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Management
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Results Best Practices-for Executives
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Drew Morris, Founder and CEO, Great Numbers! LLCDrew Morris, Founder & CEO

Instead of the usual boring biographical stuff (further down the page), I wanted to say a few words about why Great Numbers! came to be, and its implications for executives and investors.

The development of our content, techniques, and tools has already spanned more than two decades. Because I found myself pulled into this work by a belief. A belief in the power of insight to address

A Yawning Gap in Management Practice

The way most companies drive results is for senior management to set profit and revenue-growth targets for the executives who run the company's individual businesses. Then they apply the "heat" needed to achieve them. Typically, the executive is left to "figure it out," that is, to "do something(s)" to make the target.

But the heat creates "numbers stress," the chronic, nagging worries, "Will I make my numbers? And what if I don't?" This numbers stress suppresses both creativity and clear thinking; not helpful in figuring it out.

And having targets that might have been challenging in the past can lead to results that are less than all they could be (to hit the target; not go beyond). And the subconcious weighs in with, "We hit the target, so we're done, for now."

But heat-based management is the only "results process" we've had. Until now.

We call the alternative Insight-Based Management...

As you'll learn in our new book, The Upside Within Reach, just out, and in our guided upside-exploration program, it's now possible for executives to find, out of all of the actions they could take, the handful that will boost their results the most, and that they can actually pull off.

We call these their best shots, found using new tools that provide the necessary insights.

Contrast this with trying to "figure it out," under stress, and hoping the actions they've picked will meet the target.

What Insight-Based Management brings

To General Managers and others who run a single business

The skill to boost their results, consistently, and with less stress about making their numbers, because they've learned how to find their best shots.

To CEOs and business-unit heads

The ability to report the combined results gains when Insight-Based Management is applied across an enterprise or major division.

To shareholders

Higher profits, and revenue growth. As investors come to understand that the improved results stem from more skillful management rather than luck, or a one-time event, an increase in share price could also result.

But it's deeper than that...

  • This is essentially about equipping people who run a P&L with a new core skill: the perspectives, understanding and ability to use the tools that will make them masters at boosting results, time and again (one of the best ways to rise in an organization).
  • Management is never a cakewalk. But it can and should be an energizing, creative and yes, fun leadership journey rather than one sandbagged by "numbers stress."
  • When that verve awakens an organization, it's magic.

The Cause

So we're setting out to turn Insight-based Management into a movement, a shift to an enlightened and more effective way to create shareholder value, and damn-good executives.

I invite you to learn more, join in and help spread the word.

Giving Back

As you might have seen, having a successful business is one of the best routes out of tough circumstances and poverty. So a portion of the profits from our work will provide people with promise, worldwide, with access to the knowledge and skills necessary to create such a business. One U.S. example is The National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship.

Brief Bio...

After stints at Bell Labs in systems engineering and programming research, and a management role at Chase, I started what became a mid-size consulting firm and sold it to a public company after serving as its CEO for 22 years.

A few years after founding Great Numbers!, I was invited by Chief Executive magazine to lead a CEO Roundtable on leveraging assets like brands and patents, and to co-create the Wealth Creation Index it published annually from 2008 to 2015.

I earned a PhD in Systems Engineering from what is now NYU's Tandon School of Engineering, with a concentration in optimization (getting the best-possible outcomes).

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