atkinson advisor

Six Disciplines for Excellence by Gary Harpst

Author Gary Harpst found that less than 5 percent of businesses are high-impact companies, those that produce significant revenue growth and expanded employment. Likewise, he found companies that do become high impact rarely sustain their momentum more than three or four years.

Six Disciplines for Excellence is a collection of Harpst’s lessons from building several companies in his career. At the same time, Harpst takes the extra step beyond stories about those businesses and key decisions to a complete blueprint that executives can use to build organizations that achieve and sustain success over time.

The six disciplines are a set of interconnected practices that ensure employees in the organization know what they have to accomplish today to make the organizations successful. The disciplines are:

1. Decide What’s Important
2. Set Goals That Lead
3. Align Systems
4. Work The Plan
5. Innovate Purposefully
6. Step Back

For each discipline, Harpst provides step-by-step recommendations and insights that any company can use to implement a new strategic direction.

Related posts:

1. Excellence vs. differentiation
2. Indispensable: How to Become the Company That Your Customers Can’t Live Without
3. Pre-authorizing decisions before crises
4. 3 steps when communicating large changes
5. Core Purpose

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 1st, 2009 at 10:52 am and is filed under What We're Reading. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.