sixdisciplinesfo excellence biz

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.

Six Disciplines for ExcellenceSix Disciplines for Excellence

Author: Gary HarpstPublisher: Six Disciplines CorporationDate of Publication: 2004ISBN: Number of Pages: 265 pages

0974858706About the AuthorAbout the Author

The Big IdeaThe Big Idea

Gary HarpstGary Harpst

Gary Harpst, founder and CEO of Six Disciplines Corporation, is the author of Six Disciplines for Excellence. Harpst, who was the former co-founder and CEO of Solomon Software, grew Solomon to $60 million in sales before it merged with a company that was later acquired by Microsoft in 2001. Six Disciplines provides a professional business-building service, integrating the methodology described in "Six Disciplines for Excellence" with pract ica l Internet technologies and a nationwide network of local coaching organizations, to help small businesses achieve and sustain excellence.

For more information, visit: http://www.sixdisciplines.com/six_ra/main.asp

Published by BusinessSummaries, Building 3005 Unit 258, 4440 NW 73rd Ave, Miami, Florida 33166 ©2003 BusinessSummaries All rights reserved. No part of this summary may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, photocopying, or otherwise, without prior notice of BusinessSummaries.com

Building Small Businesses That Learn, Lead and LastBuilding Small Businesses That Learn, Lead and Last

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.

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

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

The Small Business AdvantageThere 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.

[ 2 ][ 2 ]

Chapter 1: ExcellenceChapter 1: Excellence

Chapter 2: The Small Business AdvantageChapter 2: The Small Business Advantage

Six Disciplines of Excellence by Gary HarpstSix Disciplines of Excellence by Gary Harpst

The six disciplines methodology is a synchronized and systematic approach for building your business to the point that you can sustain excellence. It is a step-by-step process that brings together key business principles such as strategic planning, quality management, business process automation, etc.

The Six Disciplines of Excellence are:

1. Decide What's Important.2. Set Goals That Lead.3. Align Systems.4. Work the Plan.5. Innovate Purposefully.6. Step Back.

Your leadership team must meet and decide annually what the organization's long-term priorities are. You must then ensure that these VFOs (vital few objectives) are met.

Here are steps you can follow:

1. Renew mission.2. Renew values.3. Renew strategic position. 4. Renew vision.5. Define VFOs (financial, customer, production and people).6. Agree what to stop.

After you have decided what is important, it is now time for you to set goals and initiatives. Remember that the goals you set must be specific and measurable. Setting goals allow your staff to understand how to pursue your company's VFOs. Furthermore, goals allow everyone in your organization to focus on the tasks that are important to your company's success.

Here are steps you can follow when setting goals that lead:

1. Define measures.2. Define targets. 3. Define initiatives.4. Engage the team.

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Chapter 3: The Six Disciplines MethodologyChapter 3: The Six Disciplines Methodology

Chapter 4: Discipline 1 - Decide What’s ImportantChapter 4: Discipline 1 - Decide What’s Important

Chapter 5: Discipline 2 - Set Goals That LeadChapter 5: Discipline 2 - Set Goals That Lead


Your work doesn't end after setting your company's goals. Now that you have the goals ready, you must be able to take action. You might be surprised to find out that a lot of companies fail at execution due to their own internal systems and processes.

Although it might be difficult at first, you must be able to master your organization's systems. Make sure that they are lined up with the company's priorities. If they are misaligned, set them straight.

Here are the steps you can follow to align your organization's systems:

1. Identify misalignments.2. Align processes.3. Align policies.4. Align measures.5. Align technologies.6. Align people.

Every member of your organization should work towards meeting your organization's long-term goal. You must, therefore, be able to determine areas of responsibility for each employee. Your people should be able to develop plans and take responsibility for executing them. They should also be able to work with others and manage themselves.

Make sure that each member of your organization prepares an IP (Individual Plan) quarterly. This way, they are able to monitor their progress. The IP will also serve as a basis for a status report that should be submitted every week to a specific team leader.

The key steps are:

1. Define IPs quarterly.2. Review IP status report weekly.3. Rate IPs quarterly.4. Prioritize daily tasks.5. Monitor measures regularly.

Achieving excellence that lasts requires organizations to continuously come up with new services, new products and new delivery methods. Each day, competition grows stronger and you must come up with better products and better service. If you do not do so, your company will be left behind.

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Chapter 6: Discipline 3 - Align SystemsChapter 6: Discipline 3 - Align Systems

Chapter 7: Discipline 4 - Work the PlanChapter 7: Discipline 4 - Work the Plan

Chapter 8: Discipline 5 - Innovate PurposefullyChapter 8: Discipline 5 - Innovate Purposefully


You must be able to channel the creativity of the people in your organization to contribute to your company's mission and vision. In other words, you must make sure that innovation is focused only on things that are important to the organization.

Here are the steps you can follow:

1. Brainstorm.2. Conduct 100-Point exercises to help prioritize choices.3. Quick ROI analysis.4. 5-step problem solving.5. Champion your ideas.6. Recognize contribution.

Make it a habit to step back every year to give yourself a broader view of the things that are going on inside and outside your business. Taking a closer look at the internal and external factors should make it easier for you to update and improve your strategies.

The key steps are:

1. Review externals (competition, industry, technology).2. Review internals (goals, measures, stakeholders, etc.)3. Recap SWOT (strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, threats)4. Review individuals.

Is your organization ready to try the Six Disciplines of Excellence methodology? Here is a checklist you can use to find out:

· There is passion for excellence in the organization (particularly among its leaders).

· Leaders know the difference between working in the business and working on the business. They should be committed to “work on it.”

· Business size is sufficient enough for people to see the difficulties and challenges that arise through growth.

· The leaders are trusted and respected. Employees also believe and respect each other.

· The business is stable.

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Chapter 9: Discipline 6 - Step BackChapter 9: Discipline 6 - Step Back

Chapter 10: Putting It All TogetherChapter 10: Putting It All Together


· The organization makes effective use of available technology.

· The company makes use of outside experts such as accountants, lawyers, bankers, consultants, etc.

[6 ][6 ]ABOUT BUSINESSSUMMARIES BusinessSummaries.com is a business book summaries service. Every week, it sends out to subscribers a 9- to 12-page summary of a best-selling business book chosen from among the hundreds of books printed out in the United States every week. For more information, please go to http://www.bizsum.com.

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