Scaling Up : How a Few Companies Make It...and Why the Rest Don't (Rockefeller Habits 2.0)

The best leaders have the right questions, but turn to their employees, customers, advisors, and the crowd to mine the answers.

To scale up a business from a handful of employees to something significant (i.e., build a company that has a chance to both put a “dent in the universe” and dominate its industry), our tools and techniques focus on three deliverables: • Reduce by 80% the time it takes the top team to manage the business (operational activities) • Refocus the senio

“Routine sets you free” is a key driving principle behind our methodologies and tools.

Function Accountability Chart (FACe): Jim Collins, author of Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... And Others Don’t, emphasizes the importance of getting the right butts in the right seats at the top of the organization. After all, the bottleneck is always at the top of the bottle! The FACe tool provides a list of seats (functions) tha

“Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler.”

3. Disciplines: To effectively execute, there are three fundamental disciplines (routines): Set Priorities; gather quantitative and qualitative Data; and establish an effective meeting Rhythm. It’s in these meetings, debating the data (the brutal facts!), where the priorities emerge.

In the end, it’s about keeping everyone focused on the summit (BHAG

One-Page Personal Plan (OPPP): Our personal and professional lives are intertwined — and best if aligned. This tool looks at four key decisions — Relationships, Achievements, Rituals, and Wealth — which mirror the four key decisions for the business: People, Strategy, Execution, and Cash. Having a strong and fulfilled personal life provides an impo

Yet there are three barriers to scaling up, which we’ll discuss in the next chapter: • Leadership: the inability to staff/grow enough leaders throughout the organization who have the capabilities to delegate and predict • Scalable infrastructure: the lack of systems and structures (physical and organizational) to handle the complexities in communic