Category: Growth Guy Articles

By: Verne Harnish “Growth Guy” Oct 1, 2010 1:00:00 PM ET First, my public apology to all the companies I’ve misguided over the past twenty-five years, as well as an apology to my employees. And while I’m at it, let me add a public apology to my family and friends. I apologize for dredging up all their problems, for focusing on what is wrong instead of on what is right. I apologize for focusing on the F’s instead of the A’s. I just didn’t know any better until I read a thin 70 page book called the Thin Book of Appreciative Inquiry. …

By: Verne Harnish “Growth Guy” Oct 1, 2010 1:00:00 PM ET The company’s transformation began with Lim’s frustration with their inability to attract and retain quality people. It’s 2013 and your company is paying the highest wages in your industry, affording you the ability to attract and retain the best talent. Yet you have the lowest cost structure, so you have huge flexibility in pricing your competitors out of the market. Revenues have quadrupled while gross margins have increased almost 50%, generating record profits as a reward for all your hard work – and, by the way, you’re now dominating your …

By: Verne Harnish “Growth Guy” Oct 1, 2010 1:00:00 PM ET Motek promises to make their customers “Heroes.” Advanced Circuits guarantees the “Quick Turnaround” of custom printed circuit boards. Rackspace promises to deliver “Fanatical Support.” FedEx is promising “peace of mind.” Southwest Airlines has been delivering “low fares” from the very beginning. McDonalds has gone back to “speed.” What is the promise you’re making to your customers that both really matters to them and makes you diff erent from your competitors? What is the promise you’re making to your customers that both really matters to them and makes you different from …

By: Verne Harnish “Growth Guy” Oct 1, 2010 1:00:00 PM ET “To the thousands of American companies whose cries for justice went unanswered.” This is the dedication Brett Kingstone, CEO of Super Vision (NASDAQ SC:SUPVA) penned in his 2005 non-fiction technothriller The Real War Against America. Kingstone, founder of our nation’s leading fiber-optics display manufacturer (think Coke bottle in Times Square), details his battle with the real economic terrorists of our time, Chinese counterfeiters, as the local police, FBI, and U.S. Justice Department sat on their collective hands. Grab this Tom Clancy-style page-turner and read it! Thousands of our nation’s small …

By: Verne Harnish “Growth Guy” Oct 1, 2010 1:00:00 PM ET The BHAG serves as a North Star (or Southern Cross if you’re down under) for you and your team as you continue to drive the business forward on a day to day business. 99 stores supporting 99 villages is Thomas Lundgren’s 2020 vision for his Dubai-based company, The One Total Home Experience. Reaching 10% of all Australians with a “gifted experience” is Naomi Simson’s 2015 goal for her Sydney-based company Red Balloon. Averaging $1 revenue from every man, woman, and child in the U.S. per week is Fred Deluca’s 2010 focus for Subway. What …

By: Verne Harnish “Growth Guy” Oct 1, 2010 1:00:00 PM ET In building Verifone from $30 million to $600 million to dominate the global market of clearing credit card transactions, Hatim Tyabji said his key leadership/management tool was a small booklet that explained in eight languages the eight core values at the heart of Verifone’s culture and success “I essentially spent the last six years repeating myself,” noted Tyabji. What are your rules? Below are eight ways to bring these core values alive and a recommended process for “discovering” your true values if you’ve never committed them to writing. In essence, …

By: Verne Harnish “Growth Guy” Oct 1, 2010 1:00:00 PM ET … It was like I had been gathering all this information over the years and the break gave ‘it’ time to sift itself through to give me clarity. If you’ve been in business at least seven years, you’ve got it bad. Fourteen years, you’ve got it twice as bad. Twenty-one years? It’s like needing a triple by-pass. What is it? The seven year itch, which can lead to burnout or boredom. The cure? A month or two away from the business. Seriously! “I felt completely disconnected for the first time …

By: Verne Harnish “Growth Guy” Oct 1, 2010 1:00:00 PM ET Their vision, energy, and perseverance in the face of insurmountable odds never cease to amaze me. Entrepreneurs are the growth engines of economies. They have pioneered most of what matters or have at least provided the world the tools. They are raw, real, and revolutionary. They are the “e” in the non-diff erential equation driven world of chaos in which we live and work. They drive the “creative destruction” process of transformation that economist Joseph Schumpeter recognized was key to radical innovation and sustained long-term economic growth. This is why …

By: Verne Harnish “Growth Guy” Sept 30, 2010 4:00:00 PM ET The word customer is one of the most overused terms in the business world yet one of the least understood. Like many CEOs, Larry Weinberg thought he knew his customer base – and was marketing to it correctly. His award-winning company, BOWA, which for 22 years has built and remodeled luxury homes in the Washington, D.C. area, considered its main customer the architects who were doing design work on a home and needed a builder’s help on the job. “Yet early last year,” says Weinberg “we realized we were marketing …

By: Verne Harnish “Growth Guy” Sept 30, 2010 4:00:00 PM ET As a business leader the single most important skill you can develop is how to interview and hire the right people. “I was totally taken with the Topgrading premise when the book first came out. Bought it, used it, ordered copies for our leadership team,” notes Frank Buonanotte, founder of the Atlanta-based The Shopping Center Group and Party City of Atlanta. “We had AWESOME Topgrading results….46 % turnover to 5 % one year after implementation,” notes David Rich, President of 14 employee ICC/Decision Services, a mystery shopping service for national …