Mastering the Rockefeller Habits 20th Edition: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Growing Firm

What makes this book so helpful is that it gives a roadmap for companies at various stages of development on what steps to take to get to the next level. As long as you don't forget to keep you eye on the ball and keep core revenue generating activities going and central, spending the time to understand what your company needs to do to move up to the next stage is development may give you the pieces you're missing if you're struggling or stagnating or feeling in a rut. This book can give you practical steps in making the right changes. What's really important to remember, I think, is that companies need different habits at different stages of the growth cycle. But that kind of change is really difficult. If you've followed a certain formula to get to where you are today, and you developed and fine tuned that formula through twists and turns and many mistakes along the way, that formula becomes precious to you. So precious that if you hit a rut in growth, it might be incredibly hard to understand that those habits that served so well and took so much fine tuning are the very habits that need to be changed in order to kick start growth to another stage. Though it's a very strange analogy, and perhaps may not fit real well, I think it's a little like switching gears in a manual shift car. To get to the $100 million mark and beyond, you need to be in 6th gear. which is different from 5th, 4th, 3rd, 2nd and of course 1st gear where you're starting from nothing. But rather than thinking of each gear as just a different level of effort and fine tuning, I'd say each gear is more akin to a different set of habits. This book doesn't speak in these terms exactly, but many of their practical suggestions are just that, different work flows and different styles of planning at different stages of development. As an international business consultant in the IT industry, there are few books that I would recommend more highly than this one.

In this bestseller, Verne Harnish shares the business lessons to be learned from case studies of ten remarkably different organizations: Castek Software Factory, Express-Med, HRF Exploration and Production, The Lawrence Group, Logical Choice Technologies, Marlo Furniture, McKinney Lumber, Mostly Muffins, Orion International, and The Scooter Store. In fact, Harnish acknowledges that he learned three even more important lessons from Titan, Ron Chernow's brilliant biography of John D. Rockefeller, framed as questions: 1. "Does the organization have objective Top 5 priorities for the year and the quarter and a clear Top 1 priority along with an appropriate theme?" 2. "Does the organization have sufficient data on a daily and weekly basis to provide insight into how the organization is running and what the market is demanding?" 3. "Does the organization have an effective rhythm of daily, weekly, quarterly, and annual meetings to maintain alignment and drive accountability?" These three questions suggest issues that leaders in any organization (regardless of size or nature) should regularly address with sufficient rigor and candor. Leaders in the ten exemplar organizations do so to ensure that (a) everything they do and are planning to do is of great importance to their current and prospective customers, and (b) everything they do or are planning to do will differentiate their organization from its competitors. In my opinion, this is one of the most practical business books written in recent years, offering material based on a wealth of real-world situations and filled with insights and suggestions that almost any leader can put to immediate use. Yes, it can help to increase the value of a growing firm as its subtitle suggests; it can also help those leading start-ups to avoid most (if not all) of the mistakes that doom most new enterprises. I also highly recommend it to those now preparing for a career in business or who have only recently embarked on one.

I certainly received my monies worth and then some, with many,many good tips & ideas. Would have given it a five star-but just a bit dated and some content using charts and terminologies that are just stupid.

I totally recommend this product to entrepreneurs looking for an inmediate applicable way to better manage the course of their organizations, better ways to leveraging their human resources, and better strategies to really set the bar high when it comes to setting the standarts in the industry. I'm an entrepreneur myself with a great background in sales and marketing, but with no management skills at all, so, when my companies start growing and demanding more delegation and structure i started to desesperetelly looking for answers. This book gave me the foundations needed to apply DOZENS of time management and general management books and content i read prior to this book. If your juggling between DOZENS of objetctives, projects and ideas... And somewhat you can't find HOW to organize your ideas, this book will give you the TOOLS (not just content) to make some serious shifts happen. Totally recommend it. Even if you're very familiar with general management concepts, i'm sure you can find information and insights that can give you great insights about getting an organization to grow to the next level.

Don't get thrown off by the title or that the book was printed 8 years ago. This book is solid. In a mere 100 pages, Harnish packs a bevy of practical field management strategies which he brings alive with colorful examples. In a rapidly changing environment riddled with complexity, this book offers a safe harbor of tactical strategies which will be appreciated by middle management and upper management. He offers up solid templates, summaries and working tools. I'll excuse the author's bandwagon jumping (Jim Collins/Good to Great), the final chapter on Bank Financing (which seems to be an odd fit for this book) and for the appendices (which offered limited utility) - - otherwise, this was a well-written and easy reading book offering executable strategies. The book is organized around 3 sets of fundamentals: 1) Priorities (handful of rules; top 5 and top 1 of 5; repeat yourself a lot; act consistently around rules; have big hairy audacious goal) 2) Data (data is required to be acting consistent with priorities) 3) Rhythm (daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly meetings to keep everyone aligned and accountable) Chapter Headings include: 1)Mastering Growth 2)Mastering the Right People Doing the Right Things SETTING PRIORITIES 3)Mastering a One-page Strategic Plan 4)Mastering the use of core values 5)Mastering Organizational Alignment and Focus 6)Mastering the quarterly theme (placing spotlight on #1 priority) DATA 7)Mastering Employee Feedback (resolving client and employee hassles) RHYTHM 8)Mastering the Daily & Weekly Executive Meeting (including 15 min Daily Huddles) The X-FACTOR 9)Mastering the Brand Promise (key differentiating strategy for dominating your market) OTHER 10)Mastering the Art of Bank Financing

Harnish covers some good points for smaller businesses and entrepreneurs but I honestly don't think he did much research on John D. Rockefeller, his methods and the Standard Oil corporation. I gained MUCH more insight into Rockefeller by reading the superbly researched and detailed biography of Rockefeller, "Titan", than I did reading Harnish's book. Harnish actually spends more time discussing case studies of medium to small business than he does on Rockefeller. The cynical view of Harnish is that he and the publishing company used Rockefeller's name and legend to sell the book, while actually providing little insight into the Rockefeller business system. In this instance, I'm inclined to cynicism. This is a good book for entrepreneurs, not for understanding Rockefeller, his genius or his habits. I would not recommend this to someone interested in learning more about the business system and principles of Rockefeller.

After reading the book "Mastering the Rockefeller Habits" I was so impressed, I ordered five more copies for my management staff. At our weekly meetings we started going over various chapters in the book just to make sure everyone was on board. After a month or so customers started mentioning they were feeling a positive change in our company and had started recommending us more than ever. The best news of all is after a few years of our business doing very well we were able to buy out two of our competitors. I guess they didn't get the book.

Verne is truly the "entreprenuer's guru" - he knows our strengths and weaknesses to a prefect tee and Mastering the Rockefeller Habits is "the well" of inspiration for entreprenuers at any stage of their businesses. What makes Verne the true genius is the fact that all of the ideas and concepts he talks about in the book are tangible resources that you can EFFORTLESSLY implement into your organization. Most books are full of ideas and leave the reader to "re-create the wheel" in order to make the ideas come to life, but Verne knows entrepreneurs well and has removed the burden of responsiblity to create the tanglibles he talks about. I love to read, and have a lot of favorites including Good to Great, Wizard of Ads, Topgrading, The E-Myth and Execution -- but Mastering the Rockefeller Habits is truly the most practical and inspiring book an entreprenuer can read.

Thanks!

Amazing book. Received in perfect condition.

This is the second time I'm buying this book as it is so good I lent it to a friend. But I can't remember which one! It's a great read. Particularly for mid size companies.

Este libro debería de estar en tu estantería de manuales básicos. Estamos utilizando su método en nuestra empresa, y los resultados son espectaculares. Eso sí, tienes que perseverar, como todo.

Lo que más me gustó del libro es lo práctico de las herramientas y el reforzamiento que de ellas hace a lo largo del mismo. Lo recomiendo para cualquier gerente en cualquier tamaño de industria.