Tracy - TurboStrategy – 21 Powerful Ways to Transform Your Business and Boost Your Profits Quickly

TurboStrategy

21 Powerful Ways to Transform Your
Business and Boost Your Profits Quickly

Brian Tracy

AMACOM

American Management Association

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Tracy, Brian.

Turbostrategy : 21 powerful ways to transform your business and boost your profits quickly / Brian Tracy.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN-13: 978-0-8144-1328-9

ISBN-10: 0-8144-1328-5

e-ISBN: 978-0-8144-2930-3

1. Strategic planning. 2. Reengineering (Management) I. Title.

HD30.28.T724 2003

658.4012dc21 2003005128

2003 Brian Tracy.

All rights reserved.

Printed in the United States of America.

This publication may not be reproduced,

stored in a retrieval system,

or transmitted in whole or in part,

in any form or by any means, electronic,

mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise,

without the prior written permission of AMACOM,

a division of American Management Association,

1601 Broadway, New York, NY 10019.

Printing number

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To Peter Drucker, the finest management thinker
and business philosopher of this age or any age.
Your insights, ideas, and observations have been a
continuous source of knowledge and inspiration to me,
for which I am continuously grateful.

Contents

Thank you for reading this book. In the pages ahead, I will show you how to turbocharge your business quickly, increasing sales and revenues, cutting costs and boosting profits by applying the best techniques and strategies ever discovered for operating a successful business, in any economy or under any competitive conditions.

You will quickly learn a series of practical, proven ideas, methods, and techniques used by all successful companies that survive and thrive in tough markets.

You will learn how to clarify the vision, values, mission, purpose, and goals of your company and how to use this increased clarity to achieve greater revenues and profitability in the months ahead.

To save you time and to help you get more and better results as quickly as possible, Ill give you ideas that have been distilled from years of experience and from hundreds of books and articles on strategy, planning, marketing, selling, and business success.

The most important part of this book, however, is not what you read or learn, but what you actually do with these practical, proven concepts. Action is everything. As you read, think about specific steps you can take immediately to apply these ideas in your business.

In business, as in so many areas of life, results are everything. As you go along, think about how these strategies can help you to get better results faster!

My reasons for writing this book on Turbostrategy are twofold. First, I want to help you to be more successful in your business, whatever it is or wherever you find yourself in your career today.

My second reason for writing this book is that I want to introduce you to the practical techniques that you must master to survive and thrive in the increasingly turbulent and challenging business climate of the twenty-first century.

I call this approach Turbostrategy because it is an intensive, fast, focused, and effective way of setting and implementing strategy. It is for executives and companies that want to make immediate changes and get better results faster.

There is a simple rule for setting priorities or determining the value of any decision or action: It revolves around the idea of consequences. An action or decision that is important is something that has significant potential consequences. The greater the potential consequences, the more important the action or decision is.

By this yardstick, strategic thinking and planning are perhaps the most important acts of the decision-maker. The consequences of good strategy can be the success of the organization. A poor strategy, or no strategy at all, can lead to the failure of the enterprise. As Michael Kami says, Those who do not plan for the future cannot have one. Peter Drucker says, The very best way to predict the future is to create it. Strategy is the key.

In every interview and study, business executives agree almost unanimously that, of all the management methods and techniques that are available today, strategic planning is still the most powerful and effective in getting business results.

One of the biggest challenges for busy executives today is finding the time to read the vast literature and master the intricacies of strategic thinking. What you need is a set of simple tools that you can use immediately to increase profitability. The twenty-one principles you are about to learn will serve as those tools.

Most companies today do not have a strategic plan, or if they do have a plan, it is outdated and obsolete in light of the current economic situation. This book will enable you to conduct a quick strategic analysis of your company and make immediate decisions to improve operations. You may even gain the insights you need to turn your company around completely, as these ideas have done for so many other businesses over the years.

Let me begin this book with a story. In 1951, the Nobel prize-winning physicist Albert Einstein was teaching at Princeton University. He had just administered an examination to an advanced class of physics students and was on his way back to his office. His teaching assistant was walking with him, carrying the completed exam papers.

The assistant, a little shy in the presence of the greatest physicist of the twentieth century, asked him, Dr. Einstein, wasnt that exam that you gave this class of physics students the same exam that you gave to this same class last year?

Einstein thought for a moment and then said, Yes, it was the same exam.

The teaching assistant then asked hesitantly, But Dr. Einstein, how could you give the same exam to the same class two years in a row?

Einsteins answer was classic. He said, Well, the answers have changed.

The point of this story is that the questions might have been the same, but as the result of rapid developments and discoveries in world of physics at that time, the correct answers were different from what they might have been a year before.

This story applies to you and your business as well. Your answers have changed in the last year, and they continue to change, sometimes every day. Over the course of twelve, twenty-four, or thirty-six months, your products, services, prices, processes, marketing, selling, and levels of profitability may all change. Sometimes they will all change together. This is why you need to engage in a continuous, ongoing process of strategic thinking and strategic planning.