Customer Reviews

Six Disciplines for Excellence

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First, I want to share remarks by Jack Welch when explaining why he admires small businesses: "For one, they communicate better. Without the din and prattle of bureaucracy, people listen as well as talk; and since there are fewer of them they generally know and understand each other. Second, small companies move faster. They know the penalties for hesitation in the marketplace. Third, in small companies, with fewer layers and less camouflage, the leaders show up very clearly on the screen. Their performance and its impact are clear to everyone. And, finally, smaller companies waste less. They spend less time in endless reviews and approvals and politics and paper drills. They have fewer people; therefore they can only do the important things. Their people are free to direct their energy and attention toward the marketplace rather than fighting bureaucracy." Next, some observations by Michael Gerber: "Of the 1 million U.S. small businesses started this year [2005], more than 80% of them will be out of business within 5 years and 96% will have closed their doors before their 10th birthday."

Everything Welch says is true in terms of the potential advantages which small businesses have and the statistics which Gerber cites suggest that very few of them know how to achieve and then sustain those advantages. As Harpst explains, this book was written for decision-makers in established small businesses which, typically, employ 10 to 100 people. How does his book differ from others which also discuss business improvement? "First, [unlike most other books] which focus 80% on principles and 20% on implementation, this book's content [begin italics] is focused 20% on principles and 80% on implementation [end italics]....Second, the [Six Disciplines] Methodology is [begin italics] designed specifically for small businesses [end italics]....Third, the Six Disciplines Methodology is the first methodology to [begin italics] distill and integrate what were designed as separate best practices into one cohesive whole [end italics]."

Harpst devotes a separate chapter to each of the six Disciplines: Decide What's Important, Set Goals That Lead, Align Systems, Work the Plan, Innovate Purposefully, and Step Back. True to his word, Harpst focuses most of his attention on HOW to derive maximum benefit from each of the six separate but interdependent Disciplines. In my opinion, he has positioned them in the most appropriate sequence, helping his reader to understand that business improvement must be viewed and initiated as a cohesive and comprehensive process. He correctly emphasizes the importance of definition, clarification, identification, measurement, evaluation, and when appropriate, modification and adjustment. Each small business really is a "work in process" which, hopefully, involves progress or improvement rather than deterioration.

Over the years, I have worked closely with hundreds of small companies and agree with the owner/CEO of one of them who confided that he viewed his own company as it were a young grandchild entrusted to his care. "I have to keep an eye on it all the time. Be alert to potential dangers. Let it wander a bit but keep it away from trouble. Make sure it is safe. Feed it. Clean it. Provide love and care and support and encouragement. But make certain that it knows what the rules are...and follows them. Let it have fun but not break anything. Sometimes it's exhausting but I love it!"

To me, Chapter 6 (Discipline III: Align Systems) is especially valuable. In it, Harpst explains how to identify and then correct misalignments in areas such as processes, policies, measures (i.e. metrics), technologies, and people. All of these business components are interdependent. That is to say, it is difficult (if not impossible) to measure human performance accurately if competent people are not involved in the right process, guided by the right policies, following the right procedures, and provided with the right resources (e.g. hardware, software, equipment, work environment). Conversely, business improvement cannot be achieved by incompetent and untrainable people, however appropriate the given processes, policies, measures, and technologies may be. Proper alignment must include everyone and everything. Harpst explains how such alignment can be achieved and then sustained.

Before concluding this commentary, I presume to suggest that many decision-makers in all organizations (regardless of size or nature) demonstrate what Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert I. Sutton characterize as "The Knowing-Doing Gap": they have at least an adequate understanding of what business improvement requires but, for whatever reasons, fail to achieve it. Books such as Harpst's are essentially worthless unless and until the information and counsel they provide are applied effectively to the needs of a given organization. Darrell Royal was correct when asserting that "potential" means "you ain't done it yet."

Those who share my high regard for this book are urged to check out Steven S. Little's The 7 Irrefutable Rules of Small Business Growth, Michael Gerber's E-Myth Mastery, and Jason Jennings' Think Big, Act Small.

I recently read "Six Disciplines for Excellence: Building Small Businesses That Learn, Lead and Last" by Gary Harpst. Within the book, Harpst has created a business-building methodology utilizing six fundamental business disciplines that are specifically designed to help small businesses move beyond today's successes into enduring satisfaction and greatness.

The problem, for most of us, isn't knowing what to do - but doing it. Gary Harpst says "When it comes to achieving excellence, figuring out the right things to do isn't nearly as difficult as continuing to do them over the long term." This book sticks to this concept as it pushed though on the execution and implementation of the principles it covers.

Harpst's principles are simple:

1. Decide what's important
2. Set goals that lead
3. Align systems
4. Work the plan
5. Innovate purposefully
6. Step back

The complexity comes when we investigate each discipline more thoroughly. Within each, Harpst uses diagrams, questionnaires, steps, tips and templates to bring each one into focus. It contains an impressive quantity of practical information and real world examples, which can be a bit daunting for the reader, yet highly beneficial.

This hands-on book goes beyond the fluff that many other business books serve up, and offers a real world business plan. It is well tailored to small businesses and is great for those who want a strong framework to build or begin their business. It is a long-term business plan, not a quick route to success, but for those who take the time to read it, the payoffs can be astounding. I recommend this book for anyone who is serious about a better business.

Of the many books written by people who have built significant businesses, Gary Harpst's offering, Six Disciplines for Excellence, is truly different and refreshing. Too often, many such books are long on theory and short on practicality. In addition to presenting the combined thinking of some of today's best business minds, Mr. Harpst's book also details step-by-step the unique business methodology that he developed and successfully used to build an award-winning international software business. Along the way, he stresses the human factors of business building, including empowering and involving people, building lasting relationships, and communicating effectively. Six Disciplines for Excellence is a valuable addition to the library of anyone who wants to achieve business excellence - and do it with integrity.

From the back of the book: "This book is NOT for those who are looking for a quick fix. Six Disciplines is a "long-term fitness program, not a fad diet". I think that's an excellent description. I'm "into" ITIL, and process methodology as a whole, with a technical focus. Six Disciplines has made a very nice addition to my process skills arsenal with its focus on the business side of the house.

The Six Disciplines break down as follows:

* Decide What's Important
* Set Goals That Lead
* Align Systems
* Work The Plan
* Innovate Purposefully
* Step Back

and each of those major headings above breaks down into additional sections, which are then explained fully in the book.

This is a circular, continuous improvement methodology, with outputs from one section readily feeding into another, and that there are linkages throughout the methodology.

Frankly, I wish I'd had this book a few years ago, when I was part of a project that DID create a global IS department, from several smaller departments, and set visions, mission statements, processes, and so forth in place, many of which are still in operation today. We got it done, but at times it seemed like we were winging it, as there was no central reference like this to go to, other than process steps we defined for ourselves. If I was in that situation again, this would be a process guide that I turned to. I'm honest enough to admit that I might not follow it to the letter - the curse of man is that he likes to change things to his own preferences - but it would definitely be a good starting point.

In reading the book, I'm struck that the author spends time focusing on HOW to achieve maximum benefit from each of the six interdependent Disciplines, and not just providing a laundry list without explanation. There are plenty of "lists" and "summaries" out there, but getting a strong sense of the reasoning behind a recommendation adds to the value.

The book is subtitled "Building Small Businesses That Learn, Lead and Last", and that's a great focus; while it may not scale to a larger company in its entirety, there's no reason individual departments within such couldn't benefit as well.

Along with my ITIL maps, project management maps and so forth, the Six Disciplines will form a permanent part of my reference set that I use when I work as a manager.

This book is an absolutely essential primer for anyone currently in - or considering getting into - a small business.

Read this book with a highlighter and/or a legal pad and pen nearby. You'll need them.

Think of this more as a field guide or a handbook. You'll want to keep this book nearby with your other critical business reference materials. This is the type of book that each time you read it, you'll find new pearls of wisdom and - better yet - practical advice.

In addition to many years working in and around small businesses, I also teach college business courses. In my experience, it is very rare to find a book that is both geared to small business and offers pragmatic and actionable advice.

I just finished reading Gary Harpst's book - Six Disciplines For Excellence and I strongly recommend it.

As part of my quest for value add, I've read and participated in many "best practice" methodologies over the years. Unfortnuately most are skewed towards theory, with minimal attention to practice and implementation. Sometimes you feel that the authors are locked into outmoded business practices with approaches and examples that are past their due date.

Gary Harpst is the direct opposite. His Six Disciplines For Excellence delivers an effective way to build and grow a business. The approach is current and I love that it ties technology and systems with strategy. Most importantly this book is about execution. It provides the reader with processes, examples, worksheets that last in the real world.

Even though the book is designed for small business I believe it could funcion well within a mid sized company as well. I'm adding Six Disciplines to the reading materials I provide to each of my clients.

Most new jobs created in the United States today are the result of small businesses forming or expanding. Gone are the days when large manufacturers rapidly created hundreds or thousands of jobs to support their growing requirements. However, small businesses have special needs, not only to survive the early years but to sustain their foundational growth. Author Gary Harpst actively taps into these critical needs in Six Disciplines For Excellence.

As Harpst mentions in the Introduction, "figuring out the right things to do isn't nearly as difficult as continuing to do them over the long term". He continues by commenting why this book was written, "That passion is directed toward helping small businesses not only achieve excellence, but sustain it". Throughout the remainder of the book, Six Disciplines For Excellence integrates the best practices to grow a small business and unifies them into a interconnected plan. Furthermore, unlike most business books, Harpst cleverly focuses on implementation (how to) rather than simply principles. He states that this "book's content is focused 20% on principles and 80% on implementation".

Six Disciplines For Excellence is composed of 10 chapters and an Epilogue. The first three chapters introduce the book and discuss the challenges of being a small business. The next six chapters each discuss one of the six disciplines. For example, chapter eight analyzes the fifth discipline entitled Innovate Purposely. In this invigorating chapter Harpst demonstrates how innovation works in concert with the other disciplines and how it should permeate the daily culture of a small business.

This is a book that should be read by everyone who leads a small business. Six Disciplines For Excellence has the clever ability to connect solid principles together with proven strategies to create a workable plan. It makes sense of the seemingly complex and fragmented problems facing any organization in a book that is colorful, easy to comprehend and well written. If you own, manage or lead a small business, this book will make you and your organization better!

Here's what differentiates this book: it bridges concept and principles to execution. The point Gary makes, as noted in the introduction, is that when it comes to achieving excellence, figuring out the right thing to do isn't nearly as difficult as continuing to do them over the long term. Most books focus 80% on principles and 20% on implementation. This book is 80% implementation.

Like most revolutionary concepts, the principles are pretty simple:

* Discipline I: Decide What's Important
* Discipline II: Set Goals That Lead
* Discipline III: Align Systems
* Discipline IV: Work the Plan
* Discipline V: Innovate Purposefully
* Discipline VI: Step Back

Within the disciplines, Gary shares hundreds of frameworks, steps, processes, questionnaires, roles, responsibilities, and to dos to make them come to life. He shares the what, but more importantly, expands on the how with utilitarian advice.

A useful concept, under Working the Plan, is a framework to put strategic rigor in prioritizing daily activity. Prioritization comes down to choosing what action to take - what you're doing today, at this instant and asking "Is this work aligned with what's important to the company, or not?" As simple as it sounds, the connection day to day work and tasks list to the overall strategy and impact is overlooked by most employees.

He gives an example of a task list, which could be implemented such that you can score task impact against short and long term goals of the company. Imagine the impact if everyone in your company did that!

This is one example of many principles Gary shares that (if executed) would make big impact in a company or organization.

For pragmatists and those who love execution, I give this book a strong recommend. Buy Six Disciplines of Excellence.

It's not just a book. It's a playbook. It now has a permanent place in my laptop bag.

Any business could benefit greatly by ditching their Operations Manual - if they have one - and using Six Disciplines in its place.

Loaded with worksheets, processes, workflow graphics, checklists and examples, this book brings focus, alignment and synchronization into your business operations.

Without a doubt - Buy It.

When I moved into Executive Management about five years ago, I knew that I had a lot of things to learn. One of those areas was around strategy and long term planning. Over the next few years, I started reading whatever books I could on the subject, some I didn't like and many that I enjoyed. However, I also found myself frustrated after reading those books. Most of them focused on theories but didn't really give you the tools, templates, processes etc that you needed to implement their theories. Others did take you further, but it seemed that their implementation required expensive solutions with more staff than our company could take on. We are a small organization that has been around for 15+ years with a staff of just under 100 people. We needed something that would work for our organization as we struggled with the areas of strategy and long term planning. I have also learned over the years that one size doesn't fit all and that there are no silver bullets -- so I am a little skeptical on methodologies that claim to solve all of your problems and require little work from you.

So I contacted Skip and asked him to send me a book, some for personal reasons as well as something to share with my readers through a book review. When I received the book, I glanced over it but put it aside not sure that I wanted to read it further. Given what I had experienced before, I thought this was just somebody else's "snake oil". Then given some struggles that I was having in my organization around strategy, I decided to start reading the book. Boy, was I in for a surprise!

First of all, the author of the book is Gary Harpst. I didn't know Gary personally but I was very familiar with his background given my IT experience. Gary used to own a company called Solomon, who provided accounting systems to small to medium size businesses. I had watched as Solomon had merged with Great Plains, then was sold to Microsoft. I had assumed that Solomon was just another success story that had the right amount of luck and the right people. What I didn't realize was that Solomon was a struggling small company who's future didn't look too bright. As the CEO, Gary realized that the organization needed an "Extreme Makeover" at all levels to turn things around. Thus, he planted the first seeds to this book, "Six Disciplines for Excellence".

This book is geared towards a small company who is struggling with their growth and the "startup" mentality of everybody jumping in and having more informal communication and processes with 10 or fewer people. We are talking companies that are around 10 to 100 people, who have limited resources of people and money but want to be able to plan and execute more effectively. Gary makes it a point in the book that this still requires discipline and lots of it to make things work, but if you have the right organization the things discussed in the book can work for you. There are six major steps of discipline: Decide What's Important, Set Goals That Lead, Align Systems, Work the Plan, Innovate Purposefully, and Step Back. Many areas of management are covered including Strategic Planning, Quality Management, Integrated Learning, Business Process Automation, People Performance Management and Measure Driven Improvement. The book also provides you the manual tools, processes, checklists etc that any "do-it-yourselfer" could take and try to implement in their business. What I found also fascinating is that the book was influenced by many people (the same people that I had read and liked the theories but didn't know how to act) including: Michael Porter (Competitive Strategy ), Stephen Covey (7 Habits of Highly Effective People), Michael Gerber (The E Myth Revisited), Robert Kaplan and David Norton (Balanced Scorecard), Peter Senge (The Fifth Discipline), and Jim Collins (Good to Great) to name a few.

But the book doesn't stop there! To really benefit and to transform a company in using the six disciplines really need more help than a "do-it-yourselfer" can accomplish. Therefore, there is also a Six Disciplines company that was established to help companies long term get established and maintain using this methodology. If you happen to live in one of the fortunate areas where a Six Disciplines Leadership Center is located, you have access to additional training, coaches, automated tools and other resources. There are plans to have Leadership Centers throughout the country, because Gary has a passion to reach as many small organizations and help them as it helped Solomon.

Throughout the book, the Be Excellent! blog and the Six Disciplines website, you can feel the passion that comes from people like Skip and Gary. These people mean business and have a desire to truly help other companies. Their ideas are sound and proven. Their business model for Six Disciplines is fascinating. If you work especially in a small organization that is struggling with growth and lack of direction, get the book and just give it a try. You have then taken the first step towards an answer. I believe that Gary and his company can provide the help that you need to transform your business and make it excellent!