Organizing For Growth

February 26, 2008

It has been a long time since I read the most extraordinary business book I have ever read, Organizing For Growth by Theodore Levitt.

For whatever reason, I find myself revisiting it now (I no longer have a copy of the book, but the theme still lives within me) as I begin to create a more simplified, but more holistic approach to working with organizations to do just that…organize for growth.

There are three components to this newly defined process of mine…The Organizing For Growth Process®

The first component is called Intentional Dreaming®. It is the process I have invented in The Dreaming Room. The form it takes in the creation of a venture worth pursuing comprises four distinct steps: creation and realization of The Dream, The Vision, The Purpose, and The Mission of a meaningful venture. These four steps move the awakening entrepreneur through the four psychological and pragmatic Divisions of the entrepreneurial personality: The Dreamer, The Thinker, The Story Teller, The Leader. Component One is completed with the creation of a White Paper which clearly articulates the Great Result® the new venture is intended to produce (The Dream, The Vision, The Purpose) and the process by which it is built and realized (The Mission).

The second component is called Intentional Organization®. The Structure or Architecture of the Business Model, what it looks like, how it works, the fluency of performance, the documentation required so as to produce scalability of its unique, highly differentiated performance. Once Intentional organization is complete, the Venture is ready to grow. One does not organize people, one organizes Work. Projects. Programs. The Work of the Organization. The Projects of the Organization. The Programs of the Organization. The Work of the Organization is that which goes on repeatedly in the Key Functions of the Organization…financial work, marketing work, administrative work, technology work, and so forth. The Projects that go on in the Organization have a beginning, middle and an end. The arise with an objective in mind, and end once that Objective is successfully or not so successfully completed. The Way one Organizes a Project determines the likely success or failure of that Project. The Organization of projects is a critical competency of the Organization. The Programs that go on in the Organization, are best described as repeating Projects. We do a Program again and again and again. A Program is designed to produce long term results. A Program provides the Organization with the potential for scale. The Programs of an organization are essentially the Products of a Company, while Projects are the means to create Programs. And Work is what we do while we are completing Projects and delivering Programs. Once the seminal Intentional Organization initiative is complete, the Organization is ready to grow. The seminal Intentional Organization of an Organization is that which creates the essential components of its Operating System, it’s ability to be called whatever it’s Dream, Vision, Purpose and Mission have designed itself to be.

The third component is called Intentional Growth®. Intentional Growth is the product of Direct Response Marketing. Direct Response Marketing is the methodology through which the Organization makes its promise to its prospective customer in order to elicit a response from its prospective customer, and converts that response into a sale. The promise is that which the organization has intentionally organized itself to deliver, the Dream, Vision, Purpose and Mission the organization has set itself out in the world to fulfill. The raison d’etre of the Organization, its reason for being. The zeitgeist of the entrepreneurial mindset; the meaning of it all.

So it is that the creation and design of a company worth pursuing is a continuous process of Intentional Dreaming®, Intentional Organization®, and Intentional Growth®.

The Process for proceeding with the development of your Company is straightforward.

Any questions?

Thanks for listening,

Michael E. Gerber

Your Chief Dreamer

In the Dreaming Room, LLC

Carlsbad, California

Throwing Caution to the Winds

February 25, 2008

I am often asked whether entrepreneurship comes easy to me. The answer is yes and no. Yes, the ideas flow easy. They just come. And no, the things that are built from the ideas most often are only the product of struggle, and sometimes fear, with the terribly difficult task of realizing what one great sculptor called it, the shape within the stone. The shape often doesn’t reveal itself within the stone that harbors it that easily as the idea which came from nothing did. The shape within the stone, which is the predecessor of the actual form of the idea in the things which comprise the enterprise, the thing in itself, the thing which makes the enterprise come alive, the thing which calls out its uniqueness, which I am calling the shape within the stone, the face of it if you will, that entity most often takes some muscling time, some sweat too, some working with it without most of time any real clues that indicate which way to go, right or left, or to just stop and take a breath because if you push to hard you’ll probably just ruin it before its time. I know this must sound terribly complicated, but it’s actually not. Saying it is, but the doing of it has a natural flow to it. Much like lifting weights. Or doing sit ups. In one moment the weights just feel like dumb stuff on the end of a stick. At other times they are transformed into an enterprise of sorts, when the exact form of your body, your shoulders, your arms, your calves and thighs and your feet, and of course, your neck, all combine with your mind, and what was only moments before simply dead sullen weight suddenly appears as a luminously exciting idea, the idea of man, and of form, and of intention, and of a moments’ indefatigable honorable breath. Breathe in. Breathe out. Feel the swell of it. The sweat of it. The intellectual rigor of it. The drama of it. The sudden wonderful elegance of it. And then it’s up. Yes, that’s what entrepreneurship seems like to me when everything is going really well.

Come Dream With Me

Michael Gerber

Chief Dreamer

In the Dreaming Room, LLC

Carlsbad, California