The Breakthrough Company
How Everyday Companies Become Extraordinary Performers
Number of pages: 304
Publisher: Crown Business
BBB Library: Entrepreneurship, Operations Management
ISBN: 9780307352194
Editorial Review
As hard as it is to grow a company, wouldn’t it be nice if there was a “recipe” for creating a company with sustained high performance? It is tempting to dream that if we could just find the right combination of ingredients—a cup of customer loyalty, two tablespoons of Blue Ocean Strategy, a dash of reengineering, and a pinch of Six Sigma—we could unlock the secrets of building breakthrough companies. But believing in that dream would be like believing that one could, after a lifetime of “painting by numbers”, suddenly produce a masterpiece. That just doesn’t happen. However if someone with a stroke of talent studies the work of great masters and comes to understand the interplay of light, color, structure and composition, and then spends hours playing with these aspects on his own canvas, he might create a great painting one day. The goal of aspiring chefs is to gain such a deep and visceral understanding of tastes and textures that they can create something wholly new and distinct—a breakthrough, so to speak. Breakthrough performance, whether in cooking, painting and /or growing a business, is hard.
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Wisdom to Share
If a company’s character gets reduced to a set of platitudes no one really believes in, much less acts on, the passion and commitment will fade away.
Many of the firms had hired consultants to help them define and articulate what would become their “core values.”
Three reasons companies fail to breakthrough is because they fear losing control, losing their expertise, and losing their financial freedom.
We were surprised to learn that entrepreneurial leaders, in fact, are often more risk averse than is popularly believed.
Most striking was the fact that all nine breakthrough companies had crowned the company in a powerful way.
Too many leaders, after they achieve some level of success, tend to make their organizations all about them.
Company’s leaders must put the interests of the firm above their own, harnessing the power of people at all levels in building the firm’s future.
Most businesses start out carving small but secure footholds at the lower elevations of some industry.
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