“Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends.” — Walt Disney

Whether you are a “one-man band” or a large organization, your customers are why you are in business. By having clarity on the customer segments, the customer needs, and the potential profitability of each segment, you can choose more effective segments to serve for a more sustainable business.

“There is nothing wrong with change, if it is in the right direction.” — Winston Churchill

To predict explosive change before it occurs, you need to be able to distinguish a “spider” from a “starfish.” A starfish can replicate and spread a fluid set of ideas, beliefs, values, and norms. This is the hidden power behind things like Wikipedia, craigslist, Skype, and even the early days of Alcoholics Anonymous.

What are the key stages in an innovation life cycle? What is the end-to-end value chain for bringing innovation to market? In “Smart Spenders, the Global Innovation 1000,” an article in strategy+business magazine, Barry Jaruzelski, Kevin Dehoff, and Rakesh Bordia write about the four key stages of innovation that the 94 high-leverage innovators have in common.

I’m a fan of learning from the best. What are the high-leverage strategies that the leaders in innovation use? In “Smart Spenders, the Global Innovation 1000,” an article in strategy+business magazine, Barry Jaruzelski, Kevin Dehoff, and Rakesh Bordia write about the successful strategies that the 94 high-leverage innovators use.

What is your business?  What will it be?  What should it be? In The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management, Peter F. Drucker writes about asking what your business is, will be, and should be to avoid spending your energy defending yesterday and instead, spend your energy exploiting today and the future.
Key Take AwaysHere’s my key take aways:

Ask what your business should be.
Systematically abandon what no longer adds value.
Don’t waste energy defending yesterday.
Exploit today and tomorrow through systematic analysis.
Systematically analyze existing products, …

What leads to the downfall of established companies?  In The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management, Peter F. Drucker writes about five bad Entrepreneurial habits that let small companies leapfrog over the big companies.
The Five Bad Entrepreneurial Habits
According to Drucker, the five bad habits are:

NIH (Not Invented Here)
“Cream” a market.
The belief in “quality.”
The illusion of the “premium” price.
Maximize rather than optimize.

The Downfall of Established Companies
Drucker writes how the bad habits let small companies use Entrepreneurial judo:
There are in particular five fairly common …

Working on your business, is working on your life.  Life if what business is about and your business should create more life for everyone.  In The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, Michael E. Gerber writes about how going to work on your business, is going to work on your life.
Going to Work on the Business, is Going to Work on Your Life
Gerber writes that working on your business development is a metaphor for working on your life:
“On a more practical level, …

According to Michael E. Gerber, Innovation, Quantification, and Orchestration are the backbone of every extraordinary business.  They are the essence of your Business Development process.   In The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, Gerber explains how Innovation, Quantification, and Orchestration are key to your business development process.
Key Take AwaysHere’s my key take aways:

Innovation, Quantification and Orchestration are the keys to your business.  Innovation, Quantification and Orchestration are the backbone of business development.
Innovate in how you do things.  Innovate in how your business …

How do you make an idea stick?  Mark Twain noted, "A lie can get halfway around the world before the truth can even get its boots on."  Meanwhile, people with important ideas, struggle to make their ideas stick. In Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die, Chip Heath and Dan Heath write about six principles to make your ideas stick and help you get your point across.
Key Take Aways Here are my key take aways:

Be a master of exclusion.   Less is more.  Ruthlessly prioritize …

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.  In The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management, Peter Drucker writes about innovation objectives.
Key Take AwaysHere’s my key take aways:

You can innovate in your product, process or marketplace.  There’s three kinds of innovation: product, process, and marketplace.
Innovation is how you grow your business.  Innovation is how you transform your business into what it should …

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.
Your Business Must Attract Land, Labor, and Capital
There’s three kinds of resources: land, labor, and capital.  Drucker writes that your business must attract all three:
All economic activity, economists have told us for two hundred years, requires three kinds of resources: …

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.  In The Essential Drucker: The Best of Sixty Years of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management, Peter Drucker explains that productivity is the best yardstick for comparing management effectiveness.
Key Take AwaysHere’s my key take aways:

Results are the best way to compare effectiveness.  Productivity is the best tool for comparing effectiveness.   Your yield is directly related to the effectiveness and efficiency of your production.
Quality of management is a key …

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 Management, Peter Drucker writes about baking social objectives into your business strategy. 
Business Needs to Think Through Its Impacts
Your business has an impact …

“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 …

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 of Peter Drucker’s Essential Writings on Management, Peter Drucker, writes about identifying minimum profitability.
Key Take AwaysHere’s my key …

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