Strategic Discipline Blog

Would you like to get more value from your team? Maximize their output and contribution?

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.  

John D Rockefeller understood how to operate a successful business. That’s why he grew Standard Oil into the mega giant it became. Verne Harnish [Mastering the Rockefeller Habits] has distilled the principles Rockefeller used to achieve success and as a Gazelle’s business coach we use these daily in our coaching practices to help our clients follow the same success formula that Rockefeller gained.

Last evening while reading the book I’d purchased on Civil War battles the enormity of the decision making these generals had to make occurred to me. It must have weighed on them heavily. We view the decisions of generals to delay or attack and fail to grasp the gravity of the situation. Each decision they made would lead to deaths. A decision to delay or dig in, while easily second guessed today, easily might have been that general’s effort to reduce the burden of killing more soldiers. 

“The battle Chancellorsville was one which I believe neither side, the Union nor the Confederates won. Both sides made major mistakes that hurt them in their efforts to win the war.” With these words our guide from the National Parks Service opened her 45 minute presentation on the battle of Chancellorsville and the events surrounding the death of General ‘Stonewall’ Jackson. 

Answer for me today what is your #1 priority? Do you know it? Did you have to think about it, or did you just finish working on it? 

As a Certified E-Myth Coach for over ten years I’m well aware of the value E-Myth Mastery provided business owners with the opportunity to create systems for their business. The Program provided step-by-step documented processes to transform a business with very little structure into an organized, systematic, policy driven company that would produce consistent, predictable results.   What’s wrong with that? Absolutely nothing, yet many clients never achieved this degree of success. The challenge often became that the owner became so absorbed in developing systems that he replaced the tactical work in the business with the strategic work ON the business. Many an owner became disillusioned with the process of E-Myth Mastery due to this substitutional approach.    One form of tyranny [working in the business had been supplanted by another [working ON].

From my recent blog, someone asked me about Joseph Sugarman’s book Success Forces and what the six success forces are. The book was written in 1980, yet like most books that have valuable information, the information is timeless. One of the things I like so much about this book is its simplicity. In Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, Tom Meredith, former CFO of Dell who helped transform their financial structure and helped Dell survive in the early 90's by dramatically improving Dells cash conversion cycle offered the keys to running a good company are very similar to being a good parent,