Book Summary Preview :
Six Disciplines for Excellence

The Big Idea

If you are a small business owner, you should aspire for more than momentary success. Your goal is to push your organization towards achieving and sustaining excellence. Author Gary Harpst uses his years of experience with thousands of small businesses to bring you the six fundamental business disciplines that can help you achieve enduring excellence.

 

 

Chapter 1: Excellence

An excellent small business should:

1. Be a learning organization.
2. Strive to be a leader in a chosen area.
3. Have the ability to sustain success.

To be better than the rest, you must:

1. Be able to rely on a strong leadership team.
2. Attract and retain good employees.
3. Have a disciplined approach towards business.
4. Utilize a strategic use of technology.
5. Be able to build strong relationships and use it effectively.

You must also be able to hurdle barriers that can prevent you from achieving lasting excellence. These barriers include having a poorly understood strategy, weak strategy execution, unchecked organizational entropy, and impractical implementation methods.

Chapter 2: The Small Business Advantage

A small business owner may experience challenges that may seem daunting but are nevertheless manageable. The top ten issues are:

1. Financial issues.
2. Customer issues.
3. Production issues.
4. People/employee issues.
5. Limited resources.
6. Growth management.

The Small Business Advantage

There are several advantages to small businesses. As a small business owner, you must learn how to use them effectively and aggressively.

They are:

1. Connecting people to purpose.
2. Effective communication.
3. Timely decision-making.
4. Customer intimacy.
5. Attracting team members ........