Building companies that last
From Built to Last by James Collins and Jerry Porras, a book about Visionary companies and how they come to be visionary, the authors say:
To stimulate growth Visionary Companies do the following:
1. Establish “BHAGS” i.e.: Big Hairy Audacious Goals
2. Try a lot of new Stuff
3. Live by “Good enough never is” ( or relentless self improvement).
In order to grow, companies need to think outside the box, say Collins and Porras. But can you define the “box” you want to think outside?
From Built to Last by James Collins and Jerry Porras, a book about Visionary companies and how they come to be visionary, the authors say:
To stimulate growth Visionary Companies do the following:
1. Establish “BHAGS” i.e.: Big Hairy Audacious Goals
2. Try a lot of new Stuff
3. Live by “Good enough never is” ( or relentless self improvement).
In order to grow, companies need to think outside the box, say Collins and Porras. But can you define the “box” you want to think outside?
Only companies that know intimately what they are already doing should set about “Trying a lot of new Stuff”. “Relentless self-improvement” requires ways of defining how we do NOW, against how we do tomorrow, and we can only find out the difference by taking transparent measurements or our current performance. So we need measurement processes that are easy to follow and give clear outcomes.
Sounds great? So where do you start? Start by measuring what you do now – realistically – no matter how badly. What are the activities that you do that make your business do business? What results in product or service sales do they gain? Where is the information held that can give you these measurements? Where do you collect the data? Do you collect the data?
Often even trying to focus on that simple option – measuring what you do – throws up a gaping hole in your systems. So you have to take a step back and ask: How can we collect the data? Use the help of professionals.
Don’t plunge in, acting on beliefs about how you do business and how that affects your business outcomes. You could end up changing things that don’t need changing and ignoring the obvious. Outside eyes see what you don’t. They can define the holes, but they can also spot the strengths and help you leverage these into business advantages.
Often the best solution is to bring in an outside company that is able to look at your business objectively and help you define the systems – where they intersect or overlap, where the opportunities are for obtaining good data and setting up a performance measurement system.
One of our clients needed to overhaul their sales system and integrate it into their manufacturing systems. There was a continual series of costly printing mistakes, with jobs having to be reprinted. As we worked through gathering details of their current sales procedures we realised there were several methods of processing orders and several points where changes were communicated to several different people. By highlighting these potential hazards for communication we were able to help them settle on a single sales “route”, thereby reducing the potential for mistakes.
Defining what we do leads to clear procedures; following procedures leads to changes where they are obviously not working. It is only then that you move into the next step - creating systems for relentless self-improvement.
To read a review of Built to Last go to ReadingGroupGuides.com. For more information about Collins and Porras go to the Derbyshire Business School’s list of Top 50 Business Thinkers page. This book is available new and used and as an audio cassette from Amazon Books.
Posted by Heather Absalom-Smith at April 18, 2005 03:44 PM
