Up Your Business!: 7 Steps to Fix, Build, or Stretch Your Organization, Second Edition, Revised and Expanded

Up Your Business!: 7 Steps to Fix, Build, or Stretch Your Organization, Second Edition, Revised and Expanded

by Dave Anderson, John C. Maxwell
Released March 2007
Publisher(s): Wiley
ISBN: 9780470068564

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Book description

Praise for the first edition of Up Your Business!

"Dave Anderson has hit another home run! Up Your Business! is an invaluable, highly readable guide that should be on the desk—and in the mind—of anyone demanding top-level performance from themselves and others."
—James Strock, author, Reagan on Leadership and Theodore Roosevelt on Leadership

"Up Your Business! is a powerful blueprint for companies looking to take their business to the next level. It is one of the most powerful books on business and leadership I have ever read and will be a major component of Saga Communications' leadership training."
—Warren Lada, Senior Vice President, Saga Communications, Inc.

"Once again, Dave Anderson puts it all together in a way that almost makes you think he's been looking over your shoulder all these years. Chapter two alone, 'Abolish Corporate Welfare: Create a Culture of Merit,' is worth the time it takes to read the entire book."
—Mike Roscoe, founder and President, Horizon Communications

"Finally . . . a business book that gets to the heart of what matters and creates usable templates that could help any business thrive."
—Roxanne Emmerich, author, Thank God It's Monday!

Table of contents

  1. Copyright
  2. Foreword
  3. Preface
  4. Author’s Note
  5. Introduction
  6. 1. Always Remember, “It’s the People, Stupid!”
    1. First Things First
    2. Get Proactive: Go from Hunted to Hunter
      1. Create an Eagle Environment
      2. Make Recruiting Everyone’s Responsibility
      3. Turn Your Web Site into a Recruitment Post
      4. Use Technology as Your Edge
      5. Raid Talent Pools When and Where Uncertainty Reigns
      6. Don’t Make Want Ads the Central Part of Your Hiring Strategy
        1. Be Careful What You Ask For
    3. Employ Guerilla Interview Tactics
      1. Create and Stick to Predetermined Interview Questions
      2. Discipline Yourself Not to Make an Emotional Hiring Decision
      3. Dig Deep into the Applicant’s Track Record
      4. Clearly Define and Explain Job Performance Expectations during the Interview
      5. Keep Highly Developed Leaders Involved in Interviewing, Recruiting, and Hiring
      6. Build Your Team around Individual Excellence, Not Harmony
      7. Hire People Wired for the Work
      8. Make It Tough to Get on Board
      9. When in Doubt, Keep Looking
      10. Diligently Check References
      11. Set the Candidate Up for Counteroffers
      12. Debrief New Employees
    4. Declare War on Poor Performance
    5. Don’t Screw Up a Good Thing
    6. Accept Your Responsibility
    7. Further Up Your Business
      1. The Importance of Creating Stressful Interviews
  7. 2. Abolish Corporate Welfare: Create a Culture of Merit
    1. Defining a Culture of Entitlement and a Culture of Merit
    2. The Roots of Entitlement in the Workplace
      1. Entitlement Infects Business
        1. Thirteen Symptoms of a Culture of Entitlement
        2. Nine Traits of a Culture of Merit
    3. Keep Society and Business Mind-Sets in Their Proper Places
      1. Family Versus Team Model
      2. A Culture of Merit Brings Forth Discretionary Effort
      3. Environment Dictates Behavior
    4. Five Steps to Move from Entitlement to Merit
    5. The Mandate of Pressure to Perform
    6. Entitlement and the Question of Succession
    7. Further Up Your Business
      1. To Build a Culture of Merit, Your Organization Must Dwell Above the Neck!
        1. Below-the-Neck Traits
        2. Above-the-Neck Traits
  8. 3. Develop Your Human Capital: How to Train, Coach, Mentor, and Retain Eagles
    1. How to Train Effectively
      1. Train, Don’t Just Educate
      2. Consciously Hone Your Presentation Skills
      3. Strike at the Root: Management Training Meetings
    2. The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Coaching Your People with Fast, Frequent, Brutally Honest Feedback
      1. The Good: Positive Reinforcement
        1. The Other Side of the Coin
      2. The Bad: Empty Feedback
      3. The Ugly: Negative Reinforcement
        1. Constructive Feedback
    3. The Key to One-on-One Coaching and Training
      1. Step 1: Ask
      2. Step 2: Listen
      3. Step 3: Coach
      4. Step 4: Reinforce
      5. Step 5: Stretch
      6. One-on-One Training
    4. The Magic of Mentoring
      1. Step 1: Lay the Right Foundation
      2. Step 2: Help Them Develop a Plan for Personal Growth
      3. Step 3: Deliberately Make Your People Less Dependent on You
        1. Exhibit More Trust in Those You Lead
        2. Push Decision Making Down the Hierarchy
    5. Don’t Treat Unequals Equally
      1. Redefining Fairness
      2. The Top 20 Percent Club
      3. The Financial Factor
    6. Encourage Conflict and Dissent
    7. Further Up Your Business
      1. Get New Hires Off to a Great Start!
  9. 4. It’s All Right to Aim High if You Have Plenty of Ammo
    1. The “Bunt”: The DNA of Leadership Wimps
    2. Setting Stretch Goals
    3. The Role of Strategy and Tactics
      1. Vision Is the “Where”
      2. Strategy Is the “What” and Tactics Are the “How”
        1. Effective Strategies Attack Centers of Gravity (COGs)
        2. Effective Strategies Attack Multiple COGs Simultaneously
      3. You Can’t Shrink Your Way to Greatness
        1. Cost Cutting Backfires When You Axe Your Capacity to Produce
        2. Don’t Just Optimize—Innovate!
        3. Don’t Mistake the Scoreboard for the Game
    4. Create an Unlevel Playing Field
    5. Focus on Your Strengths
    6. Plan for Seismic Shifts
    7. Pitfalls That Derail Vision, Strategy, and Tactics
      1. Don’t Wait for the Perfect Plan to Begin Your Journey
      2. When Vision Is Not a Priority
    8. Further Up Your Business
      1. The Power of Visioneering
  10. 5. Look in the Mirror: Executing Your Leadership Twelve-Pack
    1. Understand Your Leadership Role
    2. The First Six-Pack
      1. 1. Establish and Reinforce Behavior and Performance Standards
        1. Core Values
        2. Performance Expectations
      2. 2. Invest Time in High-Leverage Activities
      3. 3. Invest Time and Resources in High-Leverage People
      4. 4. Build Your Personal Capacity to Produce
      5. 5. Create, Cast, and Communicate Organizational Vision and Facilitate Strategy
        1. Communicating the Vision
        2. Evaluate and Adjust the Strategy
      6. 6. Lead from the Front and Positively Impact Others
    3. The Second Six-Pack
      1. 7. Determine That People Are Developed at All Levels in the Organization
      2. 8. Take an Active Role in Recruiting, Interviewing, and Hiring
      3. 9. Confront, Turn Around, or Remove Poor Performers
      4. 10. Assess Your People and Conduct Brutally Honest Performance Reviews
        1. Identify Both Strengths to Be Reinforced and Weaknesses to Be Addressed
        2. Map Out Specific Plans to Move Forward
        3. Hold People Accountable for Plans Developed at the Last Review
        4. Be Brutally Honest
        5. Put Your Main Points in Writing
        6. As Part of the Review, Ask a Few Key Questions and Dig for Specific Answers
      5. 11. Rattle the Status Quo
        1. Become a Questioning Machine, Not an Answering Machine
        2. Include New Voices in Change and Strategy Conversations
        3. Take and Encourage Risks
      6. 12. Contain Costs
        1. Reminder: Don’t Ax Your Capacity to Produce!
        2. Cost Cut by Department, Not across the Board
        3. Tie Cost Cutting to Your Strategy
    4. Further Up Your Business
      1. Understand the Four Rules of Ruts
  11. 6. Survive Success: How to Overcome the Six Temptations of Successful Organizations
    1. The Enemy of Great Is Good
    2. Temptation 1: Leaders of Successful Organizations Stop Working on Themselves
    3. Temptation 2: Leaders of Successful Organizations Stop Thinking Big
      1. When Not to Set Stretch Goals
    4. Temptation 3: Leaders of Successful Organizations Stop Leading from the Front
      1. What Leading from the Front Does Not Mean
      2. What Leading from the Front Does Mean
    5. Temptation 4: Leaders of Successful Organizations Stop Developing Others
    6. Temptation 5: Leaders of Successful Organizations Stop Holding Others Accountable
      1. Fifteen Tenets of Accountability
        1. Background Facts about Coach Vince Lombardi
        2. Keys to Lombardi’s Unparalleled Success
        3. The Parable of the Talents
    7. Temptation 6: Everyone in Successful Organizations Begins to Abandon the Basics
    8. Further Up Your Business
      1. You May Be More Complacent Than You Think!
  12. 7. Build Long-Term Vitality: Steps for Execution and Follow-Through
    1. Get Off Your Dead Horse
      1. The Naked Emperor Rides Again
    2. Four Reasons Change Fails
    3. Thirteen Steps to Overcome “Flavor-of-the-Month” Syndrome
      1. Entrenched Culture
      2. Rattle the Status Quo
      3. There Is No Perfect Time
    4. Further Up Your Business
      1. Diagnose before You Prescribe!
  13. 8. Close the Gap between Knowing and Doing: Develop the Commitment to Do What Is Easier Said Than Done
    1. Are You Interested in or Truly Committed to Taking Your Business to the Next Level?
  14. Notes
    1. Chapter 1
    2. Chapter 2
    3. Chapter 3
    4. Chapter 4
    5. Chapter 5
    6. Chapter 6
    7. Chapter 7
  15. Bibliography
  16. Acknowledgments
  17. About the Author

Product information

  • Title: Up Your Business!: 7 Steps to Fix, Build, or Stretch Your Organization, Second Edition, Revised and Expanded
  • Author(s): Dave Anderson, John C. Maxwell
  • Release date: March 2007
  • Publisher(s): Wiley
  • ISBN: 9780470068564