Last week, in Austin I had the opportunity to participate in a 2 – day “Mastermind-type” meeting with a gathering of technology and Internet entrepreneurs and executives from around the globe.
It was an impressive group – leaders of companies with average sales of $8 million and competing and prospering in industries that run the gamut – from consumer products, to healthcare IT, to energy and entertainment, to mobile apps and wearable technologies, to real estate, and more.
To those who have never participated in a business mastermind, you don’t know what you’re missing! Originally conceived by legendary personal development guru Napoleon Hill, a Mastermind is a gathering of like-minded professionals that meet regularly and over time develop a productive, high-trust dynamic through which to attain breakthroughs of insight and accountability around and about strategic, tactical, and management challenges.
A Mastermind group, both generic ones as I attended in Austin, branded versions like Vistage and YPO, and informal versions as organized by trained facilitators, are where the hard, methodical work of entrepreneurial business – building and growth gets done.
The “table topic” for our meeting was best practices as to data-driven decision making and strategic plans.
It is obviously a very timely one – as Big Data and Business Intelligence (BI) tools and software are at the center of vast swaths of venture capital financings and strategic and managerial best practices for companies of all types and sizes.
We talked about how the companies getting the highest “BI ROI” connect the dots between their “old” and “new” school strategic planning and thinking.
They are old school (in the absolute best, non-pejorative sense of the term) in that they recognize that strategy…
…arrived at through Mastermind get-togethers, through board and advisory board meetings, through strategic planning processes led either internally or by an outside consultant – remains fundamental in attaining and maintaining long-term business success.
And they are new school in their leveraging the very many best-of-breed business application software as services to arrive at this strategy.
Tools like CapitalIQ, Sage, KISSmetrics, AWeber, SurveyMonkey, RingCentral, Campaign Monitor, Zoho, Marketo, CAKE, FuseDesk, Maropost, and Hubspot that automate and optimize traditionally laborious and repetitive business functions.
And, as they do, collect massive reams on the marketing, sales, operations, finance and managerial performance of a business.
And, as importantly, the technology has finally matured to where all of this collected data can be organized, analyzed, and benchmarked against comparable – but better performing – companies from around the globe.
This “New School” data wizardry, when combined with old school Masterminding, risk-taking, and a ton of hard work…
…is what allows companies to both run more day to day efficiently and profitably, and more in strategic alignment with their missions and long-term goals than ever before.
