“I keep six honest serving-men (They taught me all I knew); Their names are What and Why and When And How and Where and Who.” – Rudyard Kipling

Know Why

Start a business when you have a passion for something and want to create something that you can be proud of. Inspire your people with a clear vision. Define shared values and let values rule. Build your distinctive corporate capabilities to achieve competitive advantage.

Know What

Finding the right balance in your business will help you refine your goals and hasten you towards them. Organizations prosper by achieving strategy through balancing the four major factors or perspectives: Financial; Customer; Process; and Growth.

Know Where

Remember the old joke about the car mechanic who’s called in after every other mechanic failed? He listens to the engine for a few minutes, then hauls off and gives it a big swift kick in a certain strategic spot. Lo and behold, the engine starts humming like a kitten. The mechanic turns around, gives the car owner his bill for $400 and the price breakdown: '$1 for my time, and $399 for knowing where to kick.’

Know When

Timing is everything. You have to know not only how to make a move, but when. “The value of actions lies in their timing,” said Lao Tzu. Customer value derives from timely delivery. Change is unavoidable, but if you can anticipate it and understand business cycles, you can ride with change instead of being run over.

Know Who

"In the end, all management can be reduced to three words: people, product, and profits. People come first," said Lee Iacocca  Your corporate vision is worthless, strategies powerless and shared values are corrupt without the right people to execute.

Know How

Manage processes, not people. Focus not on what they do, but on how they do it. Establish a synergistic enterprise-wide and an end-to-end (cross-departmental, and often, cross-company) coordination of work activities that create and deliver ultimate value to customers.

Contents

Corporate Vision

Corporate Growth Strategies

The Tree of Business Success

3 Strategies of Market Leaders

7 Routes To High Profits

Core Competencies

Creating Customer Value

Sustainable Competitive Advantage

Competitive Strategies

9 Strategic Questions To Answer

Surprise To Win  ●  Venture Strategies

How To Discover Opportunities

Change Management

Managerial Leadership: 10 Keys

Entrepreneurial Leader

Employee Empowerment

7 Areas of Systemic Innovation

Yin-Yang of Value Innovation

Entrepreneurial Organization

Winning Culture

Business Process Innovation

Continuous Improvement Firm (CIF)

Synergistic Marketing and Selling

Lessons from Leading Companies

8 Best Practices of Successful Companies

Creating a Great Company

10 Lessons from Konosuke Matsushita

25 Lessons from Jack Welch

Areas Targeted by TQM in Japan

10 Success Lessons from Google

Lessons Richard Branson