A Myth-Busting Book
I just finished reading a great new business book that really breaks new ground, and I am recommending that my readers put it on their 2008 reading lists. That book, “The Breakthrough Company” by Keith McFarland, examines nine companies which found ways to grow exponentially, while others like them settled for merely succeeding.
Did you know that just one-tenth of one percent of U.S. firms achieve revenues of more than $250 million in sales? Almost all books and media focus on these sizable companies, but this new work takes you through the steps from a one-person shop to the big time.
McFarland took five years out to “CAT scan” and “MRI” more than 7,000 growth companies seeking to become powerhouses in their industries. He narrowed his study to nine breakthrough companies — ADTRAN, Chico’s, Express Personnel, Fastenal, Intuit, Paychex, Polaris, SAS Institute and the Staubauch Company. His goal: To identify the secrets of breakthrough, which enable a firm to grow to $1 billion in sales and beyond.
In interviewing more than 1,500 executives on four continents, McFarland discovered that much of what is believed about what it takes to build a breakthrough company is just plain wrong. Included among his myth-busting insights, McFarland says that breakthrough companies:
Discover profitable niches where others see only challenges. I call this “nitch picking.”
Focus on building an organization where you can hire ordinary people who can do extraordinary things. It’s essential to have quality people, which becomes less of a challenge when you build a great company, because the best people have a way of finding you.
Breakthrough Tips
Spend less time worrying about corporate culture than corporate character. You can’t fake character.
Point to difficult times as the periods when the organizations learned the most and made the most progress.
Surround yourself with insultants. Yes, I said insultants. You must always have people who question your ways of doing business.
Perhaps my favorite chapter is “Crowning the Company,” where “leaders serve their company rather than have the company serve them.” These companies might have started out as one-man bands, but they grew into sovereign organizations where “they honored the organization more than the individuals in it.”
If you choose to crown your company, here are some of McFarland’s tips:
Crown the customer first. “If everyone in the organization is taught to view their own departmental activities as always secondary to the needs of the customer, then employees will consider the customer their top priority.”
Avoid the trappings of corporate royalty. Breakthrough execs are paid market rates, but they tend to receive the same treatment and benefits package as any other employee.
Shift from commander to coach. Leaders must adapt their skill-sets to begin coaching and developing new capabilities throughout the organization.
Encourage chaotic communication. You need to have an open-door policy. Everyone in an organization should be enouraged to talk to anyone at any time.
Cut employees in on the action. And it doesn’t always have to be money. It can be benefits like flexible workdays, on-site health care, fitness center or day care.
McFarland says that breakthrough companies continue to up the ante to increase the size of their bets to match the growing stakes of the game in their industries. Many companies fail to break through because they fall into the trap of playing it safe. The key is knowing how to tell the difference from a good bet and a merely risky one.
Mackay’s Moral: If you’re looking for a breakthrough, break open this book.
Harvey Mackay is president of Mackay Envelope Corp. and a nationally syndicated columnist.
WBJ Web Partners
Most Recent
Most Recent
0 Comments