In Search of Excellence

Rating:
Summary: Great Prequel to Built to Last
Review: This is an excellent and useful book for anyone wanting to understand how to manage a company or organization well. Built to Last is similar and more rigorously researched.

Rating:
Summary: The book that launched a genre
Review: This is the book that launched the management guru business, as well as the popular management genre. Previous management authors such as Peter Drucker wrote academic oriented tomes for buisness executives. Tom Peters wrote for the masses.

The book starts with an introduction explaining the problems in the economy (this was the early 80s, when fear of Japan Inc was rising) and why this abstract concept of "Excellence" was needed. In many senses, the book's emphasis of "What's Right in the US" is really it's strongest selling point. In the context of a world where America seemed to be losing it's way, the book provides a rallying cry for places that America is doing things right.

The book the passionately covers general management caveats, such as "Stick to your knitting" with examples of companies providing extensive focus on their core competencies. It is important to note that Tom Peters does not claim to be a great management theorist here - his claim is to capture examples of companies who have figured out "how to be excellent". This is consistent with his academic training - an engineering background with a Phd in Organizational Behavior. He's not developing new business models here, only capturing what others already know to be true.

So how does it hold up over time?
Well, if you believe the naysayers, many of the supposedly excellent companies have gone belly up. Peoples Express airline? If you believe the Tom Peters website, his companies have still managed to beat the S&P 500 over the past 20 years.

Bottom line - The book is still valid. Closeness to customers is still as important as ever. Companies are learning they do need to stick to their knitting. This is a very entertaining and influential book. It's worth reading for the insights, as well as the chance that your customer has read it too. :-)

Rating:
Summary: The book that launched a genre
Review: This is the book that launched the management guru business, as well as the popular management genre. Previous management authors such as Peter Drucker wrote academic oriented tomes for buisness executives. Tom Peters wrote for the masses.

The book starts with an introduction explaining the problems in the economy (this was the early 80s, when fear of Japan Inc was rising) and why this abstract concept of "Excellence" was needed. In many senses, the book's emphasis of "What's Right in the US" is really it's strongest selling point. In the context of a world where America seemed to be losing it's way, the book provides a rallying cry for places that America is doing things right.

The book the passionately covers general management caveats, such as "Stick to your knitting" with examples of companies providing extensive focus on their core competencies. It is important to note that Tom Peters does not claim to be a great management theorist here - his claim is to capture examples of companies who have figured out "how to be excellent". This is consistent with his academic training - an engineering background with a Phd in Organizational Behavior. He's not developing new business models here, only capturing what others already know to be true.

So how does it hold up over time?
Well, if you believe the naysayers, many of the supposedly excellent companies have gone belly up. Peoples Express airline? If you believe the Tom Peters website, his companies have still managed to beat the S&P 500 over the past 20 years.

Bottom line - The book is still valid. Closeness to customers is still as important as ever. Companies are learning they do need to stick to their knitting. This is a very entertaining and influential book. It's worth reading for the insights, as well as the chance that your customer has read it too. :-)

Rating:
Summary: Excellent!
Review: This is the sort of text that provides one of the most whole analysis of the best practices of business.

Peters and Waterman have created a reference which is important for anyone interested in business and essential for anyone in business.

Covering all elements of operations and functions of businesses big and small, In Search of Excellence gives great analysis and interesting examples to back up their theories. Importantly too, the authors break down the topics into specific themes, but not to be esoteric, simply concise.

A wonderful book.

Rating:
Summary: Management as Science
Review: This publication is a survey written by a couple of McKinsey consultants that seek to define the characteristics of successful, I mean excellent, organizations using the McKinsey 7-S framework; Structure, Systems, Style, Staff, Skills, Strategy, and Shared Values.

Their findings suggest that eight attributes are common for an excellent organization; bias for action, close to the customer, autonomy and entrepreneurship, productivity through people, hands on, value driven, stick to the knitting (=focus on what you do best), simple form lean staff, and simultaneous loose-tight properties (balance between centralized/decentralized organization). This is it.

Although the authors have a pleasant narrative style and are eloquent in making their point, I hesitate to buy into the arguments presented, first and foremost because I question the all encompassing validity of the McKinsey 7-s approach. Secondly, the authors cite companies such as Digital and Wang as qualifying for excellency. Whatever these companies did during the eighties, it wasn't good enough in the end since their advantage was not sustained and hence I wouldn't call them excellent. Thirdly, the best before stamp is obvious.

I do find the introduction and management theory review very well written and enjoyable. Ironically, (for me) the authors find that chapter the least important part of the book. I beg to differ. Overall, this would make a good intro for those interested in management theory. While you're at it, try to also take a look at Michael Porter's and Peter Drucker's work. In my view they are the authority in the field.

Rating:
Summary: An interesting exercise, though time has proved it wrong.
Review: This was one of the alltime management bestsellers. Time has shown it was just another commercial bestseller. Several of the companies depicted as "excellent" have since gone bust. The book has value as an historical example of what is wrong about management books.

Rating:
Summary: The eight essential basics of excellent companies
Review: Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr. were consultants with McKinsey & Co. when this book was published in 1982. This book shot both authors into management guru-dom and is still one of the greatest management bestsellers ever. Both authors have written other books, but none have come close to this one.

In this book, the authors report on the findings from the excellent companies: "It will define what we mean by excellence. It is an attempt to generalize about what the excellent companies seem to be doing that the rest are not, and to buttress our observations on the excellent companies with sound social and economic theory." The authors' research started in 1977 when two internal task forces at McKinsey & Co. were set up to research a general concern with the problems of management effectiveness, and a particular concern with the nature of the relationship between strategy, structure, and management effectiveness. One of these task forces was to review thinking on strategy, the other was to review thinking on organizational effectiveness. Peters and Waterman were the leaders of the project on organizational effectiveness. Their research involved talking extensively with executives around the world and extensive literature reviews. Initially they worked mainly on the problem of expanding our diagnostic and remedial kit beyond the traditional tools for business problem solving, which then concentrated on strategy and structural approaches. This resulted in the now well-renowned 7-S framework (structure, strategy, systems, shared values, skills, style, and staff). "But there was still something missing. ... we were shore on practical design ideas, especially for the 'soft S's'." So the authors decided to look at management excellence itself. "We asserted that innovative companies not only are unusually good at producing commercially viable new widgets; innovative companies are especially adroit at continually responding to change of any sort in their environment." The authors labeled the companies that seemed to have achieved that kind of innovative performance as excellent companies.

The authors eventually chose 75 highly regarded companies, in which they conducted intense, structured interviews. Their project showed that the excellent companies were, above all, brilliant on the basics. The authors use eight chapters to discuss in detail the eight attributes that distinct excellent, innovative companies: 1. A bias for action, for getting on with it; 2. Close to the customer; 3. Autonomy and entrepreneurship; 4. Productivity through people; 5. Hands-on, value driven; 6. Stick to the knitting; 7. Simple form, lean staff; 8. Simultaneous loose-tight properties. None of these eight attributes are something special. In fact, they can even be called simple and predictable and the authors refer to them as "motherhoods". Most essential to each of these excellent companies is the intensity within them. This intensity is build on the strongly held beliefs of these companies.

Yes, I do like this book. I must admit that I had heard plenty about this book and had read several reviews before I actually started reading it. The biggest criticism I heard was that the example companies are not so excellent now. Perhaps true, but I do not think that this book is that much about the excellent companies themselves. I believe that it is much more about the attitude of the example companies, the positive culture. Highly recommended to business leaders, managers, and MBA-students. Read it sooner rather than later. The book is written in simple US-English, although it contains quite a heavy literature review.

Rating:
Summary: You're Better of Reading "In Search of Stupidity"
Review: While some of the advice in "Excellence" is good standard business practice info, I recently read a very funny new book called "In Search of Stupidity: Over 20 Years of High-Tech Marketing Disasters."

It made some excellent points that people should know. For instance, the data in Excellence is faked; "Stupidity" reprints the Busines Week article in which Peter's admits this. Once I read that, I had a hard time taking Excellence seriously.

In Search of Stupidity also points out that practically *all* of the high tech companies Excellence profiles either failed or had major financial problems. In my opinion, the book is a much better look at the real world problems that face companies than Excellence.