Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Growing Firm Hardcover – March 1, 2002

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 Growth2)Mastering the Right People Doing the Right ThingsSETTING PRIORITIES3)Mastering a One-page Strategic Plan4)Mastering the use of core values5)Mastering Organizational Alignment and Focus6)Mastering the quarterly theme (placing spotlight on #1 priority)DATA7)Mastering Employee Feedback (resolving client and employee hassles)RHYTHM8)Mastering the Daily & Weekly Executive Meeting (including 15 min Daily Huddles)The X-FACTOR9)Mastering the Brand Promise (key differentiating strategy for dominating your market)OTHER10)Mastering the Art of Bank Financing

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.

Easy to follow advice and lots of free online guides and tools. Can't wait to start workin on growing the business.