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!
