2019 Business Excellence Forum – Blinding Flashes of the Obvious Part 1

Originally posted 3/18/2019.

For the fourth year in a row, the Business Excellence Forum (BEF) grew and exceeded the previous years in attendance, presenters and content.  This year there were more than 700 business owners, executives, team members and business coaches in attendance in Charleston, SC.  With that many attendees, there was an abundance of formal and informal exchanges of ideas, strategies, success stories and best practices.

This year’s forum had an extensive list of keynote speakers whose presentations yielded many Blinding Flashes of the Obvious (BFOs) and new ways of looking at things.  The following are some of the BFOs that struck a chord with me, all of which will enhance the value I bring to my clients.  I am sure that some of these will have a similar effect on you.

The event began with Dr. Mark Thompson and Dr. Bonita Thompson, authors of “Admired – 21 Ways to Double Your Value”.  Their presentation was about “Being The Most Admired Brand.”   They presented the five factors needed to be an admired brand:

1. Who do you admire?
   • We admire people with the same values as us
   • We all need “Power Partners” – mentors
2. Productive PARANOIA
   • Steve Jobs 1.0 – was fired from Apple. At that time, he was ambitious, arrogant, and lacked humility
   • Steve Jobs 2.0 – re-tooled himself and built Apple into one of the most valuable companies in the world

3. Value-Creators – If your house burned down, would you:
   • Rebuild the same House?
   • Using the same Process?
   • With the same Team?
   • What about your business? Does your business create Value?
4. Never-ending Mission – four parts
   • BHAGs – Big Hairy Audacious Goals
   • OKR – Objectives and Key Results
   • Simplicity
   • Urgency – Creates Learning & Growth

5. Deliberate Practice – 6 Parts

6. Redefine Success – What is your definition of Success?

They concluded with the secret to passionate growth:

And Number 7 Gratitude.

Our next speaker was ActionCOACH Chairman and Founder, Brad Sugars.  Under the often-repeated mantra of going back to basics, Brad presented some reminders and updates to the Six Steps to Massive Results seminar.  Highlights include:

• Don’t fall in love with your product or service – break out of your rut and continually improve and innovate
• It is no use building your marketing if you can’t keep the customers – make sure you can consistently deliver
• With the internet and social media, marketing has shifted toward labor, away from spend
• In the ActionCOACH concept of Test & Measure – testing has become extremely easy because of all the statistics that are available
• Use the ActionCOACH 5 Way Formula backwards, from Profit up – 5 years, 4 years, …

Stay tuned for the next installment of BFOs from the 2019 BEF.