A Book A Week - Week 5: Good To Great

This week's book:
    Good To Great   by Jim Collins

Grade:
    B    if he'd left off the last page, it would have been an A

I came to this book fully prepared to hate it.  It's been one of the must-read business books since it was first published in 2000.  I generally hate business books, they're usually written by academics or psychologists who have no idea how the real world works.*  'Good To Great' was also written by an academic - part of the reason I was certain I would hate it - but its premises and conclusions are backed by empirical research.  Hard to dispute that.  So I didn't hate it, and I actually came to appreciate most of the points the author made.  Until the very last page.  More on that later.

The idea behind the book was to see if the research team working on the book could find any commonality between companies that went from merely good to great, regardless of their industry.  'Great' defined as beating the stock market average regularly and by a large margin.  Right away he's pre-selecting for public companies, but I'll let that slide.  How would you research private companies?  As I read further and further in the book I found that I completely agreed with their methodology, and from the way the author describes their research it seems like they covered all their bases pretty thoroughly.  So I went from being almost hostile in my dismissiveness to fairly receptive to their conclusions.  Which were unsurprising but revolutionary for American corporations.

I won't rehash those conclusions - you can read the book for that - which are fairly straightforward.  Mostly it's 'know where you're going and trust your people to get you there.'  Again, not surprising at all, unless you're a corporate drone who thinks 'monetize' is a word and that meetings actually accomplish things.

He had me, Mr. Collins turned me around.  Up until the last page.  There he addressed the same question I had when I picked up the book, which is 'why does a company need to be great?  Isn't it enough to be good and successful?'  I read on, eagerly anticipating a great answer.
   However, Mr. Collins responded to that question not with an answer, but with a rejection of the question:
     'Indeed, the real question is not 'Why greatness?' but 'What work makes you feel compelled to try to create greatness?'  If you have to ask the question 'Why should we try to make it great?  Isn't success enough?' then you're probably engaged in the wrong line of work.'

Ahh... the academic's response to someone questioning their precious research.  'Oh yeah?  Well... you're a stupid-head... why would somebody even ask that question?  Unless they're a stupid-head... '

If he had just treated the question like the valid inquiry it was and answered it appropriately, he would have found a convert in me.  All he had to do was say something like 'all public companies have a fiduciary responsibility to their shareholders to return as much value as possible, and the best way you can do that is to try to make your company great' and he would have kept me.  But rejecting the question as unworthy of asking?  That's juvenile and makes me question the entire book and the time I spent reading it.

Is this book worth the read for the small business person?  For the entrepreneur?  Yes, but with qualifications.  The studies were of large corporations with a long history, which entrepreneurs don't have.  So take their conclusions with a grain of salt and apply them to your situation only with great consideration.  The principles are sound, but your execution might need to be adjusted to make them work for your small business. 

Next week:
   One For The Money     by Janet Evanovich
    I would never in a million years have picked up this book, which I why I chose it for my 'Book A Week' effort. 



* Like 'Who Moved My Cheese?' easily the worst business book ever published.  I will not be re-reading that one, not this year or ever.