John Pyecha - Leading Your Business Forward: Aligning Goals, People, and Systems for Sustainable Success

Copyright 2013 by Competitive Solutions, Inc. All rights reserved. Except as permitted under the United States Copyright Act of 1976, no part of this publication may be reproduced or distributed in any form or by any means, or stored in a database or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

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Shane, John, Anna, and Seth would like to take this opportunity to sincerely thank those individuals who have allowed us to enjoy our over-whelming successour clients. Over the last 22 years we have had the pleasure of working with some of the best leaders and organizations in the world. The opportunity to play a small part in helping the worlds most-recognized companies achieve performance excellence is both humbling and rewarding. Every engagement has presented us with opportunities to grow both personally and professionally, and for that we are grateful. It is no secret that for a consulting company to thrive for 22 years it must have a methodology that is both compelling and impactful, because, at the end of the day, that methodology must deliver sustainable value. So to our clients, we thank you for your trust, your commitment, and most of all your friendship.

Lastly, no enterprise succeeds without the support and dedication of those people who are behind the scenes. We would like to thank our spousesStephanie Yount, Lynn Pyecha, Ron VerSteeg, and Ann Davies. Without their encouragement, support, and abundant patience, our 22-year run would not have been nearly so successful nor enjoyable.

We hope you enjoy this book and find that the contents contained within allow you to plot a successful course utilizing your own leadership GPS!

Gabby, the feminine name we have given to our global positioning system (GPS) manufactured by Garmin Industries, is quite remarkable. In her soft-spoken yet insistent manner, she guides us through the spaghetti bowls of metropolitan intersections, across the deserts of the Southwest, and through the mazes of streets in both large and small metropolises. She isnt infallible, yet she invariably gets us to where we want to go.

Of course, for her to do what she is supposed to do, we need first to tell her our destinationalong with, perhaps, some parameters, such as shortest route, scenic route, no tolls, no ferries, and major highways only.

And we need to keep her maps up to date.

If we fail to do any of those things, Gabby will let us down, and we may become temporarily lost. Even if we keep our end of the bargain, sometimes as we are driving along we miss a turn. Gabby insistently tells us she is recalculating. And she continues to recalculate until we accept her directions and get back on route.

We love Gabby. She has become an invaluable friend and aid to us as we explore new places. She has almost (but not quite) replaced all of our printed maps. We quite literally feel lost without her.

In the business world, over the years, business leaders have been given a number of different roadmaps to success. Total Quality Management (TQM), Lean Manufacturing Systems, ISO, Total Preventive Maintenance (TPM), and Six Sigma, to name a few, all promised us how-to solutions to business growth. They were good maps, yet, with few exceptions, they did not guide us to a sustainable level of success.

What has been missing is a GPS for leaders. With Gabby as an inspiration, we have written Leading Your Business Forward, which we consider a Gabby for business.

In this book, we lay out the process of a leadership GPS, using Gabby as our guide. The book is organized into five sections, with which (if you use a GPS in your car) you will be familiar:

: Acquiring

: Settings

: Where To?

: Recalculating

: Arriving!

Within each of these sectionswhich act as steps to implementing leadership GPSyoull set your direction, give your leadership Gabby parameters, and follow her directions. And, using leadership GPS, youll attain that next level youve always wanted and tried to achievesustainable success.

Travelingwhether across country or across the cityis much easier today than it was a mere decade ago.

Back then, in the olden days, if you were going somewhere previously unknown to you, you had to either call ahead to get elaborate directions from someone at your destination or you had to consult a map and hope you could remember every turn, especially if you didnt have a navigator with you in the car. Even if you used