Good read, if you have not read Good To Great

books:


	• Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies Jim Collins, Jerry I. Porras Collins Business, 2004 - 368 pages average customer review:based on 147 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The ideas in this book are Built to Last!

Great book, excellent non conventional ideas to help everyone from the executive to the small business owner. Discusses ways successful companies became that way, not by using the "kill instinct" to make profits at all costs, but by thinking about the products and services they provide and how they will enrich and improve their customers' lives.

Great Book Excellent presentation

This book is a master piece, and is one of the most interesting business books I've ever read, I recommend this book to anyone who is studying for an MBA or doing research related to business organizations. The authors have done lot of work before they wrote this book, it is evident with the amount of references that they have quoted in the book. It busts the myth that "management is complicated science" and shows you simple and intriguing stories as to how some of the top companies in the world stumble upon fortune. And how they kept the company afloat during times of struggle (did you know that Boeing had to do furniture business to keep the company running? I read it on the book), the way they treated their employees.. Its an investment to buy this book.

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Inspiring, but lacking analytical rigor.

This is an inspiring book, and informative. It answers the "what" question convincingly. I missed answers to the "why" questions. Why, for example, are successful visionary companies characterized by their emphasis on ethical standards? There are many possible explanations: the staff of the company are inspired by the ideals and give more to their employer; the companies reap payoffs in the long term from grateful recipients of their honorable deeds; the companies acquire a good reputation which increases sales and hence profits. More interesting, is the question of the logic of ethics in the business game - not even touched by these authors.

According to Jim Collins and Jerry Porras, it does not matter what the company ideology is, as long as it is passionately believed by the management and employees. I find this a dubious claim, and not supported by the data. The ideological frameworks of the companies that were studied are not interchangeable, not for the trivial reason that the ideology of another company happens not to be the one believed by each of them. Boeing is unlikely to spend money on a program to cure river blindness in Africa. Why does Merck do this? Clearly, a pharmaceutical firm does well to invest in a reputation for medical generosity that flows from a passion for making people well? Merck is purchasing precisely the trust that pays-off in the medical market place. Trust reduces transaction costs, and in some cases is almost as good as a monopoly. Boeing, on the other hand, must buy a brand name attached to their dedication to engineering excellence. It does matter what companies are passionate about.

My company operates on the Internet. Our pledge includes the words: "The tragedy of the commons is the propensity of users to take more from the commons than they give. We undertake to contribute more to the commons than we take. Our presence shall make the Internet safer, more useful and greater fun." Why is this a suitable ideology for our company? The answer is not that this is one we happen to believe in, and feel passionate about - although we do. Rather, this ideology is strategically fitting. We enhance to our brand name, and therefore the value of our software, by adding our reputation to the web applications we write.

In one of our daughter businesses we are a broker of information from merchants to consumer (information about products that are available) and from consumer to merchant (we generate real time demand curves for a large range of commodities). We have pledged not to become a trader. Why? In ethical terms, we should not be a trader because our insider information would give rise to conflict of interest. The trust that we gain by not being a trader, and hence remaining a disinterested supplier of market information, enables us to broker Coasian agreements with reduced transaction costs between the parties on the Internet. The advantage is large. It is on the Internet commons that trust is scarce. We are able to purchase this by foregoing some potentially profitable trades, and that pays us more in the long term in our role as an information service provider.

Our ideology was designed to give us the greatest possible strategic advantage in our markets. That is not to say we do not believe in our ideals, but that the nature of our ideology is important. It does matter what we believe. It matters what you believe, and it matters that you understand that it matters.

I strongly recommend "The Modern Firm" by Roberts. Read this alongside "Built to Last". Roberts is a harder read, but he gets under the logic of corporate dynamics better than Collins and Porras. Because "Built to Last" is characterized by an ubiquitous analytical paucity, Jim Collins and Jerry Porras' interpretations of their data are not always correct. That is a pity. Their findings are exciting, inspiring even, and the book despite its limitations is a good read.

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excellent

excellent

Good read, if you have not read Good To Great

For one, it is slightly difficult for me to review this book because:

1. It shares completely all its structure & methodology with Good To Great. This is not exactly bad, but it is no different.

2. It shares a good amount of its content with Good To Great. This is to be expected because it stands to reason that companies who made it "Great" will have commonalities with companies which have been "visionary".

To those of you who are looking for an isolated review of "Built To Last", I apologize. This review will not cover a lot of it. I'd instead say that in my own opinion, "Good To Great" is a far better book. Now this could be because I read that one first, but I'd also like to think that this also because "Good To Great" has:
1. About all the specific traits as far qualifying differentiators of great companies is concerned. The phraseology could be different, e.g. what is termed as "Clock Building" in BTL is called "Level 5 Leadership" in GTG.

2. And it has more, particularly two traits that come to my mind right away. One is "Face the brutal facts" & the other being the "Hedgehog concept". The authors in many ways might have implied these traits in visionary companies in BTL, but they are not identified as points to focus on - as they are in GTG.

On the whole, my advice is read any one of them for the marginal value of reading the other having read any one first is really little. And in case you intend to read just one, I'd recommend GTG over BTL.

And here is one last thing I think that both books did not emphasize enough:
So if
Business success = Traits A(Traits common to all successful companies) + Traits B (Traits about great companies that separate them from just successful companies),

then both books just talk about traits B. May be I should talk to JC about that, :)

S!

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reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, page 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16

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