Good To Great Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't By Jim Collins
This book is about how companies go from being good companies to companies that create long term sustained great performance. The book identifies eleven publicly traded companies from the Fortune 500 that went from barely beating the market to having continuous returns of at least twice the market for stockholders. I am not sure how this applies to libraries, but the book attempts to define a set of principles on making a company great.
The message in this book was easy to identify with. There are no complex strategies, flashy leadership secrets, or special financial techniques. This book is about how to inspire discipline, find a consistent simple purpose, create continuous incremental change, choose the right technologies, and bring very focused leadership on board.
One of the first things that Jim Collins writes is that it is impossible to implement any sustainable strategy without first bringing the right people on board. He also writes that it is as important to choose what not to do as what to do.
The book has a number of metaphors sprinkled throughout. One of them is the Stockdale Paradox: be brutally honest and at the same time know you will prevail. For discipline, there is the metaphor of rinsing your cottage to remove all the extra fat. This was done by a champion triathlete.
Most of the examples in this book are very concrete. Philip Morris introduced flip top boxes for cigarettes, Nucor introduced continuous slab casting, and Kroger was the first to experiment with scanners in supermarkets. These are all examples of introducing the right products and technology to gain market advantage.
My favorite metaphor in the book is the flywheel metaphor. Change happens not because of big fantasy initiatives, but because of continuous pressure. A flywheel speeds up because of continous sustained momentum. I like to think of the same idea with pushing an iceberg where it is very slow to move, but becomes very hard to stop once it is in motion.
The book contains no photographs. There are a few black and white charts that are easy to understand. Also, there is an index, bibliographic notes, and a detailed set of appendices explaining how the research on the companies being written about was done.
I read the companion monograph, Good to Great and the Social Sectors Why Business Thinking Is Not the Answer as well. The monograph is very short, 35 pages and distills the essence of the larger book focusing on nonprofits and government agencies. A few of the organizations covered are the New York Police Department, the Girl Scouts, and the Cleveland Orchestra. There are a number of metrics on how to measure greatness in social sector companies. This is worth reading before you read the larger book.
Showing posts with label business administration. Show all posts
Showing posts with label business administration. Show all posts
Sunday, May 3, 2009
Sunday, December 7, 2008
Collins Best Practices Time Management Set Priorities To Get Things Done Right by John Hoover
Collins Best Practices Time Management Set Priorities To Get Things Done Right by John Hoover
Last night on the train home after work, I read Collins Best Practices, Time management, Set Priorities to Get Things Done by John Hoover. I rather liked this book with its simple format and lots of color. The book is well designed.
Time Management is a practical book. One of the only measures which you can get from these types of books is can you use the ideas in the book and will it help you in your work. This book reminded me that I needed to get a new telephone log for my desk.
Most of the ideas are fairly simple. If you are more organized you can be much more creative. Make sure you schedule extra time to finish things, activities usually take longer than you plan. Keep a to do list and prioritize which things you need to finish first. Choosing which things you do is more important than planning to do everything at once. Simple, practical, easy to use.
There is a summary of points to remember at the end of each chapter, and at the end of the book, there is a summary of the whole book. There are quotes, bullet pointed suggestion lists, and simple self tests on your time management skills. The book ends with a suggested reading list and index. I read the book in two hours. Take the time to learn a bit on time management.
Last night on the train home after work, I read Collins Best Practices, Time management, Set Priorities to Get Things Done by John Hoover. I rather liked this book with its simple format and lots of color. The book is well designed.
Time Management is a practical book. One of the only measures which you can get from these types of books is can you use the ideas in the book and will it help you in your work. This book reminded me that I needed to get a new telephone log for my desk.
Most of the ideas are fairly simple. If you are more organized you can be much more creative. Make sure you schedule extra time to finish things, activities usually take longer than you plan. Keep a to do list and prioritize which things you need to finish first. Choosing which things you do is more important than planning to do everything at once. Simple, practical, easy to use.
There is a summary of points to remember at the end of each chapter, and at the end of the book, there is a summary of the whole book. There are quotes, bullet pointed suggestion lists, and simple self tests on your time management skills. The book ends with a suggested reading list and index. I read the book in two hours. Take the time to learn a bit on time management.
Wednesday, May 28, 2008
MBA In A Day-- Steven Stalser Ph.D. -- Review
MBA In A Day by Steven Stralser, Ph.D. served its purpose for me. It gave me an outline of the management functions of an MBA.
Each chaptered covers a specific aspect of business management. There are a wide variety of subjects covered, human resources, organizational behavior, leadership and team building, ethics, negotiation, accounting and finance and many other subjects. At the end of each chapter there was a short bibliography of recommended reading.
The chapters contained many definitions of business theories. I found the section on leadership styles covering autocratic, democratic, laissez faire, transactional, and transformational leadership to be interesting. I think the new director would like to turn the library into a "high performance organization." The section on Quality Management was also quite enlightening.
The main complaint I have about this book is I thought that it did a rather weak presentation of the internet and ecommerce as well as management information systems function. It seemed to be limited in its coverage.
This book is useful if you want to understand what an MBA does. It gives an outline of the different functions of business administration as well as basic definitions of the central ideas behind current business management.
There is nothing new or exciting in this book. It was written in 2004. It is more of a practical book than anything else. There is an index and some pages have black and white diagrams. The book is well laid out, making it easy to follow. It is clearly written for a professional like a lawyer, doctor, or small business owner.
Each chaptered covers a specific aspect of business management. There are a wide variety of subjects covered, human resources, organizational behavior, leadership and team building, ethics, negotiation, accounting and finance and many other subjects. At the end of each chapter there was a short bibliography of recommended reading.
The chapters contained many definitions of business theories. I found the section on leadership styles covering autocratic, democratic, laissez faire, transactional, and transformational leadership to be interesting. I think the new director would like to turn the library into a "high performance organization." The section on Quality Management was also quite enlightening.
The main complaint I have about this book is I thought that it did a rather weak presentation of the internet and ecommerce as well as management information systems function. It seemed to be limited in its coverage.
This book is useful if you want to understand what an MBA does. It gives an outline of the different functions of business administration as well as basic definitions of the central ideas behind current business management.
There is nothing new or exciting in this book. It was written in 2004. It is more of a practical book than anything else. There is an index and some pages have black and white diagrams. The book is well laid out, making it easy to follow. It is clearly written for a professional like a lawyer, doctor, or small business owner.
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