In scaling-up, Verne Harnish transforms his earlier work called “The Rockefeller Habits” into a re-usable methodology for business growth. Also several works of other authors, like Jim Collins’ “Good to Great”, form a treasure trove under this methodologies line of thinking. In general, Harnish claims from extensive study that any business that is able to make it to a yearly revenue of 1.000.000 bucks and up is always able to extend its market in such a way that 10.000.000 bucks should be possible as well. The method handles about all the habits that you should quit and/or pick-up in your organization to get that growth going.
The work is divided in 4 basic areas of attention:
- People: how to make sure you got the “right people sitting on right seats of the bus” when you try to scale up you organization.
- Strategy: how to set yourselves a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG, a term coined by Jim Collins) that forms your guiding light in the coming years.
- Execution: how to break down that BHAG into tangible smaller goals that you can chase every quarter in order to keep building momentum towards that BHAG over the years.
- Cash: how to make sure you got everything in place to keep an eye on your funding. Growth sucks cash and you should not spread your resources too thin. Together with Greg Crabtree, this chapter in the book was written with simple guidelines on how to track all basic KPI’s you require to survive towards your BHAG.