VITAL FACTORS: The Secret to Transforming Your Business and Your Life

For Immediate Release

Contact:

Alan Fox, Planned TV Arts, Tel
David Hahn, Planned TV Arts, Tel foxa@plannedtvarts.com / hahnd@plannedtvarts.com
Jessica Church, Jossey-Bass, Tel
jchurch@josseybass.com

MANAGEMENT: What Are Your "VITAL FACTORS"?
And why does your success depend on knowing them?

SUMMARY: In a new book, "VITAL FACTORS," a leading management consultant tells us the dramatic stories of 24 real business people who each face a colossal business problem -- and about how each solves their difficulty by discovering and managing their VITAL FACTORS.

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(NEW YORK) -- "VITAL FACTORS: The Secret to Transforming Your Business and Your Life" is a new business book on leadership and management being published by Jossey-Bass/A Wiley Imprint (November 2006, $27.95). It introduces us to a cast of characters and a series of dramatic stories from the front line of American business. Each man and woman in this striking book is a business person facing trouble. Each must learn an eternal and powerful business lesson or face either personal failure or business collapse.

BOOK AT-A-GLANCE: Why This Book Is Unique, A Taste of What's Inside

There's no hype. No jargon. No self-congratulation. "Vital Factors" tells the stories of ordinary men and women achieving extraordinary things.

Each of the men and women profiled in this book faced a serious obstacle -- the kind millions of men and women in business face every single day. Then they learn the secrets of their own Vital Factors process and go on to achieve their goals and grow as leaders, managers, and individuals.

You'll read about:

Katherine Le -- She fled Vietnam in a crowded, rickety boat. Through grit and courage, she made her way to California, learned English, put herself through college and landed good jobs in banking and finance. Her formula for success was always the same: Self-reliance. Do it yourself. Work harder than everyone else. As she climbed the corporate ladder, that formula served her well. But when she reached the top, Katherine ran out of answers. She worked to exhaustion, and when her people let her down, she did their work as well. Inevitably, her health suffered, and so did her family life. Katherine needed help.
Ted Price -- Ted faced one of the toughest challenges in business: managing highly creative people. As president of a hot video games company, Ted ran a staff of 150 people, most of them young techies with a passion for video games and computer programming. His people worked long hours, kept crazy schedules, and their burn-burnout rate was disastrously high. Worse, they detested the necessary basics of business: controlling costs, measuring performance, and holding people accountable. Ted was stumped. Was there some sure-surefire system of management that his people would embrace? Was there some proven path he could follow to take his young company from good to great?
Bill de la Viña -- Bill, an immigrant from Cuba needed help—desperately. To serve the Latino community he had a created a small money-transfer business, but soon it was growing faster than he could handle. What to do? Bill had no formal business training and no time for school. Who could teach him business fundamentals? And who could teach him how to successfully grow a business from the ground up?
Michael Caito -- Michael had no direction when he came out of school, but as it turns out he was a born entrepreneur: smart, gutsy, and hungry for success. A restaurant delivery company that he launched with two partners grew rapidly in the start-up phase, but then they it hit a wall. Sales flattened. Profits fell. Morale plummeted. Michael was wracked with stress and a growing feeling of desperation. Who could help them him and his partners manage the crisis? Where could they learn the secrets of sustained business success?
These Dramatic Stories and 20 Others

Each found their answers by going to a respected management training firm -- a trusted forty-six year old firm named MAP or Management Action Programs.

Lee Froschheiser, the co-author of "VITAL FACTORS," is the CEO and President of MAP.

Froschheiser along with co-author Paul Chutkow -- a veteran correspondent for The Associated Press and later a frequent contributor to "The New York Times," and other news organizations -- take us into the unique problem-solving process of Management Action Programs -- a company that specializes in helping you learn and manage your Vital Factors.

MAP AT-A-GLANCE: Why This Management System Is Effective. And What Are "VITAL FACTORS"?

In 1960, a business pioneer named Eric Gillberg and a group of colleagues made an important discovery. They found that while every industry and every company is unique, each company rises or falls according to how well it identifies and manages a small set of critical -- and often hidden -- components that directly affect its productivity, execution, and bottom-line profitability. Eric and his team named those critical business drivers "Vital Factors."

They then developed an entire system to help companies identify their own particular Vital Factors and then manage them for optimum performance. Eric's system and the company he built around it are called MAP, Management Action Programs.

MAP is unique in the field of business management. The MAP team is not interested in the quick fix. MAP consultants work as mentors and coaches, helping companies implement the MAP system and the Vital Factors process throughout their organization. Through a series of sophisticated workshops, MAP teaches managers the arts of leadership, communication, planning, execution, staffing, and crisis management. MAP coaches work with clients over the long haul, helping them through their different stages of development and constantly fine-tuning their operations. The book "Vital Factors" draws together MAP's 45 years of management experience.

In the book you will learn:

LEADERSHIP: The surprising secrets of effective and inspiring leadership.
BEST PRACTICES: The 10 key things that winning companies do every day
EXECUTION: Why and how it is critical to understand the Pareto Principle, which urges that you focus on your few "vital factors," and ignore the trivial many others.
TEAMWORK: The book introduces an innovative team consulting method, whereby you may learn: How to run more effective meetings. How to problem-solve better. How to focus your team.
MANAGING GROWTH: A great lesson for entrepreneurs: What happens when success becomes your own worst enemy?
GOALS AND CONTROLS: How to establish goals and controls that don't punish people but rather motivate people and lift them to new heights while increasing profits.

ALSO:

How to write strong mission statements and business plans.
The importance of defining – and upholding – strong values.
How to recruit the best people and groom them for success.
How to keep your team aligned, motivated, and happy.
How to improve communication throughout your company.
Why candor is so critical to effective management.
Why the best leaders are also great coaches and mentors.

Publication Data:

"Vital Factors: The Secret To Transforming Your Business And Your Life"
By Lee Froschheiser and Paul Chutkow
November 2006, 336 pages, $27.95, Cloth, ISBN: 0-7879-8447-7
Publisher: Jossey-Bass/A Wiley Imprint
www.VitalFactorsBook.com or www.MapConsulting.com

# # #

About MAP

"How can we thank you for the impact your organization has had in our growth? At Cold Stone Creamery, our culture is one of results. Everyone on our team, including our supplier partners, is expected to deliver measurable outcomes that build our brand and make our franchisees more successful. That has certainly been the case with MAP….The results have been nothing short of spectacular."
-- Cold Stone Creamery, Sheldon Harris, COO

"We have had nearly all mid-managers through executive management go through the program…Over the past five years, our company has enjoyed considerable growth, with assets growing from about $6 billion to in excess of $20 billion. More importantly, the total return for our shareholders has more than doubled that of the market averages. We believe that MAP has been an important contributor to our success over this period."
-- Washington Mutual, Kerry K. Killinger, Chairman and CEO

Management Action Programs, Inc., MAP, has helped more than 12,000 organizations, from creative start-ups to mom and pop businesses to major corporations, to fuel and manage sustained growth and exceptional levels of success. For 46 years, the California-based consulting and management development firm has transformed companies and the lives of the people who work for them.

Their most recognizable clients, whose CEOs and leadership directly acknowledge MAP's role in their phenomenal growth, include: Cold Stone Creamery, Trader Joe's, Washington Mutual, Dave & Buster's, Bally Game Systems, and Balance Bar. MAP has advanced the bottom line for United Way, Wal-Mart, YMCA, Wells Fargo, Marriott Hotels and Resorts, Red Bull, SBC, The City of Los Angeles, as well as for lesser-known companies in a variety of industries, including: construction, financial, food-beverage, professional services, healthcare, technology, retail, non-profits, and city agencies.

"Our successes include companies who are on the cusp of growing but need to take it to another level," says MAP CEO Lee Froschheiser. "Some of our clients are at the stage where they are transforming from a one-person-does-everything mentality to the stage where they need to hire, define jobs, implement systems, and overcome old action patterns." Indeed, MAP has helped many companies and organizations from the public and private sector with revenues as small as $5M to publicly traded companies and turned them on to wild-growth and sustained profits.

More than 150,000 managers and leaders have benefited from MAP's services, learning from former CEO's, presidents, business owners and business leaders, whose objective is long-term success.

Whether you're a CEO of a larger corporation, the owner of a small business, or the executive for a non-profit or government agency, your success depends upon your ability to manage and lead. Over the past decade, the nonfiction best-seller list has been filled with a steady run of books touting new management themes and get-rich-overnight styles. Yet the MAP Management System has endured and flourished for 46 years because it teaches the practical, systematic tools to help make executives better problem-solvers, better decision-makers, and better communicators. In other words, better managers and leaders – who stick to the basics. Management gurus and fashionable trend-setters often disappear and give way to those grounded firmly in reality. MAP's unique focus on core fundamentals accelerates performance and increases profits.

"Fads and gimmicky business theories come and go ," says Lee. "For 46 years we've built up a lot of intellectual knowledge. We understand what makes companies successful, and what doesn't. We understand the essential ingredients to a successful company. And we have included all of that in the book."

MAP takes an old-school approach that has proven to be greatly successful. "At MAP," says Lee, "we focus on business fundamentals, the daily blocking and tackling that every company has to master to be winners in their field. So we focus on the six basic functions of business: leading, communicating, planning, organizing, staffing and controlling. And we stress fundamental virtues like discipline, accountability, strategic alignment, managing your values and empowering your people. We believe that one golden thread ties all of those virtues together: clear communication."

MAP's management team has over 250 years of combined experience. Several managers came to MAP initially as clients and decided to join MAP, including the CEO. MAP has a proven track record as one of the oldest management firms on the West Coast.

"At MAP, we have a strong belief: Write it down!" says Lee. "We believe that every company should have three clearly drafted documents: a mission statement, a values statement, and a business plan. These are all essential to business success. And here's the best part: If you do it right, the process of drafting those documents will naturally produce common understanding, consensus, alignment and buy-in. The process itself promotes clear communication within your management team and at the same time, it empowers your people and grooms them for future leadership."

The key to MAP's success is in helping companies and people pinpoint their Vital Factors, the critical elements that will either hold them back or propel them to success. As MAP discovered, many companies have no idea what really drives their businesses, how to execute their business fundamentals, or how to make the changes that will lead them to success.

MAP has offices in Los Angeles, Oakland, Newport Beach, Seattle, Phoenix, San Diego, and Las Vegas. For more information, see www.VitalFactorsBook.com or www.MapConsulting.com.

Author Biographies

Lee Froschheiser

Chairman, Chief Executive Officer and President
MAP

Lee Froschheiser is the CEO, Chairman and President of Management Action Program, Inc. (MAP). He has been with the 46-year-old management consulting and training firm for seven years, and reveals the secrets behind MAP's success in a new book, Vital Factors: The Secret To Transforming Your Business And Your Life.

Having first experienced MAP as a client, Lee knows full well the benefits of the strategies and principles offered by MAP. His high visibility clients include Kia Motors, WR Grace, the City of Los Angeles, Beverly Hills Hotel, Mondavi Wines, and Restaurants on the Run.

His business career spans nearly three decades. He has held various positions in other firms, including: president and regional vice president, managing all aspects of operations, providing consulting to a broad range of businesses and industries. Lee has experience in executive management, sales and education working in the corporate environment and public sector.

Lee has developed and conducted training curricula for all aspects of business. He provides a wide span of consulting and management development programs that includes executive and board strategic planning retreats, implementation of the MAP Management System, leadership training for management, and skills development workshops for staff.

Lee has served on the board of directors for several associations and financial institutions. He served as a faculty member in the Nebraska public school sector and the University of Phoenix.

Prior to coming to MAP, Lee worked with McKesson Corporation.

Lee resides in Los Angeles. For more information, please consult:

www.VitalFactorsBook.com or www.MapConsulting.com

Paul Chutkow

Bestselling Author and Media Personality

Paul Chutkow is an accomplished author, journalist, and foreign correspondent. In his books and articles, Chutkow specializes in creating illuminating, in-depth profiles of artists, movie stars, and business pioneers.

Paul has been a foreign correspondent for The Associated Press and a frequent contributor to "The New York Times," "Cigar Aficionado," and many other newspapers and magazines. He has also done featured commentary on CNN, ABC News, Fox News, and the BBC.

His books include:

"Visa, The Power of an Idea" -- The story of how A.P. Giannini created the Bank of America and how that led to the global credit card revolution. The book examines how plastic money has transformed banking, commerce, and consumer life on five different continents.

"Harvests of Joy" -- The memoirs of Robert Mondavi. Published in 1998 by Harcourt, with an edition in Japan. "Publishers Weekly" called it "a fascinating blend of autobiography and the story of how a nascent winery became a formidable challenger to the greatest names in wine making." Dan Rather called it "a trove of wisdom born of passion, hard work, and experience." "American Way" called it "a tale both touching and uplifting -- a vintage to be savored."

"Depardieu" -- The biography of the legendary French actor Gérard Depardieu. Published in 1994 by Alfred Knopf, with editions in France, Germany, and Britain. The book was a bestseller in France, and "Kirkus Reviews" here called it "among the best books ever written about film acting."

How To Implement Goals and Controls

"Implementing "Goals and Controls" systematically into one's company creates accountability and discipline up and down the organization," notes MAP CEO Lee Froschheiser. "There's nowhere to hide in this process, or as I like to say, there is no way to fly under the radar."

"Because each element in the process is open, transparent, and measurable, the process very quickly defines out who's performing well and who is not. It tells you who are the slackers and who are the doers. The Vital Factor process also quickly identifies those individuals who resist team-building or who fail to move into full alignment with your company's stated mission and goals."

Lee reveals in his new book, Vital Factors, how to implement a "Goals and Controls System" in your company:

Each staffer and manager sets goals that are based on the Vital Factors he or she can affect in their job. The goals must be clearly stated in writing, with the intended result spelled out. The goals should be challenging but realistic.
The goals should hold you accountable and the results of achieving the goals should support increased revenue/profits, decreased cost, increased quality of service/product, and time efficiency for delivery.
Agreement of these goals should happen amongst your Vital Factor team.
Make plans on how to best fulfill each goal.
Set deadlines.
Take action.
Regularly compare your performance to your goals.
Take corrective action.

"Your goals must be aligned with the company's goals," says Lee. "Setting goals can't be a vague intention -- it's got to be pro-active, specific and something that can be objectively measured."

Hiring Right and Building A Winning Team For The Long Term

"Your most important job as a manager or a leader is managing and developing your people," says MAP CEO Lee Froschheiser, the author of a new book, Vital Factors. "It's simple: If you want to grow your business, start by growing your people," he adds. "But, unfortunately, many companies do not have a structured hiring process, fail to groom their people, and often lose their top performers."

To build a winning team, Lee identifies six fundamental principles to adhere to:

Hold your Vital Factor Team meeting every month. It ensures account-ability, keeps people focused on the right things, and helps identify trouble spots early. The meeting becomes part of your performance review process.
Execute a well thought-out business plan. Recognize the need for hiring before it's an urgent necessity.
Write a clear, detailed job description before you interview anyone.
Implement a multi-layered interviewing process.
Upon hiring someone, give a 90-day training plan and specific goals to meet.
Create a detailed personal development plan for your people. This is the blueprint for their ongoing success, job satisfaction, and personal growth. It's also a strategy for retention.

"Too many companies recruit reactively, meaning they wait until they urgently need to fill a position," notes Lee. "When managers are under that kind of pressure to hire and hire fast, they often get desperate, and when they can't get Mr. Right they settle for Mr. Make-do."

When interviewing a candidate, Lee recommends you have multiple people on several occasions participate in the process. "It's good to get other opinions," he says. He also believes job candidates should take a Behavioral Style Analysis assessment to help narrow the field as to who is likely to fit into your organization. When hiring facilitators at MAP, Lee likes to also put them through a 30-minute role play simulation.

"Once you're fortunate enough to hire right, you need to mentor and train him or her." says Lee. "This is where most companies fail. After going through a great effort to find a well-qualified candidate, they do little to ensure his or her success. Managers and leaders love to talk about people being their most important asset, but many of them don't put real dollars into developing their people."

Vital Factors shows that if a business wants to succeed, they have to learn how to hire the best people, define their jobs and responsibilities, train them, keep them focused, challenged, rewarded, and always growing and becoming better at what they do.

10 Things That The Best-Run Companies
Do To Keep Them Growing

"The best-run companies, no matter what their field of endeavor, almost always display a common set of attributes and virtues," says Lee Froschheiser, the CEO of MAP, and the author of Vital Factors: The Secret To Transforming Your Business and Your Life. MAP found the following 10 areas to be the ones that winning companies excel in:

Their business goals are identified in a clear, specific, and measurable way.
Their supporting values are clearly stated, written down, displayed, and unbendable.
Internal communication flows up and down the company, clearly and honestly.
There is complete alignment: everyone understands, buys into, and supports the company's mission, vision, values, and strategic objectives.
Everyone's role is clear, with a job description that details precisely defined duties and responsibilities.
Individual goals are stated clearly. Each person has specific goals to meet, performance is evaluated, and measurable benchmarks are in place.
Controls are in place so that everyone's performance is evaluated consistently, including managers and executives, on a regular basis.
Incentives are made available to people who consistently meet their goals and are groomed for greater responsibility.
There are consequences and accountability to those who fall short of their goals, including: training, changing assignments, dismissal.
.Candor is evident in every communication or action. High standards are kept to support openness, honesty and fairness.

"The No. 1 priority of all the best-run companies is their people," states Lee. "The top companies understand, deep in their marrow, that their most important resource is not technology, clever marketing, canny pricing strategies, or astute financial planning. Their most valued resource that makes them winners is their people."

Mapping a Life Plan - Aligning Your Personal Life With Your Business Life

"If you to align your job with your life, it's clear that you need to implement a "Life Plan," just as a company issues a business plan." says Lee Froschheiser, the CEO of a successful management and training firm, MAP. "For 46 years our process has guided people into growth and maturity as leaders, and as people."

His new book, Vital Factors: shows you how to create an alignment between your job and your personal life. By structuring a process for growth, Lee advises you create a life plan that includes a mission statement, a vision statement, a values statement, and a business plan. He suggests the following seven steps to map your life plan:

Step 1: Get an appraisal of where you are now. What opportunities exist for personal growth? What are your barriers? What motivates you: which values, desires, and interests? What type of relationships? (vision, mission)

Step 2: Set goals. Identify specific changes you want made in your life. Focus on the Vital Few after identifying your Personal Vital Factors. Specify how you want to improve your relationships, be rewarded, and stretched beyond your comfort zone.

Step 3: List your strategies for achieving these goals. Select a mentor, and a role model to emulate. Leverage your strengths, work on your weaknesses, and commit to a system of accountability. Seek new knowledge/experiences, and give priority to creating a balance in your life.

Step 4: Take goal-oriented action. Implement your plan through action steps.

Step 5: Create a system of evaluation. Measure progress.

Step 6: Take corrective action where necessary.

Step 7: Celebrate your successes. Validate your accomplishments.

Most people accomplish putting together their life plan by writing it down over the course of 5-10 pages, but Lee says many people get very detailed and have written 80 to 100 pages. One of his clients even went so far as to form a personal advisory board. He had people come over for a "board" meeting and consult him on his Personal Vital Factors.

"However detailed you want to make your plan is fine," says Lee, "but the main objective is to have a plan in writing and to refer to it over and over."

MAP Testimonials

"At a minimum, MAP has helped us facilitate our rapid growth at Dave & Buster's. MAP has done so much more for our organization than we ever imagined…We greatly appreciate the impact that your programs have had on our organization." -- Dave & Buster's, Inc., Nancy J. Duricic, Vice President, HR

"I am very pleased with the affect the MAP program has had on our key employees that have been involved in the program. You are very much aware that Balance Bar sales grew from $1,000,000 in'95 to $100,000,000 in '99. Profits grew accordingly. We sold the business to Kraft for $268,000,000 in January 2000. We appreciate the great job you and MAP did in helping us to achieve these results." -- Balance Bar, Jim Wolfe, CEO

"The goal-setting and accountability workshops you facilitated for approximately 90 of our managers was an eye-opening experience for many. After a tough year of reorganizations, layoffs, upper management changes and poor financial performance, I was expecting to face a group of weary cynics. Instead, through your enthusiasm, impressive knowledge, engaging style and powerful instruction methods, we discovered an untapped well of optimism and a thirst for excellence among our managers. MAP is the key to tapping this well." -- Bally Gaming Systems, Kris Johnson, Director, Communications & Business Process Improvement

"In today's marketplace, it is critical to have a solid game plan to achieve our team's goals. MAP's training for our managers has helped us develop goals and controls systems built to win."
-- Los Angeles Clippers, Carl Lahr, Senior Vice President of Marketing & Sales

"I learned things about myself that will help make me better at my job and in my personal life. I am convinced that I will be considerably more effective, now that I have been "maptized." – City National Bank, Michael G. Hausknost, Vice President, Beverly Hills, California

"For me, the most effective MAP tool has been the Goals and Controls Report. I have utilized it for almost one month and the results have been astounding. Our renewal efficiency rate for annual contracts has increased from 40% to 84% in one month as a result of the focus generated by the Goals and Controls Report."
-- City of Los Angeles, Kenneth F. Desowitz, C.P.M. Supply Services Manager, Mayor's Office

"MAP also provided some valuable insights into my strengths and weaknesses as a manager. In addition, it offered techniques with which I will be able to more effectively manage my operation." -- Countrywide Building, Wm. Paul Ralser, Pasadena, California

"Personally for me, this was the best and most non-confrontational method to get me to open my eyes and begin to see ways I could leverage my strengths and developmental opportunities to become a more effective manager…This is the type of program that will cause a person to stretch and grow to the next level." -- AT&T Wireless, Marla Goodwyn, Director of Sales

"About the best thing that I can say about the experience is that I would have spent my own money to attend the MAP training. I recommend it to any manager who is ready to admit that they can do better." -- The Associated General Contractors of America, Stephen E. Sandherr, CEO

"I am sending my whole team to this workshop to learn these principles of measurable goal-setting and accountability. This will be the platform for my team to springboard into some areas we've needed to focus on, and I believe the principles we're learning through MAP will prove to be one of the key foundations of our continued future successes."-- Wells Fargo, Darrell Brown, Market President, San Fernando Valley Region

"The alliance that MAP has formed with OPEN has been a contributing factor in the increase in the number of members returning to work at a much faster rate. MAPS has provided the tools and unique processes hat have helped improve the leadership and management skills of our members." -- Employment Development Department, State of California, Madeleine Brockwell, EDD Liaison to OPEN, Gray Davis, Governor

"I wanted to share with you the positive experience that my company is having with MAP. I am confident that the process works to eliminate or at least greatly reduce the costly miss-hires and I highly recommend implementing the Top Grading principles to any company wanting to take their performance to a new level." – Hootwinc Inc. (Hooters Restaurants), Fred Glick, President/COO

"The results that will be achieved in your organization will be worth your financial investment and time commitment. Let me illustrate. In 2004 we increased our sales versus budget by 33.5% and our profitability by almost 3 times that percentage. Why? Because we employed the MAP principles of management and leadership to our business processes. We also utilized MAP for our business plan and budgetary process in 2005 and were told by industry experts that it was the most comprehensive business plan they have seen in years. Our 2005 results reflected continued increases...10% increase in sales volume over 2004 and 11.2 % increase in profit over 2004."
--Hawthorne CAT, Steve Sager, Vice President and Division Manager

"When you add in the Disc Analysis, our day of leadership training could not have been more productive. My entire team remains appreciative." -- SBC Pacific Bell Telephone Company, J.R. Smith, General Manager

"I am very pleased with the results…I must admit that I was very skeptical of your ability to change one of the individuals. He was a 28-year employee and very set in his ways. He was, at best, a poor communicator and had a dictatorial management attitude. Frankly, his subordinates did not like working for him and I was considering replacing him. After the MAP course he is a new man. He took the criticism of his management style constructively, and he is very successfully employing the management tools that he was taught." -- Trader Joe's Company, John Shields, Chairman, Emeritus

"Lee Froschheiser took our company on as a client and it has not been the same ever since. Lee is a combination of wise sage, understanding coach and counselor and is relentless in his holding us accountable. He is more than a consultant. He models the behavior and principles that he teaches." -- RQ Construction, Inc., George Rogers, III, CEO

Lee Froschheiser,
President of MAP

"Vital Factors" Q & A

Lee, as president of MAP, a 46-year-old company that's been successful in helping transform companies and the lives of the people who work for them, what do you find are the critical elements -- or vital factors – that tend to hold people back or propel them to success? Over the years, we have worked with more than 150,000 managers, and over and over we see three competencies that either hold people back or propel them to success: their ability to communicate effectively, their ability to delegate, and their ability to organize themselves and manage their time. At MAP, we teach executives how to manage these three competencies of management and leadership.

Vital Factors reflects the basic business fundamentals needed for success. It almost seems too obvious, too straight-forward. Yet, so many books tout "systems" and "new strategies" for gaining the competitive edge and ignore the nuts and bolts. How much money do companies leave on the table simply by not executing the basics well? You're right: every year someone seems to come forth with a fancy new strategy for business success. And many of them sound great. But I'll tell you what: when MAP starts working with a client, we inevitably find that they are not executing their fundamentals very well. Some companies don't even understand what their Vital Factors are – the key, underlying drivers of their business. The MAP system helps people pinpoint their key business drivers and manage them effectively. That's Phase One of the MAP process. But guess what? When you drive MAP deeper into your company, you'll find that many of the techniques described, for instance, in "Good To Great" have been cornerstones of the MAP system for 45 years, albeit with different terminology. As we make clear in the book, if you implement the MAP system, your operations will be lean, effective, built-to-last, and self-improving. In the book we document that with dozens of real-life examples from companies big and small.

You emphasize the need for clear, direct, and frequent communication, yet so often communication is one area many leaders fall short in. Why? The problem is, very few people know how to teach people to be effective communicators. In our MAP workshops, we break down effective communication into its basic parts and teach the art of communication – both written and oral – from the ground up. More than that, our workshop leaders and our on-site coaches model effective communication techniques, so that managers and leaders can see and feel exactly how to do it. And here's the best part: built into the MAP system are monthly meetings – with a set agenda -- and a full regime of mandated monthly communications. Just by implementing the MAP system you are ensuring strong internal communications. We have two important mantras, too: Write It Down! Make sure everyone's been informed. And Confirm Understanding – to make sure everyone's understood what's been said or decided. These are simple communication tools – but they work. Often brilliantly.

A pretty consistent theme throughout the numerous success stories shared in Vital Factors is the need for implementing across-the-board accountability. Why do so many companies let things fall through the cracks? You know why so many companies fail to hold their people accountable? Because they have no system of accountability. In the MAP process, everyone has a clear job description, with clear responsibilities, and through our system of monthly Vital Factor meetings – with individual monthly goals for each employee – there is nowhere to hide. In our signature system of "Goals and Controls," each person's performance is visible and transparent and reported monthly. It's vital that all monthly goals are measurable. Goals are never vague or general; they are extremely specific and measurable, usually with regard to business drivers that go directly to the bottom line. Another reason that a lot of companies are poor at accountability is that they don't have clear business goals or they have very broad goals that aren't effectively communicated throughout the company. The MAP system ensures that people own their jobs and that their performance is judged by clear, objective, and measurable criteria. When you have clear goals, clear criteria for measuring performance, and an effective system of communication of management, all problems with accountability quickly disappear.

One of the tenets of MAP is to set goals and develop a plan. Part of the process includes assessing the present, evaluating the past, and designing your future. Which one is the hardest phase to define honestly – and why? The most difficult part of the planning process is assessing the present, where your company is today. To do that, you have to be brutally honest. You have to evaluate your company's strengths, its weaknesses and where you need to change. A lot of companies and even individual managers find it difficult to assess themselves and face the brutal truth. But you have to do it. In the very first minutes of our leadership workshops, we force people to hear the blunt assessments of their bosses and co-workers. That's the essential first step on the path to corrective steps that will lead you to sustained growth – both as a company and as an individual. It's a key component to your transformation and growth.

Which three mistakes do most entrepreneurial startups tend to make – and what can be done to avoid or eliminate them? I love working with entrepreneurs, especially in the startup phase. They have passion. They have fresh ideas. And most entrepreneurs are both creative and extremely positive; they just know, in their bones, that they're headed for success. But here's the plain truth: way too many entrepreneurs don't know how to build a business from the ground up. They are so busy doing a thousand things, that their energy and effort are not well-focused. And they lack patience. They shoot for the moon immediately and then got frustrated when the marketplace doesn't move fast enough or embrace their idea as passionately as they had hoped. In Vital Factors, you can see many examples of entrepreneurs who launched a good business but soon ran into trouble because they had not paid close enough attention to their Vital Factors and they had not put into place an effective system of management and organization.

What do you advise a company when it is overwhelmed by growth? Andy Cohn, one of the entrepreneurs featured in Vital Factors, makes a great point: "Strong sales cover a multitude of sins." So does galloping growth. But here's the good news: when you implement the MAP system, when you measure and track your Vital Factors on a regular basis, you are NEVER overwhelmed by galloping growth. To the contrary, you anticipate it, you plan for it, and you have a reliable system in place to manage any level of growth. The MAP system forces you to be pro-active, instead of scrambling to keep up.

How should a company factor in upcoming off-years? Every company – every industry – is going to go through a downturn. That's the nature of the business cycle. Companies that use MAP, though, have a wonderful weapon to handle those downturns: our planning process. We put enormous emphasis on drafting an effective business plan – and using it as the rudder that guides your ship. Way too many companies draft a business plan and then leave it on a shelf to gather dust. At MAP companies, though, the business plan is a living, breathing document – and it can be regularly revised to meet changing market conditions. In Vital Factors, we have a great example: Wexler Video, a video rental giant serving the Hollywood studios. When 9/11 hit, and the TV industry went into a major slump, Wexler went into a crisis planning session, revised their business plan, and weathered the crisis better than all their competitors. The MAP system helped them do it.

What do you mean when you say: Focus on the vital few and ignore the trivial many? It really comes down to this: pinpoint your Vital Factors – the primary factors that drive your business – and then focus relentlessly on the most important ones, "the Vital Few." Track those few factors, measure them, manage them, and plan for their evolution. If you do that, you are going to dramatically improve your operations -- and your results.

There are many, many management coaches out there. What essentially does MAP do that's different or better? As you know, a lot of business coaches come into a company, talk to the top management team, analyze spreadsheets and Profit and Loss statements, and then they make their recommendations and move on to the next assignment. We take a very different approach, and we have from the very beginning. We like to work with companies over the long-term, and we develop very close relationships not just with top managers but with people up and down the company. We help them put into place the MAP system and then we help them monitor their results, month after month. And because we train their people, we have a deep and ongoing interest in everyone's success and personal growth. We also help companies as they move through their phases of growth and development, and in times of crisis we are there as well. We become like trusted family friends and advisers. That's the MAP way.

Vital Factors highlights several MAP clients that have experienced phenomenal growth as a result of your professional guidance. Which story sticks out the most and why? Every story has something special in it. And I think readers will be excited by the wide variety of people and subjects we feature: men, women, big corporations, small creative start-ups, non-profit organizations, even city governments. The MAP experience often extends far beyond the office. As our readers will discover, we tell many stories of men and women who used the MAP system to improve their marriages, their parenting, their financial management and the way the plan their lives and heir retirement. There are some very compelling stories about immigrants who came to America and – with MAP – were able to fulfill their dreams. I'm thinking of a Cuban refugee named Bill de la Vina and a Vietnamese refugee named Katherine Le. They have amazing stories to share, and I think readers will understand why, in writing this, we always felt that we had front-row seats at The American Dream.

Lee, you seem so passionate about what you do. Would you say the best-run companies understand their most important resource is people? Why is this so? You nailed it: the best companies really do understand that people are their most important resource and, more importantly, they ACT on the strength of that understanding. We see it over and over: the best companies understand how to recruit the best people, how to empower them, support them, keep them happy and motivated, and give them the tools they need to succeed. What really struck me at the end of writing this book was that this is a book about ordinary people who – with a little training and guidance -- were able to accomplish extraordinary things. And our ongoing message to our readers is this: if they can do it, so can you.