Linda posted on November 08, 2009 13:38
No, this post isn't about football, although that does come to mind given some of the games I have watched this season. Rather, that was Verne Harnish's message to the attendees at the ConnectWise Partner Summit 2009.
Harnish spoke in a keynote for about 80 minutes on the last day of the conference held in Orlando last week. Obviously, his message resonated with the attendees, because when he spoke for another 80 minutes in the afternoon and there were other options, the room was full of business owners who were anxious to hear more!
He started out by explaining that a gazelle wakes up every morning knowing that to survive, it has to outrun the lion. A lion wakes up every morning knowing that if he can't catch the gazelle, he isn't going to eat. So whether you are the lion or the gazelle, you better wake up running. He used this video to drive home that point.
Harnish is known as "The Growth Guy" and has written Mastering the Rockefeller Habits - What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Growing Firm. He challenged us to get serious about doubling our revenue over the next 36 months without adding people. But more than that, he had several ideas to help us get started on that goal and more than a few suggestions of books that would help us with particular strategies.
It's very difficult to summarize everything he told us in a blog post. One thing that particularly struck me, in part because of conversations I am hearing and participating in with people in Lansing, was his statement that "you had better get global, at least in your thinking, and you better get lean." At that moment, I really wished that I was surrounded by all of the young, smart and global people from Lansing that I know would have appreciated his message. I only hope that over the coming weeks and months, I can not only begin to put my new knowledge to work growing KI Technology Group, but that I can pass along some of Harnish's ideas and strategies to friends and clients here.
Fortunately, I have a copy of Harnish's book, autographed no less, and that long list of reading that he recommended, so I won't have to rely completely on the notes that I was frantically taking. He stressed over and over that reading is one of the most important activities we can undertake.
So what about you? Are you playing to win?