The Discipline of Business
Tom Peters and Robert Waterman’s 1982 bestseller In Search of Excellence ignited excitement in the business community. The book profiled 43 “excellent” companies that possessed 8 themes the authors believed responsible for their success. Within five years, however, one third of the companies profiled had financial difficulties. Almost 3 decades later, many of the companies are now defunct.
Fast forward to 2001 and the release of Jim Collins’s Good to Great. Written in a similar vein, Collins’s well-researched thesis identified 11 companies that reflected the stellar qualities he identified as “great” businesses. Less than a decade later, 2 out of the 11 companies profiled are defunct (Circuit City and Fannie Mae).
Does this mean that Collins’s Hedgehog Concept is bunk? Or that Peters and Waterman’s idea of staying close to the customer doesn’t work?
Of course not. Business is a complex discipline. Most likely, these once-great businesses simply stopped doing what was working—and probably didn’t even know it. The lesson isn’t that we need to always follow the rules but that we must never become complacent.
Companies like Apple and Google, for example, must continue to innovate at an accelerating pace to sustain their market dominance. They must continue to foster their own unique cultures and attract brilliant minds and extraordinary talent. They must find new ways to wow and inspire their customers.
Building a strong business isn’t easy. If you just try to protect what your business has today, you’ll end up losing what you’ve already built. If your business isn’t growing, it’s declining.
In Search of Excellence sold over 3 million copies and is still in print. Good to Great has sold over 3 million copies and is still among the top 100 bestsellers on Amazon.com. We know executives are buying these books, but are they reading and living the valid principles within?
Commit to constant improvement both within yourself and throughout your business. Align to effective business principles like the ones highlighted in the above-mentioned books, but never settle for where you are now.
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