S01E12 A Strong Culture is Like a Cult, with Verne Harnish

“Is it companies who put employees first? Do they perform better than companies who put customers first? Or those that put stakeholders first?. I thought it was a fundamental question needed to be answered. And the answer [the came through John Kotter’s research] surprised everybody… The companies that outperformed by a factor of 10 were those that treated all 3 equally. That the employees, customers, and shareholders were all like a 3-legged stool.”

S01E12 of the Rethink Culture podcast shines the spotlight on Verne Harnish, founder of the world-renowned Entrepreneurs’ Organization (EO) with 18,000 members globally, and CEO of Scaling Up, a global executive education and coaching company, and author of several books, including Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, and Scaling Up Compensation.

Listen to find out:
- how would Verne write a book about culture and its first three chapters 
- why every company is strange, as it tries to align its particular culture with the people that fit it.
- why you shouldn’t try to mess with the culture of an organisation after the first 5 years
- why we need to replace the word leadership with the word “careship”
- why people don’t want to be managed or led, but coached. 
- why language is a key component of a culture

Further references:
- Verne Harnish on Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/verneharnish/
- Scaling Up: https://scalingup.com/
- Entrepreneurs Organization (EO): https://growth.eonetwork.org/

Books referenced:
- “Change to Strange: Create a Great Organization by Building a Strange Workforce” by Daniel M. Cable: https://www.amazon.com/Change-Strange-Organization-Building-Workforce/dp/0131572229
- “Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...and Why the Rest Don't” by Verne Harnish: https://www.amazon.com/Scaling-Up-Companies-Rockefeller-Habits/dp/0986019526
- “Corporate Culture and Performance” by John P. Kotter and James L. Heskett: https://www.amazon.com/Corporate-Culture-Performance-John-Kotter/dp/1451655320
- Culture Renovation: 18 Leadership Actions to Build an Unshakeable Company by Kevin Oakes https://www.amazon.com/Culture-Renovation-Leadership-Actions-Unshakeable/dp/1260464369
- The Heart of Business: Leadership Principles for the Next Era of Capitalism by Hubert Joly https://www.amazon.com/Heart-Business-Leadership-Principles-Capitalism/dp/B09156FL17/ref=sr_1_1?crid=E77JU5VTTTZH
- “Scrum: The Art of Doing Twice the Work in Half the Time” by Jeff Sutherland and J.J. Sutherland: https://www.amazon.com/Scrum-Doing-Twice-Work-Half/dp/038534645X
- “Elon Musk” by Walter Isaacson: https://www.amazon.com/Elon-Musk-Walter-Isaacson/dp/1982181281

Creators & Guests

Guest

Verne Harnish

Verne Harnish is a world-leading expert, speaker, author, and entrepreneur in the field of business growth. He has spent more than 30 years educating entrepreneurial teams. As part of his personal mission to support entrepreneurs, he co-founded Growth Institute, a premier online training company that has helped mid-market companies in over 50 countries learn and implement the latest business methodologies. He also founded the world-renowned Entrepreneurs' Organization (EO) and chaired for 15 years EO's premier CEO program, the "Birthing of Giants", held at MIT. Verne is also the Founder and CEO of Scaling Up, a global executive education and coaching company with over 180 partners on six continents, Known as the "Growth Guy" syndicated columnist, Verne is also a regular columnist for Fortune magazine. He's the author of Scaling Up, Mastering the Rockefeller Habits and, along with the editors of Fortune, authored The Greatest Business Decisions of All Time, for which Jim Collins wrote the foreword. With his expertise in high demand, Verne chairs annual Growth Summits in North America, Europe, and Asia and continues to teach in the MIT-based executive program he founded. He is also a private investor in many scaleups. Verne is a father of four who enjoys piano, tennis, and magic as a card-carrying member of the International Brotherhood of Magicians.

What is Rethink Culture?

Rethink Culture is the podcast that shines the spotlight on the leaders who are rethinking workplace culture. Virtually all of the business leaders who make headlines today do so because of their company performance. Yet, the people and the culture of a company is at least as important as its performance. It's time that we shine the spotlight on the leaders who are rethinking workplace culture and are putting people and culture at the forefront.

Andreas Constantinou [00:00:08]:

Good afternoon. Good morning. Good evening, wherever you are. Welcome to another episode of Rethinking Culture, the podcast that shines a spotlight on business leaders who are rethinking workplace culture. My name is Andreas Constantinou, and I'm your host. And I'm also chairman and founder at SlashData. I see myself as an accidental micromanager who turned servant leader over the years and developed a personal passion for workplace culture. If you have any thoughts you'd like to share on the podcast, please let me know by emailing [e-mail].

Andreas Constantinou [00:00:38]:

Now today, I have the very rare pleasure of having with me Verne Harnish. Verne is the founder of the Entrepreneurs Organization and Scaling Up, which is a global coaching and education company. Verne, very welcome to the Rethink Culture Podcast.

Verne Harnish [00:00:52]:

It's good to join you. And as you know, it's a Hugely important topic, culture.

Andreas Constantinou [00:00:58]:

It is. Before we get to that, I should say that the organization you founded, EO, has been a huge influence in my life, and people understand the influence when I say that my life is before and after e o. And, okay, I divorced right at the point where I joined the O, so that has something to do with it.

Verne Harnish [00:01:17]:

Nice.

Andreas Constantinou [00:01:18]:

Yeah. But it's before and after O, and I'm very thankful for that. Moving to culture. What is culture for you, Verne?

Verne Harnish [00:01:24]:

It came from the word cult, interestingly enough. And that's the thing Jim Collins found is that a really strong culture is cult like. And so it is a group of people that have a certain set of norms, and behaviors, And rules that they've agreed to operate under that's common, that makes them unique from other groups of people. And that's really the culture.

Andreas Constantinou [00:01:50]:

You talk at some point about how culture can be as unique and, in some cases, as weird or different as you can imagine. Like, there's I think at some point you talk about case studies of a company which pays people based on the number of hours they work, or any other example of culture. Do you wanna build on that?

Verne Harnish [00:02:10]:

Michael Porter at Harvard, a great father of strategy, said, you really don't have a strategy if what you do isn't different. So if you price the same way everyone else does, you're not different. If you compensate the same way everyone else does, you're not different. And if you've hired the same kind of people that everybody else hires, then you're really not different. And so one of my favorite books This is Daniel Cabell's Out of London Business School's book called Change to Strange, and how a strange workforce Can really power forward the culture and the company. And so you start with, all right, what's your weirdness? What's Strange about you. And so what you're referring to is Lincoln Electric. Right now, pay in the 100 best places to work.

Verne Harnish [00:02:56]:

When they surveyed the CEOs, what are your priorities for 2023? Again, these are the best places to work, not, you know, average sized companies. Pei, you know, traditionally has always been 4th on the list ahead of culture, and caring, and some of the other things that are important. Pay rocketed to number 1 for 2023 as their focus, because of the inflationary pressures and everything else. And so I opened the book, Scaling Up Compensation, with the Lincoln Electric example. And it's a company that builds welding equipment Out of the northeast part of the United States. Been around for a 100 plus years. And among other things, you are guaranteed lifetime employment. They have never had a layoff in the history of the 100 plus years of the company.

Verne Harnish [00:03:45]:

But their compensation would be considered draconian And any other culture. You eat what you produce. You get paid what you produce. It's very piecemeal. So if you have a sick day, There's no sick days off. You don't get paid. If you want to take vacation, it's not paid. If you want to work 2 shifts, you can make twice as much.

Verne Harnish [00:04:06]:

And by the way, this would not be for most people on the planet. But they're not looking for 8,000,000,000 employees. They're looking for a few hundred. And that's what makes, I think, a great culture, is it has such uniqueness Or weirdness or strangeness, that it attracts just enough people who identify with that, You can really power forward a very successful business with Lincoln Electric has. And so I think that's a good example Of where you've got real alignment between all of your people systems, including compensation, and the culture.

Andreas Constantinou [00:04:46]:

Do you find that this culture is often conscious or unconscious? Because at least from my own experience, it took me a long time until I Consciously said, you know, this is how much we're paying, and this is the reason we're paying this much or that our culture is more collective rather than individual. And I think I'm the rule rather than the exception in that CEOs are not so much aware of the culture they have built, and the quickness or strangeness that that includes. What's your view?

Verne Harnish [00:05:16]:

I've often referred to culture much like Your child's personality. And by the way, part of that personality shows in the womb. So part of that personality or culture Is present in the startup, the very beginning days. It's a combination of the few people that you pull together in order to get the organization launched. But there is a nurture period over about 5 years, up until age 5, where the personality is forming. And then the research is clear. Once it's in place by about the 5th year, it's not going to change much for the next 50 years. And so we find the same thing that a lot of it is accidental or situational, environmental, if you would, in those 1st 5 years of a company.

Verne Harnish [00:06:03]:

But then by at that point, it's there. Whether you consciously or unconsciously Tried to guide it to that point. And that's why it's important to do a discovery or rediscovery exercise. And Jim Collins was right. Culture is not a nice to have, it's not a wish. It is what ended up becoming the personality Of that organism, that organization. And so it's a discovery exercise to be able to bring it to the conscious, so that you can Work with its strengths and not try to change it. I mean, you try to change the fundamental personality of a child, You're gonna send them into a lot of therapy for the next decades.

Verne Harnish [00:06:48]:

The same with the culture. And it can be upsetting. I'll tell you, I'll share a story. So Must have been 3 decades ago, I was working with a company, out of the southern part of Virginia. And this Founder was as hard charging, type A, take the hill, no excuses kind of person. Yet, his son had taken over the company, and they were getting ready to be threatened by one of the biggest players in their industry. And the founder was frustrated that his son wasn't stepping up, and wasn't getting tough, and wasn't getting aggressive, and wasn't getting competitive. So we did a discovery exercise of the culture.

Verne Harnish [00:07:32]:

And what was interesting, Andreas, is the culture was in essence, This family friendly culture that couldn't have been more opposite than the founder. I usually ask people, do you have any children? And if they do, I say, do you have a child you have no idea where they came from? And I do, right? It's like they're so opposite of everyone else in the family. And that's what can happen. A founder, an entrepreneur can birth an organism, an organization That's the opposite of who they are. So I'll finish up that story. So we realized that culture was the opposite of the founder. And was more like the son, who was now CEO. Interesting.

Verne Harnish [00:08:16]:

We then brought in some experts. It was in the convenience store space. Some experts to say, all right, let's structure a marketing campaign to counter this player that's moving into the marketplace. The first thing they said, and they were very wise is, we know that if your ad campaign doesn't align with the culture, Then it's gonna be a disaster. You're saying one thing, but doing something else. And that incoherence the customer And the market can feel. So long story short, they built a campaign around being family and friendly. And they crushed this competitor.

Verne Harnish [00:08:58]:

And the father, the founder, had to realize that to thine own self be true. That the culture of the company is not the same as him. Just like your personality may not be the same as any one of your individual children. And so to me, that's the the perfect analogy and why that alignment and discovery process is so important.

Andreas Constantinou [00:09:21]:

So as the company grows, the culture is influenced from bottom up, whereas in the early stages, it's mostly top down influenced by the founder?

Verne Harnish [00:09:30]:

That may be an oversimplification, but I think that's generally true. I think it's more from the outside in and the inside out. I think part of the environment you're operating in, some of the early experiences of the organization can begin to Forman and some of the other people that you bring in over those 1st 60 months can add edges or take edges off of that culture. But I think within 5 years, the culture is the culture, and trying to mess with it. So I'll tell you another story. So Zapier, The 2 founders who launched Sapient had a set of 5 core values. And it was a very, very well performing company. And then they did an acquisition.

Verne Harnish [00:10:16]:

And this acquisition, they said, you know what? And they called it a merger. And there are no such thing as a merger. There's only an acquisition, and only 1 culture can survive. But what they tried to do is blend the 2. So they got rid of 1 of their 5 core values, and they adopted one From the other company. And the company almost failed. And Stuart Moore, who used to teach at that MIT program that I founded, Said in hindsight, we concluded that's what killed us. Is that we strayed from our 5 original core values.

Verne Harnish [00:10:50]:

We tried to add 1. They went back to the original, 5, and the company took off again. When we were just with Scott Farquhar with Atlassian, Scott joined, It was in our workshop when they had about 50 employees. Today, they have 10,000. Back then, they were starting up. Today, they've got something north of 50,000,000,000 in market cap. And when I saw Scott a few months ago, he reiterated again that discovery exercise we did back in 2005. A lot has changed from 50 employees to 10,000.

Verne Harnish [00:11:22]:

But what hasn't are those 5 core values. They're at the heart. But he did say something interesting. He said, Values are not your culture. And I'm like, wow, that's the first I've heard that. And he said, the cultures could actually be somewhat different depending on the Countries that we operate in. There can be some cultural. So this word culture has Some issues.

Verne Harnish [00:11:52]:

It's like the word value. So he said our core values, our 5 rules haven't changed Since 2005. And by the way, I think if your listeners wanna go to what I think is the best articulated set of core values, It is Atlassian. Just Google Atlassian core values. You're gonna see a perfect video that I think every company should create. You're gonna see that they're phrases, not words. You're gonna see their phrases that you would expect them language they would use in Australia And in their company, they have a nice description. And each one is anchored by a visual.

Verne Harnish [00:12:30]:

I think there needs to be a visual symbol for each one of them. Those 5 haven't changed. But he said there are cultural nuances that are different in their Dutch headquarters Versus their US headquarters, versus their offices they've got in Australia. And I thought that was an important nuance.

Andreas Constantinou [00:12:50]:

Beyond Atlassian. And there's relatively few companies that we talk about, at least in the tech space that I am, There are role models for culture. Like, Southwest Airlines is 1 and maybe Netflix is another, but this very Zappos could be another one. In your travels and your discussions, have you found any other companies that have built exemplary cultures that are worth talking about.

Verne Harnish [00:13:18]:

First of all, my buddy, Kevin Oates, wrote a really great book called Cultural Renovation. And I think, again, that represents that the core values at Microsoft haven't changed. But Satya Nadella changed the culture From a, as he said, a know it all culture to a learn it all culture. From a fixed mindset to a growth mindset. And so I think you can continue to learn and evolve without changing the fundamental rules of the game. And I equate core values like the rules of a professional sport. And I don't care what country you're in. We all share the same rules around tennis or football or any sport.

Verne Harnish [00:14:07]:

That's what makes it a sport. But our approach to the game, the culture of that team can be radically different. And so I think that's where the distinction needs to be held. And you get a new coach. Look, we got Deion Sanders Here, mister prime time in Boulder, Colorado, where I'm broadcasting from, the CU Buffs went from winning only 1 game last year To now ranked 18th in the nation. But he changed the culture radically, and the players as part of the process. But he couldn't change the rules of football. But let's get back to this question of people first.

Verne Harnish [00:14:47]:

Let's maybe go down this this last

Andreas Constantinou [00:14:49]:

Yeah. That was my next question. What kind of companies have you come across that put people first, or how do you help your clients create people first cultures?

Verne Harnish [00:15:00]:

Yeah. There, I think we've gotta go back and look at some research that was done by John Kotter at Harvard. Back in the late eighties, he published a book in the early nineties called Systems and Culture and Performance. I'm going blank on the name. I'll have to look it up. And what he did, he looked at 2 11 companies over an 11 year period. 2 0 7 companies over an 11 year period. And he said, I want to answer this question.

Verne Harnish [00:15:26]:

Is it companies who put employees first? Do they perform better than companies who put customers first? Or put stakeholders first. And I thought it was a fundamental question needed to be answered. And the answer surprised him and everybody. Oh, it's Corporate Culture and Performance was the name of the the book. And what he found is, It was none of those 3. Somebody who said employees are number 1, or customers are number 1, or shareholders are number 1. The companies that outperformed by a factor of 10 were those that treated all 3 equally. That the employees, customers, and shareholders were all like a 3 legged stool.

Verne Harnish [00:16:11]:

If any one of those legs is weak, the whole thing falls over. And that's, by the way, what led to the balanced scorecard. Now, if you speed forward 3 decades later, The business round table decided just before the pandemic, that maybe we should update what we think is the function of a business. And before it was to take care of the shareholder. They then said, you know what? It's the employees, the customers, the shareholders, and The 4th leg, the community. It's companies that balance those equally. Put all the people first. Not just I think when people say people first, they're thinking employees.

Verne Harnish [00:16:53]:

I think we've got to put all people 1st, including those in the community and the company that balances that. The other thing I would comment on, we just hosted Hubert Jho Lee At our CEO summit at Harvard, a couple of weeks ago. And Hubert, by the way, wrote a book that I consider the number one business book when it came out 2 years ago, Called the heart of business. It's about his turnaround of Best Buy. You know, he took that share from $11 to 110, Quarter 1000000 employees. And he had to make a lot of change there. And he said something interesting. Employee engagement, as measured by Gallup, Hasn't moved a percent for 50 years.

Verne Harnish [00:17:34]:

It dropped 5 points actually in the pandemic. But it's been about 19% for 50 years. And I'd made this comment that I think that means the 6,000 leadership books written every year aren't worth the paper they're printed on. And Hubert got up then and he said, you know what, Bernd? I agree. He said, I think we need to get rid of the word leadership And replace it with the word care shift. That at the end of the day, what it means To put people first is to care for them. That's the four letter word. And if your people and your customers And your community think you care for them, then they're gonna care for you, your company, and your people.

Verne Harnish [00:18:20]:

And so I think it really comes down to care and being caring. So he suggested, let's call it careship Instead of leadership, and I agree.

Andreas Constantinou [00:18:30]:

I agree. Definitely. The word leader could be interpreted in so many different ways. It could be the huge statue that everyone needs to look up to, which is the autocratic leader or could be the servant leader, which is a tiny statue in a Paradigm that helps everyone become bigger, the person that needs to be surrounded by people that are smarter than them and helps them grow. Yeah, we need the clear paradigm for sure.

Verne Harnish [00:18:57]:

Well, and I think what's happening, Andreas, is really nobody needs lead. What Jim Clifton's research found after surveying a 100,000,000 employees for the last 50 years Is that nobody wants managed. And I think that really means nobody wants led either. They do want coached. So I want a coach. I don't know a professional sports player who wants to be led, you know? But they wanna be coached. Because they're all leaders when they're on the field. And I think for you to have a successful company, everyone needs to be a leader.

Verne Harnish [00:19:35]:

And what I love about the internet and AI is it's put the same power in our hands As only a few used to have. Only a few people had access to the information you have today. Only a few people Had the power that AI can provide. Now it's available to all of us. And so it's the democratization of the world. And that's what we're seeing inside organizations. That, and I loved when Scott at Atlassian said it, Hey, I'm telling our managers to get back programming. Because nobody, You know, get back playing on the field instead of standing around and telling people what to do.

Verne Harnish [00:20:22]:

So I think, and this is what we're seeing is happening in the world. The traditional leaders, particularly of our countries, Are trying to hold on to their power when that power is being dissipated. And we know this, Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. And that's why the leaders that are empowered, the first thing they want to do is shut down or control Social media. They don't want us all talking. Because if we do, we're going to figure out that we're smarter than they are. And that's what they don't want. Information was power.

Verne Harnish [00:20:58]:

Now we're distributing it.

Andreas Constantinou [00:21:01]:

Something else I wanted to ask you is your books, Scaling Up Rockefeller Habits. There is a ton of very thoughtful material there about processes and structure and just how to run a well oiled business. If you were to write another book on culture and say, how'd you build a strong culture? What would be the 2 or 3 important chapters in there?

Verne Harnish [00:21:29]:

Well, I think first is being clear what the rules are, what the norms are, the behaviors that are acceptable in this culture. And I think of Towne Park. Jerry South, I met him when he had 200 employees. And by the way, it's not Google or Facebook. They park Cars for major hotel and restaurant chains. But, yeah, at the end of the day, they park cars. But what he did is he took their 6 rules. And by the way, you only have to call them core principles either.

Verne Harnish [00:21:58]:

Make up your own language. That's part of what makes a culture cool. I can't remember, they had a different name for them. But out of those 6 rules, they created what they call the 31 daily basics. And they picked 31 because that was the days of the month. And under each daily basic, they delineated 3 or 4 very specific behaviors, norms. And then every employee, and they scaled about 15,000 people parking cars. And they're a 20 fourseven, 3 65 business.

Verne Harnish [00:22:30]:

Anyone who was working a shift was in a daily huddle. And in that daily huddle, they would review 1 daily basic Every day, an audit whether they were really practicing those norms or behaviors. If you take 3 or 4 times 31, I think there really is 100 little norms That make up a culture. And so I think first, 1 chapter would be being very clear, How do you convert those handful of rules, values, into a set of behaviors and norms that we all agree we're willing to play by? And by the way, if you look at the rule book of a professional sports team, it's this thick. I mean, and you, if you're a player, Had better know every one of those subtle rules. Or you could end up losing a game, which we saw happen just this weekend With a few of those. So that would be chapter 1. I think chapter 2 would be the importance of professionalizing Business.

Verne Harnish [00:23:38]:

And to really act less like a family. Everybody talks about, hey, we need to be more like a family. But I don't know about you, but the term dysfunctional family is an oxymoron. Is it redundancy? I mean, by definition, families are dysfunctional. And so and families and families don't scale. So we think it's important to replace this mindset of family with that of a professional sports team. You know, they've been the best performing asset class this century. So everything that you see in a professional sports team, from the training And development to the coaching, to the conditioning, to the KPIs.

Verne Harnish [00:24:23]:

Everybody knows the score instantly. Everybody knows their stats. To big scoreboards and trophies. Everything we've learned about running a high performance sports team, We could translate into a high performing culture. I'd say that'd be number 2. And the 3rd chapter Would be this importance of creating a learning culture. Because I think if there's 1 thing I've seen common That separates the better performing cultures over those that aren't is they understand you're either earning or learning. You're either winning or learning.

Verne Harnish [00:25:04]:

And you get rid of the term losing. And so it's that growth mindset that Carol Dweck, And now, Mary Murphy, who's got a new book coming out in 2024, who has had her teach at at Harvard, I think is sharing with companies Around the globe. So those would be my 3 chapters. Norms, be professional, and create a culture of learning.

Andreas Constantinou [00:25:27]:

I was reading Jeff Sutherland's book on scrum, who's he's the founder of scrum. And as he was describing what scrum is and how it came about, To me, the major difference with waterfall is that of continual learning and of doing the 20% that drives 80% of the result. But really it's about continual learning. Like, every 2 weeks, every month, every whatever sprint interval, you sit back, you reflect, and you improve. And that is what drives the three x, four x typical performance advantage over waterfall methods. Yes. So, yeah, very much tying that into learning

Verne Harnish [00:26:07]:

Yes.

Andreas Constantinou [00:26:07]:

That you mentioned.

Verne Harnish [00:26:09]:

And I would take it further. We often use The analogy from fighter pilots, the OODA loop that observe, orient, decide, and act. And who whichever fighter pilots had the faster OODA loop, They lived, the others died. It was really life and death kind of decision. I think the same thing here. If you wanna move faster, you have to pulse faster. So, you know, at the heart of our work is this daily huddle. And most of our competition Sets that aside at the peril of their clients.

Verne Harnish [00:26:41]:

The first thing Steve Jobs did when he took over Apple is he turned his conference room into a situation room. And the team he chose to turn around Apple met every day. He ended up having lunch, then every day with Jonathan Ive. I just got Elon Books' Musk new book yesterday, and I've just started to dig into it. And he's really into the importance of a rapid meeting, Making decisions and getting things done today. Don't wait till tomorrow. Nate and the team at Airbnb, When they hit that pandemic, they lost $1,000,000,000 worth of bookings. I said, Nate, what did you guys do? You and Brian and the senior team.

Verne Harnish [00:27:18]:

He said we went into a daily huddle 7 days a week. So yes, it's important to learn, but it takes 6 data points, as we know in scrum, To see a pattern. And if I'm only looking at information once a week, it's going to take me a month and a half. If it's only once a month, it's going to take me a half a year. But if I'm looking at it daily, I can see the trend in a week. So I think whoever has the learn, decide, act cycle faster Then the competition has a leg up in the marketplace. So I do think speed matters.

Andreas Constantinou [00:27:54]:

Now I know you are, We're, limited for time, Verne. So I'll have 1 last question for you. Your work has been extremely seminal. I would dare say probably more than you realize because I meet so many EOers that have seen their lives transform as a result of EO. And Scaling Up is a great tool, and I've heard many accelerators say they've changed their way they see their business as a result of that material. So you've produced a lot of work that has changed people's lives in one way or another. What's your aspiration in life? What's success for you? What are you hoping to see for yourself?

Verne Harnish [00:28:35]:

Well, we did reset our own b hack, Andreas. We really finally figured out our job to be done, which I think is the single most important question an entrepreneur has to answer. What is the job Of your milkshake. Like, late late, great, Clay Christensen's 4 minute video we have every entrepreneur watch.

Andreas Constantinou [00:28:54]:

I love it.

Verne Harnish [00:28:55]:

And ours is to scale up The valuation, the value of your business. To get you to think as much as an investor, as an owner. And I did a quick calculation. Last year was my 40th year of helping entrepreneurs. And I calculated about 800,000,000,000 in value had been added. Our new BHAG is in the next 10 years to deliver 2 trillion. Now, 2 trillion is still just a drop In 1 year's global GDP. And we wanna take 10 years, but we still think that'll put a dent in the universe If we can continue to add that much value or valuation to the clients that we work with.

Verne Harnish [00:29:38]:

For me personally, my role model's Peter Drucker. Peter wrote 39 books. And what's interesting is he only wrote a third of those Before his 65th birthday, which is your traditional age of retirement, he did 2 thirds of his best work after retirement. And so I turn 65 next year, in 2024. And so I'm hoping to write at least twice as many books As I have in this first part of my life, in the next part. I love writing and I love kind of synthesizing and communicating Ideas, it's my thing

Andreas Constantinou [00:30:16]:

And I know lots of people that would be eagerly awaiting to read them Verne.

Verne Harnish [00:30:20]:

All right, so I hope

Andreas Constantinou [00:30:21]:

we get to that

Verne Harnish [00:30:23]:

Thank you.

Andreas Constantinou [00:30:24]:

Verne, it's been a pleasure. Thank you for your insights, sharing your journeys, sharing your aspirations, Sharing your stories. You always have the most entertaining stories in business. Thank you, and I hope you get to write those books.

Verne Harnish [00:30:38]:

Thank you, Andreas. And I appreciate the work you're doing to share these ideas, particularly around culture and people. Because at the end of the day, it's hard to scale without them.

Andreas Constantinou [00:30:48]:

It is. Totally. Thank you, Verne.

Verne Harnish [00:30:51]:

Thank you.