Good is the enemy of Great.
A captivating sentence to start a book by Jim Collins, known for his Built to Last.The book talks about a few companies who have stood out from the crowd (by parameters defined by the author) contrasted against some comparison companies.
According to the author, the idea of the book was fuelled by a McKinsey official’s comment that the companies covered in Built to Last were great. But most of the firms don’t achieve this greatness. What made this difference?
11 companies were selected based on some specified criteria set by the research team. In short their stock prices need to be pretty normal stretch almost along the lines of market movement and subsequently for a period of 15 years their stock price growth beat the market growth by at least 1.5 times. These 11 companies were compared against 11 firms in the same sector.
The book is written in a lucid style, even the non-technical, non-business savvy readers can understand what every word means – at least on the surface! The ideas are conveyed succinctly and with anecdotes and snippets from meetings/conversations.
Jim Collins and his team identified some key differentiators, which will ideally overcome the enemy that is good and help organizations achieve greatness. Some of them are - Level 5 Leadership – Leadership with personal humility and professional will, First Who, then What – Get the right people in first, then think about the direction, Control the brutal facts – See what you are good at? And what you are not, Hedgehog concept – Do what you are good at, Culture of Discipline – Implement with discipline and focus.
Though I appreciate the simplicity in detailing these concepts, I doubt if it were so simple to bring up organizations and exceed the expectations of the shareholders with consistency. The skeptical mind of mine says it’s difficult to isolate the factors that make a company great. Even if one has isolated the parameters, it’s all the more difficult to execute them to perfection, again and again.
Anyway, the book is as readable as a travelogue probably…