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Strategic Discipline Blog

Leadership’s First Mission: Fulfill Spiritual Resources

Posted by Douglas A Wick on Mon, Jun 27, 2011

Several of my clients and prospects have recently asked for my coaching help to elevate the management teams in their organizations.  The question often asked is how do you go about improving leaders and managers?

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Topics: Good to Great, Core Values, leadership, Core Purpose, Jim Collins

The Key to Improvement – Marshall Goldsmith Houston Growth Summit

Posted by Douglas A Wick on Thu, Jun 2, 2011

Whether you’re a business person considering hiring a coach or concerned whether your employees will respond to your coaching there’s just one major factor that determines success.  The biggest challenge Marshall Goldsmith noted is selection.  If they don’t care or you don’t care don’t waste your time.  As a coach or a business owner you can’t change those who don’t want to change.  You can only help if the person you are working with wants to change.   Inner motivation is the key to successful coaching.

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Topics: Discipline, Good to Great, People, Pearsons Law, Jim Collins

Run, Improve or Create Systems. Selecting the Right People

Posted by Douglas A Wick on Mon, May 9, 2011

A common mistake in the recruiting and hiring process is to be unclear about who and what you are hiring for.  With every one of our growing clients, we recommend Topgrading methods to select the right employees.  It’s important to recognize that of the Four Decisions that impact your business growth, People are the critical first piece.  I remind you of Jim Collins words in Good to Great, “First who than what.” 

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Topics: Good to Great, Accountability, People, A Players, Topgrading, The Right People

The Right People – Your Accountability

Posted by Douglas A Wick on Thu, Feb 10, 2011

Last blog I discussed the importance of rituals and routines in developing accountability.  A recent article in the New York Times caught my attention since it focused on successful companies and the importance of getting the right people to make a business great.  People decisions are extremely important to making your business successful, and too often we fail to recognize how keeping the wrong people in our business holds us back.  We don’t see this as a piece of the accountability puzzle.  

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Topics: Discipline, Good to Great, Accountability, People, The Right People

People Decisions – Where Will You Finish?

Posted by Douglas A Wick on Mon, Nov 8, 2010

A group of 12 young men, high school age have just completed a strenuous basketball practice.  The coach has asked them to join him in his class room to discuss the upcoming season.  He’s a new coach this year, although he has many years of experience.  He asks the team what place they expect to finish in the conference noting that this is a team sport and it’s important the team has a goal to shoot for.  He asks everyone to write down their expected finish, and then collects the results.  The votes are counted.  Ten voted for first place, 2 for second.  

What place do you think the team finished?

If you said second you’re right.  The account is from my senior season of high school basketball.  What does that tell you about the importance of having the right people on the bus?  Our team had steadily improved the previous two seasons.  When I was a sophomore the varsity basketball team hadn’t won in 36 games.  Our team largely composed of sophomores won two games that season and finished 2 – 17.  The next season we improved to 12-7.  We were a confident team going into our senior year.  As a junior I recall playing in the final game of the regular season against a team who was battling us for 3rd place in our conference. In addition to this battle, I was in a close contest with one of their players for the scoring title in the conference.  I recall two of our players telling me before that game not to worry, they would make sure this player didn’t score so not only would we win the game they’d make sure I’d win the conference scoring title.  That’s the kind of players you want on your team, people willing to sacrifice for the good of others and the team. 

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Topics: Discipline, Good to Great, priorities

People Not Your Most Important Asset – Practical Discipline #1

Posted by Douglas A Wick on Wed, Nov 3, 2010

What’s the ultimate throttle on growth?  

For any great company, it’s not markets, technology, competition, or products. The one thing above all others: the ability to get and keep enough of the right people.

If you’ve read Michael Gerber’s book The E-Myth Revisited, the emphasis on systems can lead you to believe people are not your most important asset.  As I noted in the White Paper, Was Michael Gerber Wrong, Gerber’s emphasis on systems is so intense it’s easy to lose sight of the importance of people in building your business equation.  In Good to Great, Jim Collins states, “The old adage ‘People are you most important asset’ turns out to be wrong.  People are not your most important asset.  The right people are.” 

Even Gerber subsequently recognized this and is quoted in the Forward to the book How to Hire A-Players, “It takes A-Players to conceive, design and build a world-class business system so C-Players can produce A-Player results. How To Hire A-Players tells you how to find the A-Players you need to grow your business.  Read it, or forever settle for less than you deserve.”

The hardest part of hiring is delaying a decision when you are not confident about the people you’ve interviewed for the position.  Whether you use Topgrading or not [We strongly urge our clients to] the cost of hiring the wrong person makes it prohibitive to move forward if you wish your business to grow.  Many business owners don’t feel they have the time to go through the Topgrading process.   A three-hour-plus interview, tandem interviews, reference checking, completing a job summary scorecard, etc., seems too time-consuming.   When you add up the cost of a wrong decision the compelling results tell you that to do otherwise is courting disaster and swallowing prohibitive expense.  So why do so many business owners continue to hire the wrong person?  They don’t have a system and they don’t see the hidden expenses of their mistakes.  Hiring estimates for mis-hire under $100K salary is 14 times.  Over $100K the cost shoots to 28 times.  Even if you discount either of these two numbers, the reality is whatever you pay the wrong person; you paid much more than you would have had you selected the right person.  Add in the frustration and cost time to repeat the process again.

Collins in Good to Great emphasized three practical disciplines for getting the right people on the bus.  His case for Strategic Discipline begins with Practical Discipline #1: When in doubt, don't hire- keep looking.  He refers to the immutable law of management physics, Packard’s Law named for the co-founder of HP.  No company can grow revenues consistently faster than its ability to get enough of the right people to implement that growth and still become a great company. If your growth rate in revenues consistently outpaces your growth rate in people, you simply will not-indeed cannot-build a great company.

How many times have you made the wrong decision on the people you hired?  How much has this cost you and how much will it cost you in the future?  Do you recognize how important making the right people decision are?  If you did why would you make the same mistake over and over?   

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Topics: Good to Great, Topgrading

Good is the Enemy of Great: Failed Strategic Discipline

Posted by Douglas A Wick on Thu, Sep 23, 2010

Good is the enemy of great.  That’s the first chapter of Good to Great.  So what’s the problem with being good?  Nothing.  Except it limits us.  Except that it means we are vulnerable to others that decide to be great.  Except that it means we are okay with mediocre.  Do you want to be okay with being mediocre, or simply just good?  I don’t. 

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Topics: Good to Great, Strategic Discipline, Jim Collins

12 Rules for Management Discipline

Posted by Douglas A Wick on Mon, Sep 20, 2010

A recent article from Gallup Management Journal on What Really Drives Financial Success?  reminded me how valuable the book First Break All the Rules is for determining strength in the workplace.  If you employ five or more employees I strongly recommend you pick up the book or its more recent version 12: The Elements of Great Managing.  It reveals the following 12 rules as being critical to having a well engaged and performing workplace:

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Topics: Good to Great, employee engagement, Strategic Discipline, Pearsons Law, Q12, First Break All the Rules

People & Hiring – Upon Further Review

Posted by Douglas A Wick on Sat, Sep 13, 2008

Even though I’m big supporter and believer in Michael Gerber’s principles as provided in The E-Myth Revisited, Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What To Do About It, and was a Certified E-Myth Coach for ten years, my coaching experience with over 250 small to mid-sized businesses has provided a keen insight into where some of Michael’s assertions don’t always work in the real world.  

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Topics: Good to Great, E-Myth, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, emyth

Churn

Posted by Douglas A Wick on Thu, Jul 24, 2008

A couple of my clients are having issues with their employees right now. One of them a copy sales company has had issues with performance with his sales people and has been continually working to find the right balance of stress and nurturing to get production. More on that in the next blog.

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Topics: Good to Great

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The Strategic Discipline Blog focuses on midsize business owners with a ravenous appetite to improve his or her leadership skills and business results.

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