Built to Last : Successful Habits of Visionary Companies

Rating:
Summary: Defining text on which companies/nations will create wealth
Review: Before being promoted to direct any influential company, people should be required to answer a mastermind quiz on the learning organisation realities discovered in this book. The authors have combed through decades of corporate information to reveal that internal marketing culture and aligned vision are the fundamental drivers of sustainable corporate growth. If you can convince directors to take at least a three year perspective - instead of accounting's quarterly ones - in everything they measure and opinion lead, then their companies are candidates for real wealth creation. This book's living testimony to the true spirit of marketing leadership is that "visionary" companies grow eight times more wealth in a generation than average companies. Think of the difference in future prospects of a nation (Japan?) which invests mainly in visionary (knowledge-creating) companies and one (UK?) which invests mainly in average (short-termist or poor learning) companies. And you start to see why every leader - from CEO to national politician - should be screened for marketing and cultural competence. If you would like to join an interactive book club for readers to discuss these or other thought-provoking issues, please contact me... Chris Macrae, editor of Brand Chartering Handbook & MELNET www.brad.ac.uk/branding/ E-mail me at [e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: Defining text on which companies/nations will create wealth
Review: Before being promoted to direct any influential company, people should be required to answer a mastermind quiz on the learning organisation realities discovered in this book. The authors have combed through decades of corporate information to reveal that internal marketing culture and aligned vision are the fundamental drivers of sustainable corporate growth. If you can convince directors to take at least a three year perspective - instead of accounting's quarterly ones - in everything they measure and opinion lead, then their companies are candidates for real wealth creation. This book's living testimony to the true spirit of marketing leadership is that "visionary" companies grow eight times more wealth in a generation than average companies. Think of the difference in future prospects of a nation (Japan?) which invests mainly in visionary (knowledge-creating) companies and one (UK?) which invests mainly in average (short-termist or poor learning) companies. And you start to see why every leader - from CEO to national politician - should be screened for marketing and cultural competence. If you would like to join an interactive book club for readers to discuss these or other thought-provoking issues, please contact me... Chris Macrae, editor of Brand Chartering Handbook & MELNET www.brad.ac.uk/branding/ E-mail me at [e-mail]

Rating:
Summary: Insight into what makes a top notch company
Review: This book should become a classic. It needs to be on the bookshelf of every entrepreneur and manager in the country. The book is a study of why some companies do better than others. The results are often startling. If you want to know what makes a good company, then you need to read this book

Rating:
Summary: The Perfect Business Book - A Must Read
Review: The next time you see a book that casts a business leader as a mythical or heroic figure, go back to this book and see if the leader passes the 'Level 5 Leader' tests. Sandy Weill, for example, fails that test miserably, since he cares nothing for his company or its employees, and only about feeding his insatiable appetite for personal profit, self-aggrandizement, and great food, in that order. Weill is an example of the so-called celebrity leaders who are very reluctant to groom and name their successors, since they care far more about holding onto their power than for the longer-term welfare of the company and its employees. The last thing you'd see these quasi-leaders do is sacrifice their power or money for longer benefit of the company. Eisner is another perfect example of Emperor-CEO who got paid obscene amount of money and drove out top talents from Disney, while its business and stock prices languished badly.

A perfect business book - erudite, entertaining, and relevant - and a must-read for anyone who ever dreamed of becoming (or simply working for) the true business leader.

Rating:
Summary: A Great Book with a Flaw
Review: This book reminds me of the hero in the classic Greek tragedy. The hero is always magnificent, but has a tragic flaw. This is a magnificent book with a tragic flaw.

Porras and Collins set out to write a book about visionary companies, and they did just that. They chose the companies they would study based on specific, detailed criteria.

They wanted to study companies that had been premier institutions in their industries and widely admired while they made an imprint on the world around them. They wanted their companies to have multiple generations of chief executives and to have gone through multiple product or service lifecycles. And they wanted the companies to have been around for a long time - founded before 1950.

They compared each of their visionary companies with another company that was not a premier visionary company. Many of the comparison companies were solid performers. They were good companies, but not great companies. That's one of the great things about the book. You can see the distinction between good performance and great performance.

Another thing that makes the book great is the extensive research. The project took six years, and the authors and their research team dug into critical issues and came up with fascinating insights and comparisons.

Read this book and you will learn about the characteristics of great companies that have an impact on the world around them. The discussions will enrich your understanding of what makes a great company. This will be especially valuable to you if you're in the process of building a company that you want to be great.

That's the great part, the hero part. What about the flaws?

The first flaw is that essentially performance for each of these companies is equated with market performance. There are lots of things the authors could have used, such as return on assets, for example. But share price is easy to track over time and is used as a surrogate for greatness. I'm not sure that that's the best criterion.

What you are actually reading about is a selection of excellent, visionary companies that were perceived as good investments by the market. This "perception" issue is not addressed in the book.

The second flaw is more important. While this book tells you marvelous things about companies that are admittedly great and about some of the things that make for greatness in companies, and while it mixes statistical data with telling anecdotes, it falls short in one critical area. The book doesn't tell you anything about how to achieve greatness.

In other words, it describes what greatness might be and it gives you some examples of companies who have achieved it, but the book ultimately left me with the nagging desire that the authors would have given me some "how to." As far as you can tell from reading the book, these companies were always great.

That may not be a problem for you if you're just starting a company. You've got a clean slate to start from. But if you're guiding an already-established company, or a part of it, I think you'll wish for a few examples of companies that became great after performing at some lesser level.

That's the bottom line in my recommendation. If you're looking for a book that describes greatness and where you'll pick up a wealth of ideas and good historical knowledge about great companies, buy this book. If, on the other hand, what you want is a book that describes in some detail how to achieve that greatness, this may not be the book for you.


Rating:
Summary: Take your company beyond basic product development
Review: To make a long review short - this is a great book. But reading it 6 years after it was first published makes it even more interesting. Many of the companies described in the book (Boeing) has had a hard struggle since then.
As a former COO and now as an entreprenuer, the book is relevant and well written. It shares some amazing insight about the companies it evaluates and it brings on som very interesting conclutions. Being in sales I began shortly after reading this book to change my stock portfolio into companies that was run based on the same leadership mantras as the book describes. It is hard to get beyond the marketing story telling of such companies - but fact is my portfolio has never been better since I changed my investing paradigm. This review is not about investing - but trying to dig out the the conclutions of this book from the real world companies of today is truly interesting. I love it - I hope the visionaries will continously beat the pragmatists.

Rating:
Summary: Should be required for all levels
Review: Years ago, my boss, hiring many of as refugees from another company, opened the doors on his own business. The first thing I remember his doing was giving me a copy of this book so that I would know how he wanted to approach management.

I have since moved on to become a college English instructor, so some might wonder what I was doing in what was, effectively, a management role. What this book illustrates, however, is that managers don't make companies work, worker-centered policies do.

Now, years on, that company has become part of something much larger and quite successful. Nonetheless, I still apply many of the ideas expressed in this book in the way I interact with my students.

Rating:
Summary: embrace the power of "and"
Review: Collins and Porras' basic observation in this book, where they compare the practices of visionary to those of a matched set of good, though not great, companies, is that average companies are driven by the power of "or:" You can have either short term profits OR long term growth, either stability OR progress. Visionary companies, on the contrary, embrace the power of "and:" You can preserve the core AND stimulate progress.

That said, the authors go on to describe how great companies build structures that embrace these often contradictory goals. The great companies Collins and Porras study, contrary to popular belief, are not profit focused at their core. Instead, they are `value' focused. These values are a sort of nucleus, around which leaders in visionary companies grow the company.

And that is not the only difference between visionary companies and the more average comparison companies. The visionary companies surveyed consistently produced leaders steeped in the company's ideology. These home grown leaders are the result of deliberate corporate design, an orientation to corporate structure that the authors call "clock building instead of time telling." In short, among the final products of visionary companies are competent leaders that carry on the core. And once developed, these leaders are then encouraged to experiment boldly, keeping only what works (i.e. what is effective and in alignment with the core).

A very entertaining book, it is among the best, easiest to follow guide to strategy imaginable. I also like the fact that it addresses not only macro level concerns, but also provides guidelines to help folks like me, stuck in middle management positions, apply these concepts. It is well written, the case studies compelling, and I like being able to follow the authors' research methods in the appendices. It is this thorough research which raises the book several notches above the now-classic "In Search of Excellence."


Rating:
Summary: Excellent and question for those who have read!?
Review: Howdy All,

An excellent book, highly recommended to all those in business (or starting a business) who really want to make a difference (not just make a quick buck).

Now here's my question:

I remember reading a section in the book where it explained how a hotel or motel CEO would get all new hires into his office on their first day and explain to them how they should see each day at work as a challenge to them.

I'd like to find that section again to reread (and quote it) but no matter how much I browse the book I can't seem to find it. I believe it was in the second half (or even more towards the end) of the book.

I've tried on-line searching (of the book) but that's not been successful (since I don't believe the whole thing is indexed. If anyone's starting out reading the book, or has just read it, or knows it like the back of their hand, perhaps you can help?

Any pointers (page number, chapters() would be most appreciated.

Please email [e-mail]

Thanks in advance,
Ashley Aitken.

Rating:
Summary: A Classic
Review: Of all books on business strategy, this one packs a rare combination of academic rigor, practicality and insight. It's one of a dozen timeless business strategy books in existence.

Collins (and Jerry Porras) decided to create a rigorous set of performance measurement criteria to determine which companies not only succeeded financially, as measured primarily by stock price, but also maintained the gain for a long period of time. Jim and Jerry then built a series of hypotheses around these companies as contrasted with industry competitors which had similar market opportunities but no equivalent long-term success.

The results are incredibly direct and determinative:

o If you want to last, your culture must be values-based.
o You must clearly understand your "core purpose" as well as embrace, articulate, hire to and demonstrate your core values. o The core purpose must last at least 100 ears.
o Your vision must include a BHAG to lend continued vitality to your organizations.
o The BHAG must be describable in clear, vibrant, engaging and inspirational terms.

In teaching strategic planning, I use these ideas as clear, straghtforward and energizing principles. In creating strategy, these compelling ideas are indispensible as a focal point for group success.

The 3 Cs for success are clarity, commitment and competence. This book covers the first two better than anything else out there today. It belongs on your shelf.