I just received my latest issue of BusinessWeek and excitedly read Jim Collin's book excerpt - How The Mighty Fall and Why Some Companies Never Give In.
For the record... I am a big fan of Jim Collins and I am not.
I am a fan because I really appreciate the research he and his team puts into his work - his books. His books have pushed my thinking and I believe the "conventional wisdom" of businesses and organizations around the world.
Why I am not a fan... I worry about putting a company on "high". No company stays in "top form" for life. I worry about books that illustrate the "best example" - a particular company who was good (or appeared to be good) at one point in time. How the company became "good" may be the result of more luck than strategy. Yet a few years later (after the book was published) the illustrated company is not good nor great - they have fallen from grace.
It is important to remember that there are three kinds of lies... Lies - Damn lies - and - Statistics.
By the way... If you are interested in another good book - check out The Halo Effect by Phil Rozenzweig. Powerful book.
I am grateful to Jim Collins... He inspired me (amongst several other living gurus like Tom Peters) to really look at the talent. Without the right people in the right seats on the bus, the organization's future will be in jeapardy. I thank Jim Collins for helping me really focus my energy in the single most important strategy of all - Talent Management. The focus of my work - Talent Management Strategy has been immensely beneficial to my Clients and myself.
From my review of the BW article, I can see that Jim Collins is again pushing the envelop of strategic business model of thought or "conventional wisdom". One such observation... It seems that we are pretty good at reviewing the autopsy - after the fact - after the damage was done. We are really good at reviewing the wreckage when the damage has been done - lives altered - fortunes lost.
What is particularly interesting to me is the thought process of identifying or systematically predicting what we do not know that we do not know. What if I could catch the "wreck" while it was still recoverable? A wreck could be prevented.
The implications are interesting and huge. For example... A business model may appear to be doing well when in fact it is imploding from a strategic perspective. I have seen it before. The money is rolling in - yet the faint "smell of death" seems to be coming through the cracks in the "strategy foundation". That faint smell is coming from the obvious strategy cracks - poor sales strategy, poor execution, etc. Yet management refuses to change the "winning strategy" - it is bringing in cash. Do not mess with a winning horse...
The question becomes... "How do we/I inject systemic humility, personal accountability, and self-review into the business model to avert driving a perfectly good "bus" off a cliff?"
The answer is... purposefully create the system thought process into the Culture of the team and organization.
More to come on this book - just ordered it...
Now go Maximize Possibility!
Other blog posts you may be interested in:
Book Review: Escape From Cubicle Nation
Featured Possibility Maximizer: You Can't Send a Duck to Eagle School
Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers: Employee Hiring and the Job Mismatch Problem
Chris Young helps organizations Maximize Possibility through talent management, cultural transformation, and strategic intervention. Bring Chris in today!
