How To Transform Your Organization For Maximum Growth And Scale

Amp It Up, by Frank Slootman, shows you how to transform an organization for maximum growth and scale.

Slootman, Snowflake CEO, declares that most leaders have significant room to improve their organization's performance without making expensive changes to their talent, structure, or fundamental business model—and they don’t need to bring in an army of consultants to do it.

“What they do need is to align people around what matters and execute with urgency and intensity every day,” explains Slootman.

More specifically, Slootman says that to achieve unprecedented growth, leaders should:

declare war on mediocrity
break the status quo
make conflicted choices daily
have a relentless focus on the mission

“Make your organization mission driven,” says Slootman. “When your organization has a well-defined purpose, you feel it down in your bones. You feel energized when you start the workday, and you feel good about whatever progress you’ve made toward the mission when you shut down for the night.”

He adds that the more defined and intense the mission, the easier it will be for everyone to focus on it.

And, once you have your mission in place, the four keys to getting everyone to embrace it and make it real are applying:

Focus
Urgency
Execution
Strategy

Other key takeaways from the book for me include:

Worrying about your organization’s strategy before your team is good at executing is pointless.
The bottom line is that great execution can make a moderately successful strategy go a long way, but poor execution will fail even the most brilliant strategy.
Employees should be able to look at themselves in the mirror and feel strongly that they matter to the organization, that they contribute in significant ways, that their absence would significantly hurt its results.
Culture describes how people come together as a group on a day-to-day basis. Is yours respectful, fluid, engaging, constructive, demanding, urgent, creative? Or, is it dragging, political, CYA, risk avoiding, and confrontational?
Create a company culture where everybody, and that means everybody, has permission to speak to anybody inside the company, for any reason, regardless of role, rank, or function. Your company organization should run on influence, not rank and title.
Without focused leadership, millions of conflicting priorities compete with each other. Then the best people in the origination get frustrated and start to leave, as talent and energy go untapped and dormant.

Amp It Up is ideal for executives, entrepreneurs, founders, managers, and leaders of all kinds.

Thank you to the book’s publisher for sending me an advance copy of the book.

Comments

10 Quotes From The 5 Levels Of Leadership -- John C. Maxwell

Soon I'll post my full review of John C. Maxwell's latest book, The 5 Levels of Leadership . In the meantime, here are some of my favorites quotes from the book that I believe should become a must-read book by any workplace/organizational leader: Good leadership isn't about advancing yourself. It's about advancing your team. Leaders become great, not because of their power, but because of their ability to empower others. Leadership is action, not position. When people feel liked, cared for, included, valued, and trusted, they begin to work together with their leader and each other. If you have integrity with people, you develop trust. The more trust you develop, the stronger the relationship becomes. In times of difficulty, relationships are a shelter. In times of opportunity, they are a launching pad. Good leaders must embrace both care and candor. People buy into the leader, then the vision. Bringing out the best in a person is often a catal...

How To Play Bigger And Be A Category King In Business

"The most exciting companies create. They give us new ways of living, thinking, or doing business, many times solving a problem we didn't know we had -- or a problem we didn't pay attention to because we never thought there was another way," explain the four authors of the dynamic new book, Play Bigger . They add that, "the most exciting companies sell us different. They introduce the world to a new category of product or service." And, they become category kings . Examples of category kings are Amazon, Salesforce, Uber and IKEA. Play Bigger is all about the strategy that builds category kings. And, to be a category king you need to be good at category design : Category design is the discipline of creating and developing a new market category, and conditioning the market so it will demand your solution and crown your company as its king. Category design is the opposite of "build it and they will come." Key traits of category design...

Five Essential Principles For Sustaining Growth Through Innovation

Even though many companies strive for innovation, most struggle to achieve meaningful change. The largest reason for this disconnect? Playing it safe. Leaders and organizations want to implement new ideas, but too often they are held back by the fear of failure, even though setbacks are intrinsic to the innovation process. In the new book, No Fear, No Failure , by Lorraine H. Marchand (with John Hanc), readers will learn how to overcome the status quo that stifles creative thinking and how to create a culture that encourages innovation. Marchand provides a framework for sustained growth built on the “ 5 Cs ”: Customer First Culture Collaboration Change Chance She draws on more than 120 interviews with leaders across industries, real-world case studies, and her firsthand experience and shares step-by-step, field-tested strategies, tactics, and tools that practitioners can use to embed creativity within organizational cultures. Marchand is a former Big Tech and Big Pharma ex...

Nelson Mandela Leadership Quotes

Here are my favorite Nelson Mandela leadership quotes: "Lead from the back--and let others believe they are in front." "The greatest glory in living lies not in never failing, but in rising every time we fall." "It always seems impossible until it's done." "I like friends who have independent minds because they tend to make you see problems from all angles." "I've learned that courage was not the absence of fear, but the triumph over it. The brave man is not he who does not feel afraid, but he who conquers that fear." "Do not judge me by my successes, judge me by how many times I fell down and got back up again."

How To Harness Employee Experience Design To Attract And Retain The Best Talent

Employee Experience Design (EXD) is designing with people and not for them. It’s a proven method for engaging and collaborating with your employees to help solve your most difficult workplace challenges. You’ll learn all about EXD in the new book, Employee Experience Desing: How To Co-Create Work Where People And Organizations Thrive , by Dean E. Carter , Samantha Gadd, and Mark Levy . “Many organizations are drowning in policies and initiatives. EXD is a way to reduce that burden while delivering better results both for employees and for the bottom line,” explain the authors. The book includes inspiring stories from brands like Airbnb and Patagonia, among many others, including those in retail, healthcare, hospitality, apparel, and biotech. It describes the power that’s unleashed when organizations design with and not for their employees. The first part of the book covers The Why of why EXD is so important and addresses legitimate – and tough –...

Advisory Leadership

Flashback to three years ago...because this book is so, so good! After reading nearly 30 new books about leadership this year, my pick for 2015's best new leadership book is, Advisory Leadership , by Greg Friedman , Although the book is authored by an award-winning financial advisor and primarily written for professionals in the financial services industry, this book is a must read for any leader who wants to create a nurturing heart culture that hinges on the human-centric values the next generation of employees hold in high regard. And, what exactly is heart culture ? Friedman says, "At its core, heart culture symbolizes how a company values more than just an employee's output. It's not about the work, but rather, the people who do the work." He further explains that leaders can no longer afford to ignore the shift toward a people-first culture and its direct influence on a healthy, effective work envir...

6 Ways To Seek Feedback To Improve Your Performance In The Workplace

Getting feedback is an important way to improve performance at work. But sometimes, it can be hard to seek out, and even harder to hear. “Feedback is all around you. Your job is to find it, both through asking directly and observing it,” says David L. Van Rooy, author of the new book, Trajectory: 7 Career Strategies to Take You From Where You Are to Where You Want to Be . As today's guest post, Van Rooy offers these six tips for how to get the feedback you need to improve performance at work . Guest Post By David L. Van Rooy 1. Don’t forget to as k : One of the biggest mistakes people make is assuming things are going perfectly (until they make a catastrophic mistake). By not asking, you’re missing out on opportunities for deep feedback: the difficult, critical feedback that gives you constructive ways to improve. 2. Make sure you listen : Remember, getting fee...

29 People Who Taught Us Life Lessons In Courage, Integrity And Leadership

The 29 profiles you will read in Robert L. Dilenschneider’s new book, Character , are about people who are exceptional exemplars of character. They’re inspirational because they used their abilities at their highest levels to work for causes they believed in. Because of character, they influenced the world for good. The dictionary defines “character” as the mental and moral qualities distinctive to an individual, the distinctive nature of something, the quality of being individual in an interesting or unusual way, strength and originality in a person’s nature, and a person’s good reputation. “But beyond these definitions, we know that character is manifested in leadership, innovation, resilience, change, courage, loyalty, breaking barriers, and more,” explains Robert (Bob), “Character drives the best traits in our society, such as honesty, integrity, leadership, and transparency, and it drives others to exhibit those qualities.” Profiled in the book ar...

Teach An Employee Something New Today

Take the opportunity today to teach an employee something new. Nearly everyone likes to learn and is capable of tackling a new challenge. Teach your employee something that expands their current job description. Teach something that will help them to get promoted within your organization at a later date. Teach them a skill that uses new technology. Or teach them something that will allow them to be a more skilled leader and manager in the future. You can even teach something that you no longer need to be doing in your position, but that will be a rewarding challenge/task for your employee. The benefit to your employee is obvious. The benefit to you is you'll have a more skilled team member who is capable of handling more work that can help you to grow your business and/or make it run more efficiently. Be a leader who teaches.

How To Get Along With Anyone

T he new book, How To Get Along With Anyone , by John Eliot and Jim Guinn , is the playbook for predicting and preventing conflict at work and at home. As you read the book, you will discover how to defuse any heated conflict by learning which of the five conflict styles you are and how to resolve even the most sensitive dispute with this must-read guide. Through decades of building and facilitating team chemistry for Fortune 500 companies, professional sports franchises, schools and government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and families, Eliot and Guinn have discovered people respond to conflict in one of these five ways: Avoider : Uninterested in minor details; excels in solitary work with a knack for concentration. Competitor : Always pushing the envelope; never rests on laurel and takes risks for achievement. Analyzer : Evidence-based and methodical; patiently gathers information before acting. Collaborator : A deeply caring individual,...

Eric Jacobson On Management And Leadership

Search This Blog