“Innovation distinguishes between a leader and a follower.” — Steve Jobs
Innovation objectives are how you realize the potential for your business.  Innovation is how you can create game changers either in the marketplace, your product, or your processes.
From what I’ve seen, the people that do best with innovation are the ones that can effectively leverage their intuition.  I think the other real key is being able to turn innovation into results, both iteratively and incrementally.
In today’s world, I think another key that might not be as obvious is that …

“People who count their chickens before they are hatched, act very wisely, because chickens run about so absurdly that it is impossible to count them accurately” –  Oscar Wilde
How do you attract and retain good people?  People are your most important asset.  If your jobs aren’t attractive to qualified, ambitious people, you have an issue.  
In The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management, Peter Drucker writes about setting effective resources objectives.
Key Take Aways Here are my …

“Productivity is never an accident. It is always the result of a commitment to excellence, intelligent planning, and focused effort.” — Paul J. Meyer
If your business doesn’t have productivity objectives, it doesn’t have direction.  If your business doesn’t have productivity measurements, it doesn’t have control. 
I think the meta-point is, assuming both businesses produce effective results, the more efficient one wins in the long run.  That’s consistent with my experience.  I think another important point here is that if you focus on your productivity, you can usually find a …

“If you think you’re too small to have an impact, try going to bed with a mosquito in the room.”  — Anita Roddick
What’s the impact of your business on society and the economy?  Businesses don’t exist in a vacuum.  They exist within a society and an economy.  If your business is valued by society and the economy, you have a chance for survival.  If it’s not valued, society can put you out of business overnight. 
In The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on …

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” — Aldous Huxley
To make effective decisions, first figure out what would be the right thing to do.  That’s your starting point.
There’s a good chance you’ll have to compromise along the way, but first figure out what the right solution would be before you start trimming it down.  You can’t make the right compromises if you don’t first know what right is.
In The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management, Peter Drucker writes about …

There’s two different kinds of compromises in decision making.  One compromise results in a decision that gets you towards the solution.  The other compromise results in a decision that is worse than where you started from.  In The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management, Peter Drucker illustrates
Key Take AwaysHere’s my key take aways:

Half a loaf is better than no bread.
Half a baby is worse than none.

I think metaphors are great for illustrating points.  I think these metaphors are easy to relate …

Putting decisions into place usually requires compromises along the way or dealing with unforeseen events.  If your decision depends on everything going perfectly well, you’re in trouble.  If you don’t know the minimum your decision needs to accomplish, then you can end up taking compromises too far.  To make effective decisions, you need to know the boundaries.  You need to know what good like in terms of a continuum, from the minimal solution to the ideal.  Most importantly, don’t depend on the decision that requires everything to go right.  In …

“Remember, a real decision is measured by the fact that you’ve taken new action. If there’s no action, you haven’t truly decided.” — Tony Robbins
All talk, no action?  Good ideas, but no results?  A common problem is a lack of action commitments.
If you don’t break your decisions down into effective actions with owners, don’t expect results.  If you have owners for actions, but you haven’t equipped them for success, don’t be surprised when things fall through.  Turning decisions into effective actions requires thoughtful work assignments.
In The Essential Drucker: The Best …

“Profits, like sausages… are esteemed most by those who know least about what goes into them.” –  Alvin Toffler
How much profit do you really need to make?  You only have so much energy and time.  While the idea of making as much profit as possible sounds great, the reality is life’s full of trade-offs.  In the world of business, you need to know your minimum profitability to meet your objectives.  This helps you identify realistic goals and make more effective trade-offs. 
In The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years …

If you need to interview people, what are the key questions to ask when you’re interviewing someone?  In How to Run Successful Projects III: The Silver Bullet (3rd Edition), Fergus O’Connell suggests using three basic questions during the interview to help you evaluate your candidates.
3 Questions to Ask When You Interview
The three questions that O’Connell suggests are:

What have you done?
What do you want to do?
What are you like?

What Have You Done?
The question tells you about the candidates past experience and qualifications.  O’Connell says you can find out more on this …

This post is an index of my book nuggets from The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable, by Patrick M. Lencioni. In this book, the author outlines a model and actionable steps for overcoming hurdles, and building a cohesive, effective team. The five dysfunctions are (1) absence of trust, (2) fear of conflict, (3) lack of commitment, (4) avoidance of accountability, and (5) inattention to results.
My Nuggets
Here’s my nuggets so far …

Building Trust on Your Teams

This is an index of my book nuggets from The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, by Michael E. Gerber. In this book, the author shows you how to grow your small business in a predictable and productive way. Gerber shows you how to apply the lessons of franchising to work on your business rather than in your business. You’ll also learn how to effectively manage your inner Entrepreneur, Manager and Technician, as well as understand and leverage the stages of your …

This is an index of my book nuggets from The 3 Keys to Empowerment: Release the Power Within People for Astonishing Results, by Ken Blanchard, John P Carlos, and Alan Randolph. In this book, the authors give you a roadmap for creating a culture of empowerment. This roadmap includes integration the three keys for empowerment, the three stages to empowerment, and situational leadership II.
My  Nuggets
Here’s my nuggets so far …

Situational Leadership II

This post is an index of my book nuggets from It’s Not the Big That Eat the Small…It’s the Fast That Eat the Slow: How to Use Speed as a Competitive Tool in Business, by Jason Jennings and Laurence Haughton. In this book, the authors show you how to make speed a competitive tool in your business. They show you how to stop dreading high velocity and rediscover the thrill of deciding, acting, and staying fast.
My Nuggets
Here’s my nuggets so far:

Launch a Crusade

This post is an index of my book nuggets from Flawless Execution: Use the Techniques and Systems of America’s Fighter Pilots to Perform at Your Peak and Win the Battles of the Business World, by James D. Murphy. In this book, the author teaches you how to improve execution, using techniques, systems, and strategies from U.S. fighter pilots. This includes learning how to leverage the Plan-Brief-Execute-Debrief-Win cycle, which is the heart of flawless execution.
My Nuggets
Here’s my nuggets so far:

How To Avoid Task Saturation
How To Paint a Future Picture
Planning a Mission
Sharing …

I see a shortage of execution, more than I see a shortage of good ideas. What’s the next best thing you can work on and how do you’ll get your ROI? Once I started asking this question, I found the book, businessThink: Rules for Getting It Right–Now, and No Matter What, by Dave Marcum, Steve Smith, and Mahan Khalsa. What a gem! It’s a framework for disciplined thinking that balances hard-core business thinking with high intuition and emotional intelligence.
Features of the Book
The book promises solutions for the following:

Make winning strategic …

This post is an index of my book nuggets from A Simple Statement: A Guide to Nonprofit Arts Management and Leadership, by Jamie Grady. The author provides clear and concise insight for creating mission and vision statements. Throughout the book, Grady shares his real-world experience defining organizational values, mission statements, organizational goals and objectives, and vision statements. He then frames out how you turn your mission and vision into action.
My Book Nuggets
Here’s my nuggets from the book so far:

Corporate Culture
Management is Doing Things Right, Leadership is Doing the Right Things
Measure …

”None of us is as smart as all of us.” — Ken Blanchard
How do you consistently build a winning team? I think successful coaches are good to learn from.  After all, they have to build effective teams time and time again, while dealing with people issues and finding ways to make the most of who they’ve got.
In Social Psychology: Theories, Research, and Applications, Robert S. Feldman interviews Joe Paterno, head coach of Pennsylvania State University’s college football team. In the interview, Feldman asks Coach "JoePa" about his secrets for building …

“There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction.” — Winston Churchill
The business development process is not something you do up front and then you’re done.  It’s a continuous process of innovation, quantification, and orchestration.  It’s a living system that you continue to evolve. 
In The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, Michael E. Gerber writes about how the business development process is dynamic.
Key Take Aways Here are my key take aways:

Your …

How do you create predictable results in your business? Once you’ve figured out that an innovation is useful and you’ve quantified its impact, how do you implement it in your system? You orchestrate it. Orchestration is the elimination of discretion to help produce predictable results. Orchestration is about creating order, standardization, and quality in a predictable way. In The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, Michael E. Gerber writes about Orchestration.’
Key Take Aways Here’s my key take aways:

Orchestration is …