Verne Harnish

Today they've got north of 100,000 pieces. Their whole value proposition is the fact that they have direct contact with their customers, and they've got now massive computer systems that capture that data and crunch it in order for them to see trends and patterns. And so one of the things we encourage fast growth companies to do is get some mechanism in place of capturing that kind of raw bits of data and use it then to make improvements and changes in product and moves in the marketplace and the like.

Do you find that customer feedback takes a backseat with the fast growing companies that are just starting up? Are they more concerned with the money than they are with the communication?

No I don't. They first start wanting to get customers because they're trying to get revenue or they're trying to get eyeballs. Part of what made it nice to be an Internet business is that you could get feedback like five minutes after you'd put something out on the Web. So, at the fast growth companies, if they've gotten anywhere at all, it's because they've been listening to the customer. What happens, though, is because the information is coming in bits all over the place, and you've got people all over the company touching different customers, if you don't collect it and organize it then it becomes less useful.

Another thing on the checklist was defining your rock and moving it. When you say rocks, do you mean obstacles of any kind, or is there more specific definition?

In a bigger sense, fast growth companies are trying to move mountains. And especially a lot of the Internet companies. So at least on the short term basis, you've got to be moving rocks instead of dirt. And rocks are those three or four big things. This comes directly from Stephen Covey's reference to the notion that here's a little experiment where you have a beaker, which represents the fixed time people have. That's the one thing you can't change. And then he has rocks, pebbles, sand and water. And what you have a tendency to do -- because you're putting fires out -- is do nothing but fill our beaker up with water. Then you can't even get a little bit of sand there before it overflows. But if you put the rocks in first, then you can get a lot of pebbles still in. Then you can get a lot of sand in, and then you can still put in quite a bit of water. So it's the whole idea of you've got to do the three or four big things and make sure that the urgent stuff doesn't displace them. The art is knowing what those four or five are. The four or five you choose versus the four or five your competitor chooses makes all the difference in the word.

Tell me about the importance of the weekly huddle?

To me it's higher than the top of the list. It provides the platform by which you can do all this other stuff. When are you going to review the core ideologies? When are you going to look at your measures? When are you going to focus on your rocks? It's at the heart of it. The word I'm using now is "rhythm." There's a rhythm of gatherings that are important and need to become almost ritualistic within a culture if it's going to be able to stay aligned and headed in the same direction. It's like a music score. I equate it to jazz. I mean a lot of folks use the jazz analogy for fast growth companies. But underlying the improvisation is a structure and a rhythm, that if that base structure and rhythm isn't in place, then you're going to produce something uglier than what you might want to call music.

Do you think it's important to have actual face time as opposed to e-mail or conference call updates?

It needs to be synchronous. With our video conferencing technologies, voice conferencing and on-line meeting stuff, the key is it has to be synchronous. And there has to be the ability for mind melds. So ideally it is if it can be face to face. It's no different from what Sam Walton did at Wal-Mart. The execs all left Monday, had to be back Thursday. Friday the executive team huddled, and then Saturday they flew people in from every one of the stores and had their little celebration to see how the week went.

Why do fast growth companies have a hard time defining their sandbox?