Book of the Month: Clockwork

Clockwork is a book for business owners. The purpose of the book is for owners to design their business to run itself. It is a book that has freedom and fulfillment as the ultimate goal. It echoes Peter Drucker's quote "Efficiency is doing things right. Effectiveness is doing the right things.” Michalowicz has taken this concept and created a process to put it in place. 

One of the most impactful elements of the book is identifying what Mike calls the Queen Bee Role. He writes, “Identify the core function in your business that is the biggest determinant of your company’s success. Within every company there exists a single function that is the most significant determinant of the company’s health. It is where the uniqueness of your offering meets the best talents of you and/or your staff.”

The process of thinking this through is valuable in itself. But it is not easy. We all think that every aspect of our business is crucial. Michalowicz says, “The biggest cause of business inefficiency is variability. The more services you provide to a wider mix of customers, the more variability you have, and the harder it becomes to provide extraordinary and consistent services.” So business owners should stop trying to do everything, and figure out their Queen Bee Role. And once it's identified "everyone else on the team must prioritize protecting the QBR so that the role can be fulfilled."

Michalowicz lays out simple processes to follow for every step of the 7-step Clockwork process. It takes time - anything worth doing usually does - but he makes it simple to follow the steps and identify where you're wasting resources and where you should be spending more time in your business. 

He also lays out a challenge: book a 4-week vacation within the next 24 months as incentive to get your business to the point where you can take that vacation. Does that thought scare you, or motivate you?

We're not done with this book, there's just so much to think about and process. So we'll be working our way through the 7 steps for a while in order to make sure our business runs like Clockwork. 

To order a copy of the book, click here.