Editor's Note: Home Furnishings Business published this book review of author Jim Collins' Good to Great written by Michael K. Dugan, our resident academic, in the March 2006 issue. Seeing as how this issue examines personnel matters and solidifying the right team, we thought it appropriate to share it again.
Now, at a time when furniture professionals could use more help coping with the change brought about by globalization, along comes Jim Collins with a parallel approach, only better.
His book, Good to Great, simply stated, is better than great. It is wonderful. Whether it arrived just in time or too late to save the furniture business is a good question. Collins and his army of researchers studied 1,435 companies and held them up to rigid standards of excellence before settling upon 11 that had made the difficult transition from being a good company to a great company.
What he learned in the process was surprising in many ways. At the outset, he states that good is the enemy of great, because it is too easy to settle for good performance and avoid the challenge of reaching greatness.
If he is right, and I suspect he is, what does that say about so many furniture operations that settle for mediocrity and don't even bother to become good? Alas, there were no furniture companies on his short list of 11.
By closely scrutinizing the companies that made the leap while thousands of others did not, a pattern emerges that can be applied to the furniture business quite effectively. Be forewarned, however, this application requires a heavy dose of discipline in order to make an impact.
This is no one-minute-to-perfection book. Nor is it an Excellence for Dummies publication. It is much more. Because the book is well-written and easy to grasp, it can fool you into thinking its lessons are easy to apply, but they are not.
Good to Great is suited to today's economic conditions.
According to Collins, there are seven common elements that set the great companies apart. First, not surprisingly, is competent leadership. Not just your commonplace, ordinary, command-and-control leadership, but what Collins calls "Level Five Leadership," by which the CEO looks out the window "to find someone to credit when things go well, and looks in the mirror to "find someone to instruct when things go poorly."
Companies Mentioned:
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