Title: Good to Great
Author: Jim Collins
Reviewed Format: Hardcover
Pages: 260
Rating: 5 Stars
Review: This is a great book. I went in a little skeptical... When everyone talks about how great a book is (and when the executive office of your employer is said to carry it around in their uh... knapsacks?) it always makes me question the hype and take a closer look than I maybe otherwise would. Great expectations, and all that. Well, this is a great book, but I'm not sure how many people actually get the message when they read the thing based on my own conversations with and observations of people who tout its message.
Jim Collins and a team of 20 other researchers affiliated with the University of Colorado Graduate School with the stated mission of studying companies which had established a baseline of merely good results (market average) but suddenly underwent some kind of seemingly major transformation and became great companies that sustained results for at least 15 years after the transformation event. The team made a very conscious decision to ignore their own biases and preconceptions and try to analyze their data and findings objectively-- what they found shocked them (and me).
I think the collective "we" (Jim Collins, et al., included) imagined that they'd find companies helmed by rockstar CEOs, radical transition plans, excellent management of said transition, and drastic transformations. What they found instead-- and in EVERY ONE of their eleven subjects (the only found eleven companies that met their good-to-great criteria)-- was that the transformation was actually a very starting one that gained more and more momentum as the becoming-great company pushed on their figurative flywheel (one of the books central concept). The book has seven chapters each about a specific concept, but several of them really cover a lot of the same ground and I would say there's really three central lessons to be had from this book. They are:
1. Level 5 Leadership - humble leaders who direct all of their sizable ambition towards building a great company... And hire people like them with a focus on values instead of on skills. (The book categorizes these as "disciplined thought.")
2. Hedgehog Concept - understand what your company can be great at and focus only on those things. Do not tolerate people who don't understand this or what it implies. (The book categorizes these as "disciplined action.")
3. A Culture of Discipline - When you've worked on the above to concepts the next part should be easy, but is essentially a business culture that becomes determined or even fanatic about hiring the right kind of people for the job and adhering to the Hedgehog Concept.
What it all really boils down to, is getting the right people on the bus AND the wrong people off the bus and the rest of it will tend to fall in place. Of course the book itself has numerous examples and data to support the findings of the research teams' findings and is well enough written to be a clear and easy read. The attribute I found most compelling was the fact that the research turned up the same factors and steps for every one of their subject companies so as far as data goes it was extremely clear to me that they are really on to something. As I consider the actions and performance of the company I work for, it has become impossible to view them without constantly evaluating them against the findings of this book. I very highly recommend this book for anyone interested in what makes some companies great. (5 stars)
Showing posts with label business. Show all posts
Showing posts with label business. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 15, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
Triumphant Return from The Japans
I'm back, even if some of you didn't know I'd gone! I took a business trip for my huge corporate employer to Japan over the last week. I didn't have a lot of warning that I was going which is why I didn't post a "see ya's all later kinda blog" before heading out. I even made a weak effort between the very long working days and numerous drinkings of Japanese beer to update the blog with an "I'm in Japan!!!!" kinda post, but was defeated by the intermittent wireless in the hotel.
Anyway, for what it's worth, I've been to Japan several times (including a year-long stint as a college exchange students), so it's a place I'm pretty familiar with... I like it there a lot and enjoy any chance to go that I can get. This trip took me to Kobe, a small city on Shikoku, and a smaller industrial city near Nagoya (or maybe more accurately near Toyota). I had been to Kobe (maybe known to you as the site of the devastating Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995) once before during high school for a volleyball tournament, and I think that's probably when I started my love affair with things Japanese that resulted in my aforementioned college exchange there-- interestingly enough, I don't recall discussing the earthquake much or noticing a lot of damage or anything, even though I was there around one year later. Kobe is a pretty cool city with some neat features (the Ijinkan-- barbarian houses-- left over from when Kobe was a trade port for early European traders are an example) and some cool places to hang out.
I got to travel with three other guys, who all turned out to be decent travel companions. Work travel in Japan was fairly fascinating as factories there are very different from our own. There's a ton of automation, and the Japanese are able to cram a decent process into an unbelievably tiny space. Supplier relationships are also executed in a very different way-- kind of paternalistic and definitely not arms length. I think there's some things we could learn from each other.
This blog has been brought to you by mild jetlag, which saw me awake at ~4:30 AM and has given me a bit of extra time before work.
Anyway, for what it's worth, I've been to Japan several times (including a year-long stint as a college exchange students), so it's a place I'm pretty familiar with... I like it there a lot and enjoy any chance to go that I can get. This trip took me to Kobe, a small city on Shikoku, and a smaller industrial city near Nagoya (or maybe more accurately near Toyota). I had been to Kobe (maybe known to you as the site of the devastating Great Hanshin Earthquake of 1995) once before during high school for a volleyball tournament, and I think that's probably when I started my love affair with things Japanese that resulted in my aforementioned college exchange there-- interestingly enough, I don't recall discussing the earthquake much or noticing a lot of damage or anything, even though I was there around one year later. Kobe is a pretty cool city with some neat features (the Ijinkan-- barbarian houses-- left over from when Kobe was a trade port for early European traders are an example) and some cool places to hang out.
I got to travel with three other guys, who all turned out to be decent travel companions. Work travel in Japan was fairly fascinating as factories there are very different from our own. There's a ton of automation, and the Japanese are able to cram a decent process into an unbelievably tiny space. Supplier relationships are also executed in a very different way-- kind of paternalistic and definitely not arms length. I think there's some things we could learn from each other.
This blog has been brought to you by mild jetlag, which saw me awake at ~4:30 AM and has given me a bit of extra time before work.
Thursday, May 6, 2010
Absurd, Hilarious and Pretty Scary Actually.
Amit sent me this MSN moneycentral article today at work as we discussed the huge crap the market took today. So, in case you don't want to link over there, it's possible that the minipanic today (which included the largest intraday market decline since 1987) may have been triggered by a trader at Citigroup fat fingering a sell order. The story goes that he hit "b" instead of "m" when trying to place a $16M sell order on Proctor & Gamble. This caused P&G stock to plummet from $62/share to $37/share in practically no-time. Luckily for P&G, NYSE has some built in technology to watch for something like this, and basically slowed down transactions of P&G for a short time (1-2 minutes) while things were sorted out.
I read this and laughed a lot... Immediately took the article around to coworkers to make fun of the poor SOB who happened to have a really really bad day at work today. In all seriousness though, this may or may not have caused the intraday dip before the end-of-day rebound-- I'm guessing the Greek financial disaster also had something to say about it... But it's incredible to imagine that whatever system the poor Citigroup trader was using doesn't ask you to confirm a 16 BILLION dollar trade request. I'd personally like to think better controls were in place since for at least short time major damage was done to at least one company and perhaps the market on the whole.
I read this and laughed a lot... Immediately took the article around to coworkers to make fun of the poor SOB who happened to have a really really bad day at work today. In all seriousness though, this may or may not have caused the intraday dip before the end-of-day rebound-- I'm guessing the Greek financial disaster also had something to say about it... But it's incredible to imagine that whatever system the poor Citigroup trader was using doesn't ask you to confirm a 16 BILLION dollar trade request. I'd personally like to think better controls were in place since for at least short time major damage was done to at least one company and perhaps the market on the whole.
Wednesday, April 7, 2010
Book Review: The Three Signs of a Miserable Job
Title: The Three Signs of a Miserable Job
Author: Patrick Lencioni
Reviewed Format: Hardcover
Pages: 256
Rating: 3 1/2 Stars
Review: I was asked to read this book as a part of a book club at work. This is my first review of a book that isn't necessarily designed as entertainment. As "the plot" isn't really the focus of the book, and it's not likely that I could spoil the experience for a prospective reader by letting the cat out of the proverbial bag. So get ready, cat's on the way and what not.
The subtext to the title is "A Fable for Managers (and their employees)," and that would indicate the book is most likely about trying to keep your employees happy and effective as they execute their jobs. As I am currently a non-supervisory management employee, it means that I read it from the "other side" (though it's not like I wouldn't like to be a manager of people one day) and tried to evaluate if I thought Mr. Lencioni's ideas put into practice would improve my opinion of my management or not.
The book starts of with the fictional story of one Brian Bailey, a successful businessman with humble roots. He started off in operations and climbed the ladder over time before finding himself the CEO of a mid-sized exercise equipment manufacturer. The industry enters into a consolidation mode and Brian decides to sell the company off and retire. He and his wife retire to Lake Tahoe and he gets bored and a little depressed without work. Long story short, he visits an Italian restaurant that's a little down on its luck and he ends up not only thinking through its problems, but meets with the owner and via that discussion ends up invested directly in the business.
The story from that point on serves as a vehicle for Lencioni to deliver his message. His point is that most people tend to think a job is a happy job when the employee is able to do something they love and get paid enough (or even a lot) money to do it. He suggests this model is at best flawed as there are numerous examples of famous athletes, actors, models, and musicians getting paid large sums of money to do what they love and still very unhappy. His theory is that there are three flaws common to jobs, each of which can make a person miserable: immeasurability (the author notes, as I do, that this wasn't a word until he made it so), irrelevance, and anonymity. This boils down to the idea that an employee needs to be able to measure how he makes people's lives better (immeasurability/irrelevance) and not be just a number in a phone book (anonymity).
The "fable" itself is written well enough. It's simple, with prose designed for maximum readability. I feel it'd be disingenuous to criticize Lencioni on his writing as he was absolutely able to deliver his intended message. There was even one night that the book turned into a little bit of a page-turner for me. The message itself I feel a little mixed on. There's no science to the fable... It's all pretty "soft," and Mr. Lencioni certainly wasn't going to write a story that didn't prove his point. That said, he was convincing enough in his arguments that I've found myself using some of the language in my conversations at work and interested to at least test some of it out. I'm not sure they're the absolute answer of making your employees happy, but I also very much doubt you'd make people unhappy by getting to know them and helping them understand how they help people get through their lives. It also points out something that I think is a lesson that should appear in every text for a manager: the job responsibilities of a manager of professionals do include results, but their primary function is to cause their group of professionals to perform effectively and efficiently.
A third of the way through this book, I was ready to put it down and forget about it, but I just got over the hump. I'm glad I did. It's an easy read, and it's going to help get a manager's mind focused on managing his people. From an employee's perspective, it might equip you with some concepts and vocabulary with which to train your boss and make your world a little better. Mr. Lencioni's written several other books, and I've picked out which I'll be reading next: Silos, Politics and Turf Wars. (3 1/2 Stars)
Author: Patrick Lencioni
Reviewed Format: Hardcover
Pages: 256
Rating: 3 1/2 Stars
Review: I was asked to read this book as a part of a book club at work. This is my first review of a book that isn't necessarily designed as entertainment. As "the plot" isn't really the focus of the book, and it's not likely that I could spoil the experience for a prospective reader by letting the cat out of the proverbial bag. So get ready, cat's on the way and what not.
The subtext to the title is "A Fable for Managers (and their employees)," and that would indicate the book is most likely about trying to keep your employees happy and effective as they execute their jobs. As I am currently a non-supervisory management employee, it means that I read it from the "other side" (though it's not like I wouldn't like to be a manager of people one day) and tried to evaluate if I thought Mr. Lencioni's ideas put into practice would improve my opinion of my management or not.
The book starts of with the fictional story of one Brian Bailey, a successful businessman with humble roots. He started off in operations and climbed the ladder over time before finding himself the CEO of a mid-sized exercise equipment manufacturer. The industry enters into a consolidation mode and Brian decides to sell the company off and retire. He and his wife retire to Lake Tahoe and he gets bored and a little depressed without work. Long story short, he visits an Italian restaurant that's a little down on its luck and he ends up not only thinking through its problems, but meets with the owner and via that discussion ends up invested directly in the business.
The story from that point on serves as a vehicle for Lencioni to deliver his message. His point is that most people tend to think a job is a happy job when the employee is able to do something they love and get paid enough (or even a lot) money to do it. He suggests this model is at best flawed as there are numerous examples of famous athletes, actors, models, and musicians getting paid large sums of money to do what they love and still very unhappy. His theory is that there are three flaws common to jobs, each of which can make a person miserable: immeasurability (the author notes, as I do, that this wasn't a word until he made it so), irrelevance, and anonymity. This boils down to the idea that an employee needs to be able to measure how he makes people's lives better (immeasurability/irrelevance) and not be just a number in a phone book (anonymity).
The "fable" itself is written well enough. It's simple, with prose designed for maximum readability. I feel it'd be disingenuous to criticize Lencioni on his writing as he was absolutely able to deliver his intended message. There was even one night that the book turned into a little bit of a page-turner for me. The message itself I feel a little mixed on. There's no science to the fable... It's all pretty "soft," and Mr. Lencioni certainly wasn't going to write a story that didn't prove his point. That said, he was convincing enough in his arguments that I've found myself using some of the language in my conversations at work and interested to at least test some of it out. I'm not sure they're the absolute answer of making your employees happy, but I also very much doubt you'd make people unhappy by getting to know them and helping them understand how they help people get through their lives. It also points out something that I think is a lesson that should appear in every text for a manager: the job responsibilities of a manager of professionals do include results, but their primary function is to cause their group of professionals to perform effectively and efficiently.
A third of the way through this book, I was ready to put it down and forget about it, but I just got over the hump. I'm glad I did. It's an easy read, and it's going to help get a manager's mind focused on managing his people. From an employee's perspective, it might equip you with some concepts and vocabulary with which to train your boss and make your world a little better. Mr. Lencioni's written several other books, and I've picked out which I'll be reading next: Silos, Politics and Turf Wars. (3 1/2 Stars)
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