[Business] From good to great

I just finished a book - 'Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap . . . and Others Don’t' by Jim Collins. This book prepares a list of companies who showed mediocre results for a period of atleast 15 years and then suddenly started showing great results and sustained them for atleast 15 years. It then identifies and analyzes the common characteristics of these companies and tries to answer the question in its title.

The way I understand it, according to the author the most important element in making a company great is to get the right people on board and the wrong people off it. Doesn't matter whether you are in services or manufacturing. Doesn't even matter if you don't know what the hell you are going to do. People - especially the ones at the top - are what make the difference. Now there is nothing earth shattering about this observation. Haven't we heard the 'people are our greatest asset' speech a million times. However what impressed me was the way every other finding of the author was tied back to this concept.

'The good-to-great company had X while the comparison company lacked it. So why was it that way? Because of the people.'
You could substitute X with any of the author's findings and the above statements would still be true. For example, one of the key differences between the good-to-great companies and their not-so-great comparisons was that the good-to-great companies identified their goal clearly and in very simple terms and then worked towards it with unwavering determination. Now that sounds very heroic but the key question is what if the goal were wrong? Wouldn't this lack of flexibility and single minded pursuit make things even worse? Well, the answer is if you have the right people the goal will not be wrong. Because the right people will not let their ego or inability to confront hard facts come in the way of decision making.

Another observation which I found especially interesting was the one about values. According to the author every great company needs to have a well defined value system which should permeate all aspects of its business. What is interesting is that this value system need not be good or socially acceptable. Your value system could be to get everyone on the planet addicted to tobacco. But as long as you fanatically stick to your 'values' you can greatly increase your chances of delivering superior results.

I liked this book. It was easy to read (well, to listen actually), it is backed by a lot of research and most important of all it made an attempt to explain the rationale behind the results instead of just presenting them. I would recommend this to anyone who has even a passing interest in business or is just intellectually curious. If you do not have time to read entire books you can read the summary at the end or better still you could try getting that fat butt of yours off the tv couch :)