Small Giants : Companies that Choose to be Great instead of Big

by Bo Burlingham
isbn: 9780 141 031 491

This book caught my eye as it was about companies that have chosen not to focus on revenue growth or geographical expansion (although a good return on their investment is important).  The companies are more interested in pursuing goals such as:

  • being great in what they do;
  • creating a great place to work;
  • providing great service to customers;
  • having great relationships with their suppliers;
  • making great contributions to the communities they live and work in, and 
  • finding great ways to lead their lives.

Business goals (in this book) that resonate with me:

A common dominator Bo found among these businesses is what he called “human scale”.  This is where it is still possible for an individual to be acquainted with everyone else in the organisation and for the CEO to meet new employees.  Bo’s research identified that (human) scale played an important role in their approach to reach these business goals.

Bo also remarked another common element was that companies aspiring to these goals remained privately owned with the majority of the stock in the hands of one person, or a small group of like-minded individuals, or in a couple of the cases, the employees.

Bo uses individual chapters to describe each of the six common threads pertaining to these companies. 

One passage that I found inspiring was:
 
Danny Meyer of Union Square Hospitality Group talked about businesses having soul.  He believed soul was what made a business great, or even worth doing at all.  “A business without soul is not something I’m interested in working at,” he said.  He suggested that the soul of a business grew out of the relationships a company developed as it went along.  “Soul can’t exist unless you have active, meaningful dialogue with stakeholders: employees, customers, the community, suppliers, and investors.”  When you launch a business, your job as the entrepreneur is to say, “Here’s the value proposition that I believe in.  Here’s where I’m coming from.  This is my point of view.”  At first, it’s a monologue. Gradually it becomes a dialogue and then a real conversation.  Like breaking in a baseball glove.  You can’t will a baseball glove to be broken in; you have to use it.  Well, you have to use a new business, too.  You have to break it in.  If you move on to the next thing too quickly, it will never develop its soul.  Look what happens when a new restaurant opens.  Everyone rushes in to see it, and it’s invariably awkward because it hasn’t yet developed soul.  That takes time to emerge, and you have to work at it constantly.

PS – the book focuses on fourteen businesses and I will admit I was challenged that a couple of the businesses had the human scale factor – one business has nineteen hundred employees! I am sure you will find the book an interesting read.

About admin

Comments are closed.