Verne Harnish Quotes

Discerning the Core Values is a discovery process.

In general, looking forward is great management; looking backward is micromanagement.

About Author

Verne C. Harnish is founder of the Young Entrepreneurs' Organization (YEO), now known as Entrepreneurs' Organization, and the Association of Collegiate Entrepreneurs. He also serves as co-founder and principal of Growth Institute and as founder and chief executive officer of Scaling Up.

Individuals or organizations with too many priorities have no priorities and risk spinning their wheels and accomplishing nothing of significance.

Successful athletes know the power of having a strong core, no matter what the sport.

Think of Amazon’s two-pizza rule — no team should be so big that it can’t be fed with two pizzas).

David Meerman Scott says, You are what you publish.

In setting Strategy, follow the definition from the great business strategist Gary Hamel. You don’t have a real strategy if it doesn’t pass two tests: First, what you’re planning to do really matters...

Largely ignored, by gurus and governments, are the older, high-impact growth firms. Though they generate almost all of the innovation and job growth in economies, there are not enough of them to garne...

Leaders have to balance two often competing demands on the business — People and Process. This

Lynne Twist’s insightful book titled The Soul of Money: Transforming Your Relationship With Money and Life

Scaling up is every entrepreneur’s dream — and nightmare. Hypergrowth is terrifying, and it’s most often success that kills great companies. This

Steven Johnson’s Emergence: The Connected Lives of Ants, Brains, Cities, and Software.

Read Margaret Heffernan’s book Willful Blindness: Why We Ignore the Obvious at Our Peril and Liz Wiseman’s Multipliers: How the Best Leaders Make Everyone Smarter. To

Who, What, When (WWW): Improve the impact of your weekly meetings by taking a few minutes at the end and summarizing Who said they are going to do What, When.

There are roughly 28 million firms in the US, of which only 4% ever reach more than $1 million in revenue. Of those firms, only about one out of 10, or 0.4% of all companies, ever make it to $10 milli...

The best leaders have the right questions, but turn to their employees, customers, advisors, and the crowd to mine the answers. Every business is more valuable to the degree that it does not depend on...

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and Outcomes. We start with the functions and processes driving the business, then push for the company to set goals, delineate measurable Brand Promises, and pick Cr...

For additional examples, read the Harvard Business Review article titled Building Your Company’s Vision, by James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras. You’ll notice that all the Values listed are phrases,...

An A Player, by the Smarts’ definition, is someone in the top 10% of the available talent pool who is willing to accept your specific offer. Read that definition again. They are not implying that you...

A Core Competency has three attributes, according to Prahalad and Hamel: 1. It is not easy for competitors to imitate. 2. It can be reused widely for many products and markets. 3. It must contribute t...