What I found at MIT

So Ive been studying this course at MIT for the past 3 years - its called the Entrepreneurial Masters Program.

Basicallly we get shown a whole heap of business growth best practice and then we go and implement it in to our businesses.

We were asked the question is class last week: What of this things you have learned so far have you implemented in to your business.

I thought about it and my brain said:

"Not much, slacker!".

So I tought that I would go thru the corse materials from the last 3 years and see what my team had actually gone out and done that we had learned here at MIT.

Here's what I came up with:

Every morining I pull up my metrics dashboard that we refer to in our huddles and check the top 5 for the quarter to see what I can work on for the day.

I then realise that last month we had no time for ¼ planning so we have a ½ day meet up to get the key drivers of the business. They recreate the mission, vision, bhag and core values from memory and then start arguing about whats key for next 1/4.

Its all out of control so they decide to just create key action suggestions based on the 8 levers of a business, they pick out WIP days and rev/emp as key factors and start telling me the impact that’s having on our balance sheet and starts calling for some potential x factor ideas to control key bottlenecks for both key levers.

So they finish the 1 page plan for the quarter in 4h, and I have scorecards in my inbox and metrics updated on dash next day.

Our Melbourne COO emails me to suggest some innovation to our topgrading process that will combine disc analysis and threat of reference check to make it more profitable and more effective at the same time, and I make a youtube movie that he can link to staff and potential new staff to let them know what we are doing.

And then I notice that I’ve been linked in on a new sales CRM that is tracking cost per lead, meeting conversion and sales cost vs contribution for a new team that we are putting together to make strategic customer approaches based on high NPS referrals from existing clients

And that reminds me that I have to get back to this guy who called me the other day – one of our crew has joined his team and has been teaching him about the 8 levers of business and he wants me to email him my presentation and ask me questions about how it works because my guy has saved his business from a cash flow crisis and is stepping up to lead his business into a brighter future based on GP instead of volume.

So looking back over it, I cant actually find anything that matters in our business that has not seen implementation from this course.

What a massive change in just 24 months.

Its been a bumpy ride, but we are moving always in a good direction!