I have more good  news!

Our successful 50-city “Economic Acceleration: Breaking The 3% Speed Limit” speaking tour continues to build momentum, as we extend the tour to include Cincinnati, Louisville, and Lexington in April 2009.

You can get the agenda, complete details, and registration information here, but the cities and locations coming up in April include:

I’m excited to continue our 50-city Economic Acceleration speaking tour with business and community leaders in North Carolina, Southern Ohio, and Kentucky.  I want to share the vision and a specific plan for changing the economic development equation in each of these communities.  

If you have any questions about what I cover during this tour, please see the agenda here.

I have great news!

The 50-city “Economic Acceleration: Breaking The 3% Speed Limit” speaking tour continues in 2009 in a big way!

You can get the agenda, complete details, and registration information here, but the cities locations coming up in January, February and March include:

• Austin, TX
• San Antonio, TX
• Dallas, TX
• Houston, TX
• Memphis, TN
• Nashville, TN
• Knoxville, TN

I’m excited to continue our 50-city Economic Acceleration speaking tour with business and community leaders in Texas and Tennessee.  I want to share the vision and a specific plan for changing the economic development equation in each of these communities.  

If you have any questions about what I cover during this tour, please see the agenda here.

Back in July, at this year’s American Chamber of Commerce Executive’s (ACCE) Convention in Pittsburgh, I had the opportunity to appreciate the variety of challenges faced by chambers of commerce. I came away from that event with a renewed commitment about a game-changing program that chambers can help to spearhead: a unique opportunity to accelerate local economic development. Allow me to share some of my observations with you.

First, we share a common vision of strengthening business growth in America – even during the tough times we’re confronted with now. There’s actually good things that come from crises: they force us to make choices, sometimes, tough choices. Crises force us to make a choice between vacillating among options, and taking action.

When faced with increased global competitiveness and economic uncertainty, it’s vital that we focus on developing a better way of managing our businesses. Indeed, “if nothing changes, nothing changes.” More specifically, we need to create both new business opportunities and accelerate existing business development, especially among small and midsized companies. History shows us that it’s these organizations that are the drivers of our local economies, responsible for the overwhelming majority of economic and employment growth.

To support this assertion, the SBA published a new report in June 2008: High-Impact Firms: Gazelles Revisited. This new study revisits and expands upon some of the conclusions about rapidly growing firms conducted in the 1980s. Specifically, the report examines firms with significant revenue growth and expanding employment.

The revealing research findings about “high-impact firms” are summarized as follows:

• They are relatively old, rare and contribute the majority of overall economic growth.
• They exist in all industries, in almost all regions, states and counties.
• They represent only 3% of all firms, yet they account for almost all private sector employment and economic growth in the economy.
• On average, it takes a company almost 20 years to enter this high-impact stage.
• In the four years after a high-impact firm undergoes its high-growth phase, 75% of them fail to sustain their high-impact status.

For chambers that have a strategy focused on an economic development platform, the implications and benefits of acting on this data are significant. Those who do will recognize the value of cultivating high-impact firms as well as accelerating the consistent performance of existing businesses in your communities.

Following are some game-changing implications for your chamber to consider:

• Why is it that every business – even the best ones - struggle so much to sustain growth and profitability?
• Why is that only 3% of businesses drive the overwhelming majority of economic growth and job creation in any given community? Why does it have to be only 3%?  Can’t we do any better?
• What kind of impact could your chamber have on your community’s economic development if you could help to cultivate and accelerate the number of local high-impact firms from say, 3% to 4%, or perhaps even 5%?
• What if your chamber could recommend systematic approach to enable companies to get to the high-impact stage sooner — and stay there longer?
• Perhaps more importantly, what are we going to do about accelerating economic growth for the other 97% of businesses?

During challenging times like we’re in now, what we don’t need is more rhetoric. What we need is a specific, actionable plan for changing the game by accelerating beyond the 3% “speed limit” and offer a revolutionary new approach for the other 97%.

Now, consider these observations:

• Even the best performing organizations (the high-impact firms) are guaranteed to experience bigger challenges tomorrow, compared to today. The same holds true for the other 97% of businesses.
• We’re fifty years into the Information Age, yet we’re still managing our greatest assets like we were back in the Industrial Age.
• Because of advances and innovation during the past 30 years, we’re on the cusp of a radical shift—a revolution— in how we’ll manage the performance of our workforces.
• Without the innovative synergies in quality programs, coaching, strategy formulation, business intelligence, personal productivity tools, business process best practices, and the Internet—this revolution would never have started.
• The result of these advances and innovations is a next-generation approach for how organizations will plan and execute their strategies more consistently and predictably.
• There is a leapfrog opportunity, particularly for small and mid-sized businesses, in the way they can finally choose to approach the biggest challenge in business - planning and executing strategy.
• This leapfrog opportunity is already upon us, and those who choose to ignore it—will be left behind.

A revolutionary, innovative approach to accelerate the economic growth and development of our local business communities is one that will occur — with or without us. Chambers that have a strong strategy based on an economic development are uniquely positioned to cultivate high-impact firms: getting them to the growth stage sooner, and getting them to stay there longer.

Chambers are also uniquely qualified to help accelerate the performance of the “other 97%” of existing businesses. It’s simply not enough to offer the occasional business seminar or development workshop, in hopes that it will ignite a spark and transform the company into a major growth contributor. How can we possibly hope for a new outcome, using the same old kind of thinking?  Hope is not a strategy. It’s time for chambers to take an aggressive attitude toward accelerating economic growth in their communities, and choose to actively participate in the Execution Revolution that is already underway.

That’s why I’m launching a 50-city “Economic Acceleration Tour: Breaking The 3% Speed Limit”.  For details on how your chamber can get involved and bring the Economic Acceleration Tour to your community, visit www.GaryHarpst.com/tour.

Strategy execution is considered by most business leaders and research as a universal challenge. Indeed, most would assert that it’s the biggest challenge in business.

How big is this challenge?

Let’s back it up with some poignant statistics:

• A McKinsey study of 1,077 companies over a decade that only 9 were superior in both growth and profitability.
• An astounding 90 percent of well-formulated strategies fail - due to poor execution.
• Only 5 percent of employees understand their organization’s strategy.
• Only 2-3 percent of a community’s organizations contribute most, if not all, of that community’s growth and employment.

This short list is a sobering reminder of how difficult the challenge of executing strategy really is.  Achieving a balance between strong strategy and strong execution is extremely difficult, and therefore extremely rare.  And, because it’s rare, it’s very highly valued.

To some, this is viewed as an insurmountable deterrent. To me, it  has tremendous upside potential.

For the first time, we’re now able to integrate proven best practices, harness the incredible power of the Internet, and offer a complete strategy execution program that will enable small and midsized companies to address this challenge directly.

It’s a revolution that’s already underway.  And we’re looking forward to being a major driver of this Execution Revolution.

Six Disciplines, chambers of commerce, and economic development councils share a common vision of strengthening business in America. When faced with increased global competitiveness and economic uncertainty, it’s vital that we develop better ways of doing business, and more specifically, creating new business opportunities and extending existing business development, especially among small and midsized companies. History shows us that it is these organizations that are the backbone of our local economies, which are responsible for the lion’s share of employment and economic growth.

To support this assertion, the Small Business Association (SBA) published a new report in June 2008: High-Impact Firms: Gazelles Revisited. This new study revisits and expands upon some of the conclusions about rapidly growing firms conducted in the 1980s. Specifically, this report examines firms with significant revenue growth and expanding employment.

The revealing research findings about “high-impact firms” are summarized as follows:

• They are relatively old, rare and contribute the majority of overall economic growth.
• They exist in all industries, in almost all regions, states and counties.
• They represent only 2%-3% of all firms, yet they account for almost all private sector employment and economic growth in the economy.
• On average, they are 25 years old.
• In the four years after a high-impact firm undergoes its high-growth phase, only about 3 percent die.
• Yet, 75% of them fail to sustain their high-impact status.

For community organizations that have a strategy focused on an economic development platform, the implications and benefits of acting on this data are significant. Those who do will recognize the value of cultivating high-growth firms versus trying to increase entrepreneurship across the board, or trying to attract relocating companies.

Following are some game-changing implications for you to consider, particularly before going into next year’s strategic planning process:

• What kind of impact could your community organization have on your community’s economic development if you could help to cultivate the number of local high-impact firms from say, 3% to 4%, or perhaps even 5%?
• What if your community organization could recommend a systematic approach to enable companies to get to the high-impact stage sooner — and stay there longer?

The answers to both of these questions are outlined in my new book, Six Disciplines Execution Revolution. Growing the number of high-impact firms, getting them to the high-impact stage sooner, and getting them to stay there longer, are all essential drivers behind the revolution in strategy execution that’s already underway.