Bill Canady, a summa cum laude Amherst grad and PE firm CEO, lays out a 100-day action plan for taking command of your business. The book includes two key questionnaires: one with 25 reflective questions about your team and risks, another on role clarity and competency. Canady warns leaders not to get dazzled by acquisition targets; follow the money and do rigorous due diligence instead.
Just want to take a couple minutes and talk about this book, The 80/20 CEO: Take Command of Your Business in 100 Days, written by Bill Canady. Bill Canady, a little bit about the author: graduated summa cum laude from Amherst College. He is the, um, serves as the chief executive officer, the CEO, of 2 private equity firms, one being OTC Industrial Technologies and the other one Arrowhead Engineering Products. So if you work in a business or you are working through your MBA or anything like that, this is a fantastic book to kind of walk you through some of the things that you need to be thinking about, looking at, and helping your business move forward, even if it's a small business. So I'm gonna share a couple things about the book. Obviously, this is the hardcover, hardbound book. It's got some quotes and recommendations and stuff from the beginning, praise for, for Bill and, and his company. And his leadership style. And then it's set up in chapters and sub-chapters in different parts. So part 1 is what to do first, what to do next. Part 2 is the profitable, profitable growth operating system. Part 3 is beyond the first 100 days. And then it goes through finding talent, managing risk, different things like that. But there's a couple things that I really, really liked. I have them highlighted, so I just want to share few of those things. So one of them is in the first section, and it's talking about setting goals. And before you set goals, no matter how big or small your company is, right, there's this accelerated learning questionnaire that he's put in there, and it's questions about past performance. And so there's about, see, 3, 10, about 25 questions that you would ask yourself about about your business. And for example, I work in a nonprofit, but we still, you know, operate like a business as far as education goes. So looking at my team, who is exceptional? Who is competent and capable? Who is not competent? Who is not capable? Who deserves the company's total confidence? Who are the influencers on my team? What are the sources of their influence? So you're taking all of this information from from your past or your current reality, right? And using that information to push forward, right? So, and it goes on, there's other questions about risks and easy victories and different things like that. And these are kind of throughout the entire process. So this is more of like a workbook than just a book that you're gonna sit down and read. It's something that you wanna go through. So the next questionnaire deals with segment and focus. And so, some of the things that I like to look at, right, is, again, how is the company structured? Are competencies, roles, and responsibilities clearly defined? Even in my setting, I recognize that some of my employees, their roles are not accurately defined, and sometimes that causes confusion about who does what and when certain things happen, because, oh, I thought you were gonna do it, oh, I thought you were gonna do it, because their roles are not clearly defined. Anyway, and the last one that I really liked— let me go back to this. Sorry, I had it marked. I don't like folding the pages in the corners because I don't want to ruin them. Talks about the negotiation process, and it's a full process, right? But this idea of resist to fall in love with whatever it is that you love about this company that you're trying to acquire, trying to buy into, or whatever. You want to follow the money, but you don't want to be dazzled by it, right? Obviously you want to get truth and information. You want to make sure that you do your due diligence as the first phase of integration, stuff like that. So I could go on and on. I absolutely love this book. It's a really quick read, but I think as far as if you're just going to read it, I would actually sit down with a notebook, and I plan to reread it again with a notebook and pull out little nuggets of truth and wisdom that I can use in my organization. Again, this is the 80/20 CEO, uh, Take Command of Your Business in 100 Days. And so this is the hardback version. I believe there is a paperback, but you can find it anywhere where you buy your books.
