Musk — From PayPal to electric cars to rockets, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk wants his company, SpaceX, to build America's next manned spacecraft. Please set aside 14 minutes and watch this piece on Elon – and prepare to be hugely inspired (yes, showed this to my two oldest children as well). And watch how raw and real Elon speaks – and his ability to crank up the drama!! Thanks to Bill Becker, BDI, for sharing this video clip.

"Bad Meeting" Survey Data: The daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly and annual meeting rhythm is so important. And I love what Sam Parker and his team at GiveMore.com are creating to help leaders kick off and support their meetings. Their material has been helping leaders at some of the world's top organizations get people excited, committed, and focused on what needs to be done. They recently did a survey asking people 'What frustrates you most about meetings at work?' Over 1600 people responded. Click here for the Top 10 reasons people hate meetings and for tips on how to have better meetings. Print out the list and review at your next meeting! Seriously!!

Crowdfund Investing Passes!! Entrepreneur Woodie Neiss and his team proved that with enough focus and persistence you can change the course of history! The JOBS bill passed and is just waiting for a final White House signature. Most significant to growth firms in the US, to quote this NY Times summary of the legislation, "through crowd-funding, or the sale of small amounts of stock to many individuals, companies could solicit equity investments through the Internet or elsewhere, raising up to $1 million annually without being required to register the shares for public trading with the Securities and Exchange Commission." This is how Ben and Jerry's funded their venture; now we all have an easier task both raising and investing in growth firms!

Attention YPOers — next YPO International "Making the Rockefeller Habits Rock" 2.5 day workshop is open for registration. Limited to the first 15 YPO executive teams. October 18 – 20, Dallas. Notes YPOer Dan Knox, GSM Systems "We have implemented many of your Habits from the YPO International workshop last October and they are truly transformative. It has genuinely changed the game for us."

Road to London — Jakob Keller, CEO of Keller Sports, sent me the following note "I want to share with you our current '150-days-goal-theme' named 'Road to London.' Together with our partner Mizuno (manufacturer of sporting goods) we have set up a competition and the winner will be rewarded with a free travel to London for the Olympic Games. Free tickets, free flights, no hotel costs etc.!"

Running Track — continues Keller "We have set up a running track (as running is one of our two sports) with small figures for every of our employees (currently 21). For each priority that has been fully reached (key = critical number of each priority) during the 1st and 2nd quarter 2012 they will earn 70 points (as we have max. 4 priorities per quarter => 560 points maximum in both quarters). We also wanted to stress the importance of our core values so we said that also the performance of "how much our employees live our core values" will be taken into account. For every core value we give a maximum of 20 points per quarter => 120 max per quarter = 240 max in both quarters. As we have the "core value evaluation for every employee as a normal part of our quarterly employee talk this doesn't cause more work."

Raffle
— concludes Keller "for each 100 points an employee earns, they get a chance in the hat – this way all employees have a chance to win. The more points the more chances to win the trip – and along the way we'll award a series of minor prizes – lunches, movie tixs, dinner for two, tennis balls, etc. – then have the grand drawing for the trip – this keeps it exciting up to the very last minute."

Rockefeller Habits in India — I'm back in India with one-day workshops – Mumbai April 25; Bangalore April 26.

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.