A Clearly Defined Vision Can Transform Your Business

12 Steps to Business Transformation – Step 1

Vision is a powerful picture of the future which creates an ideal and unique image of what your organization will become or achieve. It provides the reason for the organization’s existence. It defines the organization’s reason WHY and is the “North Star” that every action in the organization is guided by.

Defining the vision for your business is also step 1 in my new free Ebook “12 Steps to Business Transformation.”

This is arguably the most important step in any business. Without it, there is no apparent reason for the business to exist and nothing for the employees or staff to rally around.

12 Steps to Business Transformation

12 Steps to Business Transformation is founded on a simple business model and describes the 12 steps required to implement and execute on the model. The whole model is summarized in the Thinking Business Blueprint shown below.

13 Qualities of Successful Business Leaders

A few years ago I attended a keynote speech from Pat Williams, Senior VP of Orlando Magic. His topic was the “Thirteen Qualities of Winners”.

Williams has had an amazing amount of leadership experience in the sports world at different levels within multiple franchise organizations. Perhaps his biggest venture was establishing the Orlando Magic NBA team, which is where he was at the time of the speech.

After I reviewed his list, it became very clear that the 13 qualities he identified equally apply to business leaders. If a business leader does not have these 13 qualities, they and their business’ potential, will be limited.

I took the liberty of replacing the word “Winners” with “Successful Business Leaders” in the list of 13 qualities below. This list describes the attributes of a successful business leader!

5 Steps to Turn a Business From Failure to Success

Greg Brenneman is one of the best CEOs that you’ve never heard of! He is responsible for the turnaround of firms like Continental Airlines, Home Depot, Burger King and others. He currently is the Chairman, President and CEO of CCMP Capital, an equity investment firm that specializes in making buyout and growth equity investments.

CCMP Capital look for underperforming and undervalued businesses and invest in them in a way that they can control them and turn them around. Although Brenneman is a “low key” leader and doesn’t seek the limelight, he is one of the best business leaders in the marketplace.

He has written the book Right Now and All at Once in which he describes the leadership philosophies that he uses to acquire, lead and turnaround businesses. One of the philosophies he describes is his five step plan to turnaround and grow a business. As he emphasizes in his book, this five step process should be used in all businesses, not just businesses in trouble!

Secrets of the Millionaire Mind

Mastering the Inner Game of Wealth

The book review for this week is Secrets of the Millionaire Mind by T. Harv Eker

Eker describes “secrets” he has discovered in studying rich people and contrasts these secrets against the working habits of ordinary people. Although I thought the book had too many advertisements for Eker’s seminars and too much new age fluff, there are some great insights to be learned.

My takeaway from this book is the 17 wealth principles. They are outlined below.

Givers and Takers: What Are You and Why It Matters

As a new feature of Thinking Business Blog, I am posting a brief summary of the business books that I am reading. This will be a very high level synopsis of the book and what I gained from it. I will publish these summaries as I complete the books and not on a predetermined schedule. I trust you will benefit from them.

The first book I reviewed was Procrastinate on Purpose.

The second review was Bill Browder’s book, Red Notice

The third review was Atul Gawande’s book The Checklist Manifesto

The fourth review was Brad Lomenick’s H3 Leadership

The fifth review was Eula Bliss’ On Immunity: An Inoculation

The sixth review is Give and Take by Adam Grant

Grant provides a detailed compilation of research in the area of giving and receiving. The results from this research, backed up by reams of data and an overwhelming number of examples is that there are three types of people; Givers, Takers and Matchers.