Passionate and compelling, Spence had big shoes to fill, as the previous day's keynote speaker was best-selling presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin. But, through smart insights from his hands-on experience running 10 successful companies and studying hundreds more, the author of Awesomely Simple kept the audience's attention. Some takeaways:
- The formula for business (and independent school) success is II > EI, meaning "the rate of internal innovation must exceed the rate of external innovation."
- The formula for business excellence is (T+C+ECF)xDE, or (talent + culture + extreme customer focus) x disciplined execution.
- The biggest factor in a winning culture is offering employees "genuine, honest, sincere praise"—at least once every 10 days. Recognizing and praising good work translates into a culture of people who want to do well and thank each other. This is especially true for millennial staff.
- The seven Cs of a top leader are character, courage, communication, collaboration, competency, compassion and contribution.
Brash and funny, Spence also introduced a new word to business officers: "nimbleocity," meaning being nimble with velocity. "If you're really good at it, you're 'nim-bo-licious.'" But this talent can't outweigh the effect of substandard or difficult staff, he warned. "The poorest performer in your organization sets the standard for excellence." To that end, he offered straightforward advice for building teamwork, making the case for change—and even working with risk-averse independent school leaders.
Learn more about John Spence through the Twitter hashtag #NBOA2015, which captures hundreds of tweets from every day of NBOA's biggest-ever Annual Meeting. So far, that is—I'm already looking forward to Los Angeles in 2016.
