Mastering the Rockefeller Habits
What are the underlying handful of fundamentals that haven't changed for over a hundred years? From Harnish's famous One-Page Strategic Plan to his concise outline of eight practical actions you can take to strengthen your culture, this book is a compilation of best practices adapted from some of the best-run firms on the planet. Included is an instructive chapter co-authored by Rich Russakoff, revealing winning tactics to get banks to finance your business. Lastly, there are case studies demonstrating the validity of Harnish's practical approaches. If you are looking for an expanded and updated version of this 2002 best-seller, look for Verne Harnish's latest title Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...and Why the Rest Don't (Rockefeller Habits 2.0). In Scaling Up, Harnish and his team share practical tools and techniques for building an industry-dominating business. These approaches have been honed from over three decades of advising tens of thousands of CEOs and executives and helping them navigate the increasing complexities (and weight) that come with scaling up a venture. This book is written so everyone - from frontline employees to senior executives - can get aligned in contributing to the growth of a firm. There's no reason to do it alone, yet many top leaders feel like they are the ones dragging the rest of the organization up the S-curve of growth.
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What Hacker News says
- Three books that you should read, and why they will help you at this point:
1. High Output Management, Andy Grove - Explains management from first principles in a very engineering mindset. You'll understand the value of meetings, one-on-one's and so on.
2. Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, Verne Harnish - Explains the structure of a business, and the priorities and trade-offs of rapid growth. A bit more holistic and pragmatic than #1, and assumes you're stepping up into new roles and responsibilities relatively frequently
3. Critical Conversations, Grenny/Switzler - Talks about the need for (and differences between) discussion/conflict/control/coordination in communication in an org. Reading this should help you recognise when and how to speak up.
These are more management than leadership, but I found that a strong basis in management made it easier for me to step into leadership when necessary - I knew the why/what/how of the technical and organisational sides of the matter, and built trust and respect on that competence/understanding.
Ping me by DM if you want more customised recommendations - There's books like Pat Lencioni's '7 dysfunctions of a team' which are excellent for helping you recognise and address the most obvious flaws in a team, and it's a great starting point for becoming a good leader.
I'd also recommend things like therapy or the Landmark Forum as a way of working through your feelings about leadership and the way you relate to people. Leading people will bring out a bunch of positive and negative stereotypes in you and the people around you, and I don't think there's a better way than doing the emotional labour of recognising and working through those issues - you start getting into territoriality and survival-mode mechanisms when you are in charge of teams, and so much of it is kept below conscious awareness because the emotions involved tend to be overwhelming and imprinted at a very young age.
- You'd need to know what the burn rate is composed of: their engineering organisation might be less expensive than the marketing budget in a single major market.
If they cut ad spend and raise costs, then their growth story stops and other competitors have a window to move.
The go-to reading (at least a few years ago) for handling the difficulties of burn rate at a high-growth company is 'Mastering the Rockefeller Habits' by Verne Harnish, the chapter on cashflow. I think 'The hard thing about hard things' also talks about how this situation can kill your company if you're unlucky or unprepared
- 1.) Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?: Seth Godin
2.)Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Growing Firm - Verne Harnish
