Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Growing Firm [Audio CD]

Verne Harnish (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 1, 2006

Based on the best-selling business strategy book with over 100,000 copies in print! Grow your business by adopting a definitive set of fundamental habits the same habits Rockefeller used to dominate both his industry and era.

The fundamental ideas that produce real market value and owner wealth are based on the same habits John D. Rockefeller employed to master the oil industry. During that era Rockefeller's disciplined approach to business replaced the helter-skelter methods of the original pioneering speculators. These important disciplines explained in Mastering the Rockefeller Habits need to be embraced by all companies that want to prosper in the upcoming decade.

This audio series is for CEOs and senior executives who have no patience for anything except that which they can put to work. Mastering the Rockefeller Habits provides easy-to-use tools for making strategically smart decisions and for keeping everyone aligned and accountable to those decisions.

For busy executives who want to get the full benefit of the Rockefeller Habits material but prefer an audio format on CD, this is the product for you.

Gain invaluable knowledge as you commute, travel, or listen to it on your computer at home or office.

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Gazelles Publishing (June 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0967285542
• ISBN-13: 978-0967285542
• Product Dimensions: 5.6 x 4.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (70 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #311,767 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #55 in Books > Books on CD > Business > Investing
  • #69 in Books > Business & Investing > Management & Leadership > Strategy & Competition

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The undisputed expert in helping entrepreneurs grow their firms [has] now brought you his powerful ideas in book form." -- Ted Leonsis, Vice Chair, AOL Owner, Washington Capitals

From the Publisher

Says SelectBooks President Kenzi Sugihara, "Verne has a proven track record and a stellar reputation with top executives across this country. His new book offers the same rock solid guidance to a wider audience." --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Gazelles Publishing (June 1, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0967285542
• ISBN-13: 978-0967285542
• Product Dimensions: 5.6 x 4.9 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 0.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (70 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #311,767 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #55 in Books > Books on CD > Business > Investing
  • #69 in Books > Business & Investing > Management & Leadership > Strategy & Competition

More About the Author

Verne is founder of the world-renowned Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO) and chaired for fifteen years EO's premiere CEO program, the "Birthing of Giants," and WEO's "Advanced Business" executive program, both held at MIT. Founder and CEO of Gazelles, a global executive education and coaching company, Verne has spent the past 29 years educating entrepreneurial teams.

The "Growth Guy" syndicated columnist, Verne is also the Venture Columnist for Fortune magazine, author of "Mastering the Rockefeller Habits: What You Must Do to Increase the Value of Your Growing Firm," and Co-author of "The Greatest Business Decisions of All Time: How Apple, Ford, IBM, Zappos, and others made radical choices that changed the course of business."

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 63 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Good but misleading January 21, 2012

By J. P. Rogers

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Harnish covers some good points for smaller businesses and entrepreneurs but I honestly don't think he did much research on John D. Rockefeller, his methods and the Standard Oil corporation. I gained MUCH more insight into Rockefeller by reading the superbly researched and detailed biography of Rockefeller, "Titan", than I did reading Harnish's book. Harnish actually spends more time discussing case studies of medium to small business than he does on Rockefeller. The cynical view of Harnish is that he and the publishing company used Rockefeller's name and legend to sell the book, while actually providing little insight into the Rockefeller business system. In this instance, I'm inclined to cynicism.

This is a good book for entrepreneurs, not for understanding Rockefeller, his genius or his habits. I would not recommend this to someone interested in learning more about the business system and principles of Rockefeller.

38 of 45 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The "Bible" for Entreprenuers December 1, 2004

By Danielle Mulvey

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

Verne is truly the "entreprenuer's guru" - he knows our strengths and weaknesses to a prefect tee and Mastering the Rockefeller Habits is "the well" of inspiration for entreprenuers at any stage of their businesses.

What makes Verne the true genius is the fact that all of the ideas and concepts he talks about in the book are tangible resources that you can EFFORTLESSLY implement into your organization. Most books are full of ideas and leave the reader to "re-create the wheel" in order to make the ideas come to life, but Verne knows entrepreneurs well and has removed the burden of responsiblity to create the tanglibles he talks about.

I love to read, and have a lot of favorites including Good to Great, Wizard of Ads, Topgrading, The E-Myth and Execution -- but Mastering the Rockefeller Habits is truly the most practical and inspiring book an entreprenuer can read.

23 of 29 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Entrepreneur Of The Year winner - This is a Must-Read! November 13, 2002

By Cynthia Driskill

Format:Hardcover

Planning is everything. Our company used to be great at developing plans - we had grand plans, plans we'd worked on for months, and plans for our plans. We were planning experts. But we couldn't implement. Our plans sat in fancy binders and we pulled them out to look at them periodically, felt better because we had them, and couldn't figure out why things weren't happening like we'd planned.

Then we read Mastering the Rockefeller Habits. And we found we could actually implement the plans that we learned how to develop from the methods and techniques defined in the book. We now have plans that work. And our company has matured tremendously as an organization from following the book. I strongly recommend that any company, from young start-up to those more mature, read and implement the strategies in this book. It will change your world.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Old Stuff New Package March 10, 2013

By John Biondi

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Little if any real content, ten pages packed into 200. Not worth writing a long review over. Save your money on this one.

2 of 2 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A bible for small companies September 16, 2012

By Tetsu Noguchi

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

What makes this book so helpful is that it gives a roadmap for companies at various stages of development on what steps to take to get to the next level.

As long as you don't forget to keep you eye on the ball and keep core revenue generating activities going and central, spending the time to understand what your company needs to do to move up to the next stage is development may give you the pieces you're missing if you're struggling or stagnating or feeling in a rut. This book can give you practical steps in making the right changes. What's really important to remember, I think, is that companies need different habits at different stages of the growth cycle.

But that kind of change is really difficult. If you've followed a certain formula to get to where you are today, and you developed and fine tuned that formula through twists and turns and many mistakes along the way, that formula becomes precious to you. So precious that if you hit a rut in growth, it might be incredibly hard to understand that those habits that served so well and took so much fine tuning are the very habits that need to be changed in order to kick start growth to another stage.

Though it's a very strange analogy, and perhaps may not fit real well, I think it's a little like switching gears in a manual shift car. To get to the $100 million mark and beyond, you need to be in 6th gear. which is different from 5th, 4th, 3rd, 2nd and of course 1st gear where you're starting from nothing. But rather than thinking of each gear as just a different level of effort and fine tuning, I'd say each gear is more akin to a different set of habits....

This book doesn't speak in these terms exactly, but many of their practical suggestions are just that, different work flows and different styles of planning at different stages of development.

As an international business consultant in the IT industry, there are few books that I would recommend more highly than this one. Read more ›

10 of 14 people found the following review helpful

2.0 out of 5 stars Simple or Simplistic June 6, 2010

By J. H. B. Johnston

Format:Hardcover

While everyone is looking for a simple book on strategy this book is excessively simplistic to the extent that it is actually misleading. The only think in it which is mildly useful is the one page strategic plan. It does not cover internal or external analysis which in my mind is the basis of strategy formulation. The book stresses braking down strategic implantation into bite size chunks which is not exactly revolutionary.

12 of 17 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Habits equal success April 12, 2002

By Roger Scheumann

Format:Hardcover

Read five "how to" books and you'll get five very different ways to "do" something. Only turning those steps into Habits, and the mastering them, as Verne Harnish details in his book Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, has worked for me. A growth "guru" in his own right, this book does as excellent job distilling the elements Verne's introduced to hundreds of fast growth companies into a recipe for success. It provides a clear methodolgy for annual and quarterly planning, alligning a management team around Brand Promise and a Big Hairy Audacious Goal and creating rhythm and clear, open communication within an organization. Before reading this book, and then applying Verne's principles, we were stuck in "no man's land". Now, our management team is alligned and we've grown more in the past six months than in the past couple of years combined.