Gary Harpst - Founder of Six Disciplines (Spotlight Interview)

Gary Harpst Founder of Six DisciplinesOur guest this week is Gary Harpst.

Gary is the Founder & CEO of Six Disciplines a business excellence program designed specifically for small to mid-sized businesses. Prior to Six Disciplines, Gary was a co-founder of Solomon Software.Our guest this week is Gary Harpst.

During the 20 years he led that organization, Solomon grew to be one of the industry’s market leaders, installing more than 60,000 systems in small to medium-sized businesses around the world. Soloman was sold to a Great Plains Software in 2000 for $142 million.

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Some Takeaways from our discussion:

  • The best practices of larger organizations can (and should) be incorporated into small business
  • Leaders manage for the future - in lean times they’re preparing for growth, in busy times they’re preparing a slow down
  • Great managers down focus on firefighting, but they do focus on constantly improving they systems, looking for low hanging fruit.
  • With a recession imminent (or already here) the natural inclination will be to pull back and play it safe, but this is really a time of opportunity to:
    • Assess your competitive position
    • Re-evaluate & recommit to you corporate mission & goals
    • Expand your business by creating new products & new revenue stream

Find Gary’s Book on Amazon:
Six Disciplines for Excellence: Building Small Businesses That Learn, Lead and Last

Gary’s newest book, Execution Revolution, will be available in the coming months. I’ll update this post as soon as it is available for purchase.

Related posts:

  1. Owner’s Spotlight Interview - Marty Lyman
  2. Owner’s Spotlight Interview - Michael Feuer, Founder of OfficeMax
  3. Michael Bungay Stanier - Spotlight Interview
  4. Molly Gordon - Shaboom, Inc. (Spotlight Interview)
  5. Ilise Benun - Founder of Marketing Mentor (Spotlight Interview)

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Kelly Andrew Brown and Small Business Guru provide Coaching, Inspiration and Practical Advice for Small Business Owners and Entrepreneurs. Subscribe to the free, weekly newsletter at www.small-business-guru.com

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