Michael Gerber

Unfortunately, personalities, good feelings, goodwill, and luck aren’t the only ingredients of a successful organization; alone, they are the recipe for chaos and disaster.

The third says that the business is a place where everything we know how to do is tested by what we don’t know how to do, and that the conflict between the two is what creates growth, what creates meaning.

What’s also missing is a sense of relationship. People suffer in isolation from one another. In a world without purpose, without meaningful values, what have we to share but our emptiness, the needy fragments of our superficial selves? As a result, most of us scramble about hungrily seeking distraction, in music, in television, in people, in drugs. And most of all we seek things. Things to wear and things to do. Things to fill the emptiness. Things to shore up our eroding sense of self. Things to which we can attach meaning, significance, life. We’ve fast become a world of things. And most people are being buried in the profusion. What most people need, then, is a place of community that has purpose, order, and meaning. A place in which being human is a prerequisite, but acting human is essential. A place where the generally disorganized thinking that pervades our culture becomes organized and clearly focused on a specific worthwhile result. A place where discipline and will become prized for what they are: the backbone of enterprise and action, of being what you are intentionally instead of accidentally. A place that replaces the home most of us have lost. That’s what a business can do; it can create a Game Worth Playing.

The model will provide consistent value to your customers, employees, suppliers, and lenders, beyond what they expect. 2. The model will be operated by people with the lowest possible level of skill. 3. The model will stand out as a place of impeccable order. 4. All work in the model will be documented in Operations Manuals. 5. The model will provide a uniformly predictable service to the customer. 6. The model will utilize a uniform color, dress, and facilities code.

Disse à Sarah que todos os técnicos que sofrem da Convulsão do Empreendedor passam exatamente pelo mesmo processo: primeiro, excitação; depois, terror; em seguida, exaustão; e, por fim, desespero. Uma enorme sensação de perda — não apenas a perda do que lhes era próximo, a sua relação especial com o seu trabalho, mas também a perda de sentido, a perda de si próprio. A Sarah olhou para mim

But before you can determine what that role will be, you must ask yourself

You might say that, while going to work on the business, people begin to realize that it is a powerful metaphor for going to work on their lives.

Têm-me feito a seguinte pergunta muitas vezes: «Que sabem os donos de empresas extraordinárias que eu não saiba?» Contrariamente ao que se costuma achar, a minha experiência mostrou-me que as pessoas que são excecionalmente boas em desenvolver negócios o são não tanto por saberem muito, mas antes pela sua vontade insaciável de saber mais.

They go to work on their lives, not just in their lives.

Now, from the outside in, I can understand why you might be critical of McDonald’s. You might say that people shouldn’t eat meat. You might say that the hamburgers could be fatter, or less fatty, or this or that. But what you couldn’t say — what you could never say — is that McDonald’s doesn’t keep its promise. Because it does. Better than just about any business in the world, McDonald’s, the love of Ray Kroc’s life, still keeps its promise, long after Ray Kroc has gone. It delivers exactly what we have come to expect of it every single time.

Sarah,” I began softly, “if the Business Development Process were only about Orchestration, I would agree with you — it would be deadly. Absent a higher purpose, all habits are. Because that’s all that Orchestration really is, Sarah: a habit. A way of doing something habitually.

Remember, Sarah, any plan is better than no plan.

Simply put, your job is to prepare yourself and your business for growth.

Documentation is an affirmation of order.

In short, you would see how The Entrepreneur in you dreams and schemes, The Manager in you is constantly attempting to keep things as they are, and The Technician in you drives the other two crazy. You would see that it not only matters that your personalities are not in a balanced relationship with each other but that your life depends on gaining that balance. That until you do, it’s a war! And it’s a war no one can win.