Good to Great is Wrong...

At least that's the somewhat controversial idea that was put forth by Adam Hartung, author of Create Marketplace Disruption. He is a former Coopers & Lybrand partner and former Director of Thought Leadership for CSC. In studying arguably the largest set of databases of information on corporate America, it became extremely clear that Collins missed the mark. In fact, if you had invested in any stock market index you would have outperformed the 12 companies highlighted in Good to Great.

And what about the myriad of companies that have implemented his strategies? The reality is that the more these companies applied the ideas, the more likely they were to fail, and the faster they would fail! The more focused on execution an organization becomes, the LESS effective they become. The reason for that? They become too 'locked in' to their current thinking and they miss what is happening in the marketplace. And by the way, the same thing happened to those who followed the advice of some of the other management "guru's" like Tom Peters, Gary Hamel and the like.

Hartung claims there are only 4 things companies need to do to get unstuck.

1. Get future oriented. We spend so much time worrying about how to fix the things we have always done, we miss what is happening in the market. Microsoft has missed the marketplace. Apple has not by continually thinking about where things are going, not where they've been.

2. Focus on competition, not your customers. Our customers don't know what they really want, plus they have a vested interest in lying to us. They will always say they want it better, faster, cheaper. But Apple's customers never went to them and said they really wanted a portable music device. Apple focused on what their competition was doing and did something new and unexpected.

3. Change your approach and avoid getting locked in. The market transitions way more quickly than it ever has before. Nike focuses on what we want to do as a means of recreation, not just on selling us shoes. That enables them to not get locked in to being a "shoe manufacturer."

4. Set up "whitespace teams." You need to spend 20% of your time creating new and different ways of doing business. What % of your business comes from non-traditional sources? If it's not at least 20%, then you're putting yourself in position to get swallowed by the marketplace when it shifts. You don't want to be creating nicer classified ads in newspapers when the marketplace doesn't care about them anymore.

So, how much of your time is spent on current stuff vs new stuff? We all need to spend more time on new stuff in order to make sure we survive the next big wave...and it will most certainly come. The only question is whether you're in a boat ready to ride the wave, or standing on the beach and will get washed away.

Pretty compelling thoughts from Adam, and it has certainly made me think about our business, too. Let me know your thoughts on this.