Proven Insights into Mastering Strategy with Verne Harnish

"We have the framework: right people doing the right things right. So, it’s figuring out the right things for people to do, and that those right things are different than what everyone else in your industry is doing. That is the essence of strategy: doing it differently."?

Verne Harnish?is founder of the world-renowned Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO), with over 16,000 members worldwide, and chaired for fifteen years EO’s premiere CEO program held at MIT, a program in which he still teaches today.?Founder and CEO of Scaling Up, a global executive education and coaching company with over 200 partners on six continents, Verne has spent the past four decades helping companies scale up.?

He’s the author of the bestseller?Mastering the Rockefeller Habits,?authored?The Greatest Business Decisions of All Time; and wrote?Scaling Up (Rockefeller Habits 2.0)?which has been translated into 22 languages and has won eight major international book awards including the prestigious International Book Award for Best General Business book. His latest book,?Scaling Up Compensation, rocketed to the #1 HR book on Amazon.?

Verne also chairs the annual ScaleUp Summits and serves on several boards including vice chair of The Riordan Clinic; co-founder and chair of Geoversity; and board member of the social venture Million Dollar Women, and is a private investor in many scaleups.?

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Verne's Top Insights:?

1. Follow the 7-70 rule (3:25): Verne advises organizations to find the seven percent of the market that aligns with what your business can be best yet. You can either set your sights on the low end (IKEA) or the high end (Apple), and by winning that seven percent of global market share you will upset 93 percent of the market and gain ownership of profitability. Verne offers the reminder, “The riches are in the niches.” To find the right niche for your organization, examine your existing customer base using data and analytics. Determine which customers are the most valuable and are the easiest to acquire. Next, figure out the “job to be done” for those customers. Each customer segment will likely have a different job to be done. Once you figure that out, you will begin to discover your niche.??

2. "Blackmail” is the best strategy (8:22): According to Verne, the hidden champions in business are those that generate huge margins off low or no market costs. Blackmailing a market means finding a way to lock down a critical component that allows you to control the constraint in your industry. (Softsoap gained the upper hand over Colgate-Palmolive by controlling the company that made spring pumps.)?

3. Great leaders set up a council of advisors (12:03): Verne learned from Jim Collins, author of Good to Great, that to drive to greatness, leaders need to work on strategy once a week. In your organization, the best way to keep strategy top of mind is to set up a council. This is a small team that meets every week to talk about and work through the big strategy questions. This team should include four to five members, including a fewoutside of the executive team.?

4. Breakthrough strategists need a thinking studio (13:48): Most great leaders have a space, apart from their offices, that they can escape to for deep creative thinking. This should be a separate place that inspires your creativity and allows you to think and work on their business.

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More Resources:?

1. Visit scalingup.com for free tools and to sign up for Verne’s weekly insight. ?
2. Follow Verne on Twitter.?
3. Connect with Verne on LinkedIn.??

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