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Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't

Average customer rating:

Good and Great for anyone who wants success in anything
Must read
a corporate must read
Indeed a very valuable book
Excellent book

Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap... and Others Don't
Jim Collins
Manufacturer: Collins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
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ASIN: 0066620996
Release Date: 2001-10-16

Amazon.com's Best of 2001

Five years ago, Jim Collins asked the question, "Can a good company become a great company and if so, how?" In Good to Great Collins, the author of Built to Last, concludes that it is possible, but finds there are no silver bullets. Collins and his team of researchers began their quest by sorting through a list of 1,435 companies, looking for those that made substantial improvements in their performance over time. They finally settled on 11--including Fannie Mae, Gillette, Walgreens, and Wells Fargo--and discovered common traits that challenged many of the conventional notions of corporate success. Making the transition from good to great doesn't require a high-profile CEO, the latest technology, innovative change management, or even a fine-tuned business strategy. At the heart of those rare and truly great companies was a corporate culture that rigorously found and promoted disciplined people to think and act in a disciplined manner. Peppered with dozens of stories and examples from the great and not so great, the book offers a well-reasoned road map to excellence that any organization would do well to consider. Like Built to Last, Good to Great is one of those books that managers and CEOs will be reading and rereading for years to come. --Harry C. Edwards

Book Description

The Challenge
Built to Last, the defining management study of the nineties, showed how great companies triumph over time and how long-term sustained performance can be engineered into the DNA of an enterprise from the verybeginning.

But what about the company that is not born with great DNA? How can good companies, mediocre companies, even bad companies achieve enduring greatness?

The Study
For years, this question preyed on the mind of Jim Collins. Are there companies that defy gravity and convert long-term mediocrity or worse into long-term superiority? And if so, what are the universal distinguishing characteristics that cause a company to go from good to great?

The Standards
Using tough benchmarks, Collins and his research team identified a set of elite companies that made the leap to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years. How great? After the leap, the good-to-great companies generated cumulative stock returns that beat the general stock market by an average of seven times in fifteen years, better than twice the results delivered by a composite index of the world's greatest companies, including Coca-Cola, Intel, General Electric, and Merck.

The Comparisons
The research team contrasted the good-to-great companies with a carefully selected set of comparison companies that failed to make the leap from good to great. What was different? Why did one set of companies become truly great performers while the other set remained only good?

Over five years, the team analyzed the histories of all twenty-eight companies in the study. After sifting through mountains of data and thousands of pages of interviews, Collins and his crew discovered the key determinants of greatness -- why some companies make the leap and others don't.

The Findings
The findings of the Good to Great study will surprise many readers and shed light on virtually every area of management strategy and practice. The findings include:

Level 5 Leaders: The research team was shocked to discover the type of leadership required to achieve greatness.
The Hedgehog Concept (Simplicity within the Three Circles): To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence.
A Culture of Discipline: When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great results. Technology Accelerators: Good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology.
The Flywheel and the Doom Loop: Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructurings will almost certainly fail to make the leap.

“Some of the key concepts discerned in the study,” comments Jim Collins, "fly in the face of our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.”

Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?

Customer Reviews:

Good and Great for anyone who wants success in anything.......2007-06-29

Collins is clearly at the top of his game and good at what he does. Plus, he makes it easy for anyone to grasp the concepts in this book despite the extensive research and potential for jargon laden discourse.

This is a prequel to Built To Last (which I haven't read yet) and outlines systematically and methodically how companies moved from average performance to sustained and outstanding success. Despite what may seem like a narrow topic, Collins manages to offer ideas that anyone can apply to their own character, business, family, institution etc.

What fascinated me most is the chats and interviews he had with the people behind the companies. There is treasure, not just in the raw data and strategy revealed, but in the wisdom and character of the personalities exposed. There is an unquestionable consistency and pattern that emerges as he draws a convincing line from good to great success.

An excellent book that proves Collins himself is a example of his own work.

Must read.......2007-06-19

Great book. A must read for everyone.....not only the CEOs. Gives you evidence based characteristics of good to great companies and people who turned them around.

a corporate must read .......2007-06-18

I bought this book as a wife of a corporate executive with the intention of at least sounding like I was knowledgeable in the corporate world. I am happy to say after reading it; I can definitely hold my own. Even for the inexperienced, this is a very easy book to understand and gain knowledge. I especially like how he compares and gives examples so you really gain a thorough depiction of his data. It makes it that much easier to recall when the area under discussion arises-- as it has several times after reading the book.

Indeed a very valuable book.......2007-06-15

I must admitt that I was a bit skeptical when I first bought this book, but I was pleasantly surprised when I began reading it. Only two years out of college, my mind still thinks like a student and I was very pleased to see that this book is written very much in a way that a student likes to read a book. Every chapter begins by building a foundation to the material that will be introduced in the chapter, then the main topic of the chapter is clearly explained with the main ideas of each chapter highlighted in text boxes throughout the chapter, and finally there is a summary of the key takeaways at the end of each chapter. The book itself is very well structured, as it follows a very logical progression from one idea to the next, and ends with a summary chapter as well as a comparison chapter between GOOD TO GREAT and BUILT TO LAST.

I found many topics in GOOD TO GREAT extremely helpful, namely the concept of the "Level 5 Leader" and that of "getting the right people on the bus and the wrong people off the bus first." I will truly try to continue my career adhering to these two concepts. The only reason why I found myself unable to rate this book a 5-star book is because upon finishing the book I found myself thinking that it was a bit unrealistic to perform every single item outlined in the book simultaneously, which according to Mr. Collins is the only way that you can achieve sustained great results in the long run.

Excellent book.......2007-06-14

This book was so good I bought 18 copies for our executive and senior management team - conveyed many important messages generally supported by research rather than an individuals theory or belief - and will assist companies looking to improve their performance

The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co.

Average customer rating:

A great book for "warped" people (like myself)!
Long but worth it
Destined to be a Classic
barbarians at the gates of central park
Thorough and Completely Entertaining

The Last Tycoons: The Secret History of Lazard Frères & Co.
William D. Cohan
Manufacturer: Doubleday
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0385514514
Release Date: 2007-04-03

Book Description

A grand and revelatory portrait of Wall Street’s most storied investment bank

Wall Street investment banks move trillions of dollars a year, make billions in fees, pay their executives in the tens of millions of dollars. But even among the most powerful firms, Lazard Frères & Co. stood apart. Discretion, secrecy, and subtle strategy were its weapons of choice. For more than a century, the mystique and reputation of the "Great Men" who worked there allowed the firm to garner unimaginable profits, social cachet, and outsized influence in the halls of power. But in the mid-1980s, their titanic egos started getting in the way, and the Great Men of Lazard jeopardized all they had built.

William D. Cohan, himself a former high-level Wall Street banker, takes the reader into the mysterious and secretive world of Lazard and presents a compelling portrait of Wall Street through the tumultuous history of this exalted and fascinating company. Cohan deconstructs the explosive feuds between Felix Rohatyn and Steve Rattner, superstar investment bankers and pillars of New York society, and between the man who controlled Lazard, the inscrutable French billionaire Michel David-Weill, and his chosen successor, Bruce Wasserstein.

Cohan follows Felix, the consummate adviser, as he reshapes corporate America in the 1970s and 1980s, saves New York City from bankruptcy, and positions himself in New York society and in Washington. Felix’s dreams are dashed after the arrival of Steve, a formidable and ambitious former newspaper reporter. By the mid-1990s, as Lazard neared its 150th anniversary, Steve and Felix were feuding openly.

The internal strife caused by their arguments could not be solved by the imperious Michel, whose manipulative tendencies served only to exacerbate the trouble within the firm. Increasingly desperate, Michel took the unprecedented step of relinquishing operational control of Lazard to one of the few Great Men still around, Bruce Wasserstein, then fresh from selling his own M&A boutique, for $1.4 billion. Bruce’s take: more than $600 million. But it turned out Great Man Bruce had snookered Great Man Michel when the Frenchman was at his most vulnerable.

The LastTycoons is a tale of vaulting ambitions, whispered advice, worldly mistresses, fabulous art collections, and enormous wealth—a story of high drama in the world of high finance.

Customer Reviews:

A great book for "warped" people (like myself)!.......2007-06-11

660+ pages about the 150+ year history of Lazard Feres might put most people to sleep. Not me! As someone who actually likes this stuff, I found this book fascinating. The history of big money and finance is actually one of big personalties, and this book gives an inside look at several of the major players. Although tedious at times to read, I made it through the entire book in a couple of days. The most fascinating part of the entire story is simply that money at the levels discussed in this book doesn't seem real--most people could never fathom how corporate finance is conducted. I recommend this book to anyone interested in the subject of investment banking, especially those considering a career in that arena.

Long but worth it.......2007-05-30

extremely long, but it gives you a great description of how an organization rises and falls with the times and the great men who are at the wheel.

Destined to be a Classic.......2007-05-24

Cohan has brought to life a vivid and spellbinding tale of the legendary giants in the investment banking field (Meyer, Rohatyn, David-Weill, Rattner, and Wasserstein) at Lazard, offering a compelling and revealing portrait of the relentless personalities that invented, dominated and defined the last few decades of M&A banking. At the same time, The Last Tycoons is, at its core, a saga of ambition, egotism, greed, vanity and pride of Shakespearean proportions played out on the grand stage of corporate takeovers and national politics.

What emerges is not a noble picture of what these ostensibly "Great Men" purported themselves to be. Instead, it is apparent that at Lazard, the black arts of power and greed were the currency used to exhort and extort men of high ambition and intellect to achieve stature and enormous fees. The long shadow of Andre Meyer (unquestionably a Sith Lord) looms over the Lazard partnership and his protégés and successors, Felix Rohatyn and Michel David-Weill. Meyer was a brilliant financier with no peer with the exception of Bruce Wasserstein and it's fitting and deserving that the story of Lazard begins and ends with these two men. In between, Michel and Felix weave a complex and fascinating legacy of fear and loathing in the intervening decades.

For bankers and professionals in the field, Cohan's detail and emotional and psychological nuances will be tantalizing and relevant. For those aspiring to enter the field, it's a cautionary tale - it's very hard to play on the big stage on Wall St without darkening your soul. This story is destined to be a Classic amongst Barbarians and Den of Thieves

barbarians at the gates of central park .......2007-05-19

maybe the first casualty of wealth is self-knowledge. that is the takeaway from William Cohan's fine history of the fabled lazard freres banking house. in these pages we watch titans of finance gloat and preen while their castle crumbles from corruption and mismanagement.

Its a terrific story peopled with fascinating characters. who wouldn't, after reading this book, want to dine with the formidable felix rohatyn. He fled the Nazis as a boy, rescued New York from financial ruin and ditched Lazard at just the right moment to serve the nation as Bill Clinton's Ambassador to France. His intellect and achievement dominate the book, just as Felix dominated wall street for a generation. His departure from the firm caps the end of "the great man" era in investment banking. In Rohatyn's day only a select handful of wise men could be trusted to guide transactions. Nowadays all you need is armani and a spread sheet.

Even as he maps the tectonic movement in investment banking, Cohan keeps it light with plenty of well-researched dish on criminal investigations, love affairs, fabulous art collections, New Yorkana and the occasional drop to earth by some of Lazard's wax-winged partners. I closed the book -- a whopping 750 pp's -- edified and thoroughly entertained.

Thorough and Completely Entertaining.......2007-05-12

When Bill, an old friend, told me he was writing a book about Lazard, I thought, "Who will care?" I was ignorant. My only obligation was to buy the book, not to read it. Even if I had not known the author, I would not have been able to put this book down. Writing is a lonely pursuit, and the endless thought and organization, the hundreds of interviews on both sides of the Atlantic, the researching and re-drafting, all make the author's dedication, and the reader's, worthwhile.
Lazard was truly the first global Wall Street firm. Andre Meyer, the brilliant global pioneer, comes to life. Felix Rohatyn, away from the deserved platitudes, is complex; Michel David-Weill Machiavellian. Bruce Wasserstein, prototypically capitalist, can exist only on Wall Street. Steve Rattner alone comes across as someone for whom an investment banker would want to work. The rudderless leadership for decades, the infighting among the partners, the lack of organizational cohesion all bar the firm from the top tier. The extraordinary access Cohan had to the principals and many others suggest there was much to tell. Cohan's natural wit and cynicism spice the story.
Some have criticized the author for using secondary sources. As one who did not read many of those articles, I was delighted he included them. That Wasserstein alone did not cooperate further excuses Cohan from consulting secondary sources to complete the tale.

Exceeding Customer Expectations: What Enterprise, America's #1 car rental company, can teach you about creating lifetime customers

Average customer rating:

"Pick Up" Your Customer Service!!!
Great book about a great company
PROVIDES IMPORTANT GUIDELINES FOR SUCCESS IN A HIGHLY COMPETITIVE MARKET.
Good Book. Wrong Title.
Great for your business

Exceeding Customer Expectations: What Enterprise, America's #1 car rental company, can teach you about creating lifetime customers
Kirk Kazanjian
Manufacturer: Currency
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0385518323
Release Date: 2007-01-16

Book Description

What’s the secret to wowing your customers while maintaining a loyal and dedicated workforce? No one knows better than Enterprise, the nation’s #1 car rental company. Drawing upon the time-tested strategies that have propelled Enterprise from a single location in St. Louis into a $9 billion global powerhouse, EXCEEDING CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS reveals how to:

• Actively seek out unsatisfied customers and quickly turn them into loyal fans
• Hire smart people and train them from the ground up
•Develop methods to reduce costs and add value for your customers in every interaction.
• Grow your business by rewarding employees with financial incentives, forming strong partnerships, and focusing on the long-term
• Thrive during tough economic times by bringing new advantages to the market
• Cultivate a fun and friendly workplace where teamwork rules

In EXCEEDING CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS, noted business author Kirk Kazanjian reveals how your company can consistently outperform and outsmart the competition by following a simple philosophy espoused by Enterprise founder Jack Taylor: “Take care of your customers and employees first, and the profits will follow.” Winning customer loyalty is like running a marathon–not a 100-yard dash. By mastering this principle, Enterprise has earned not only record profits, but also received numerous awards for customer service and earned an enviable reputation as one of the world’s best companies to work for.

EXCEEDING CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS imparts timeless lessons on satisfying both customers and employees that you can put to use right away, no matter what your business or industry.

Customer Reviews:

"Pick Up" Your Customer Service!!!.......2007-03-10

This book is AWESOME! Although Enterprise is a car rental company, many of their methods can be successfully applied to other businesses. Another great companion book to this is The Ultimate Question by Fred Reicheld. They both make the assertion that you have to turn first time customers into "promoters" who will return AND bring others with them. When I need to rent a car I will Pick Enterprise...They Pick Me Up!!!

Great book about a great company.......2007-03-08

Enterprise is the best, and this book tells us exactly why. Take care of your customers and employees first, then the profits will follow. Well written, easily understood, this is a book that anyone having anything to do with customer service should read. Learn the secret that makes Enterprise Rent-a-Car so succussful. Well worth the read.

PROVIDES IMPORTANT GUIDELINES FOR SUCCESS IN A HIGHLY COMPETITIVE MARKET........2007-03-02

The author uses Enterprise to uncover critical insights that he distills into clearly stated key points. The essential focus of the book is on people...employees.

This is an first-rate analysis of a winning company, giving the reading important guidelines for success in any highly competitive market. Human resource professionals (yes, HR folks) should read this book, along with those who are concerned with business planning and marketing.

Good Book. Wrong Title........2007-03-02

EXCEEDING CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS by Kirk Kazanjian may be viewed in a variety of ways. Many will consider this book nothing more than a marketing campaign, and in large part, they would be correct. However, I find no fault in that. If that were the intention of the people at Enterprise, it is ingenious. They certainly won my loyalty, not that I ever have much need to rent a vehicle, but if I ever do,....

Others might view this book just as the title opines, an instructional treatise on customer service. They too would be correct, but only to a certain degree. I say that because I found the book to be more of a business model. In fact, I would say this book is broken down thusly; 50% business model, 30% Enterprise company history and 20% customer service. Therefore, my only big knock on this book is the title, which leads the reader to believe customer service is the primary focus here. It is not. That is not to say, however, that readers will not glean valuable information on customer service, just not as much as this reader would have liked.

The book reads well and Kazanjian is to be commended for his work, but I do not believe the story paints quite the intended picture. I found in large part, the Enterprise Company bumbled its way into prosperity because a few headstrong employees refused to follow company policy! A good example is the Enterprise "we'll pick you up" mantra. I won't give too much of the book away, but this and other business innovations within the company happened by chance. Please do not mistake this as ridicule of the company. Enterprise is certainly a gem in today's marketplace, just understand that according to this book, much of the company's success wasn't planned that way. Perhaps that in and of itself is what has made them successful; their ability to adapt.

I would like to make one other observation about the title of the book. My fear is that many will miss out on this book because of the title. This is an excellent resource for constructing a business model and is, at best, a mediocre source on customer service. If you are on a quest for knowledge on "exceeding customer expectations" you will likely be disappointed here as there are certainly more informative volumes available.

Great for your business.......2007-02-17

If you are looking for a book to give your employees for customer service skills this is the only one.

The Science of Success: How Market-Based Management Built the World's Largest Private Company

Average customer rating:

Enjoyable and Intriging
Thoughtful and Enlightening
Markets Work, even in firms
Learn new tricks, update old ones
Sound Business Principles

The Science of Success: How Market-Based Management Built the World's Largest Private Company
Charles G. Koch
Manufacturer: Wiley
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Book Description

Praise for THE SCIENCE OF SUCCESS

"Evaluating the success of an individual or company is a lot like judging a trapper by his pelts. Charles Koch has a lot of pelts. He has built Koch Industries into the world's largest privately held company, and this book is an insider's guide to how he did it. Koch has studied how markets work for decades, and his commitment to pass that knowledge on will inspire entrepreneurs for generations to come."
—T. Boone Pickens

"A must-read for entrepreneurs and corporate executives that is also applicable to the wider world. MBM is an invaluable tool for engendering excellence for all groups, from families to nonprofit entities. Government leaders could avoid policy failures by heeding the science of human behavior."
—Richard L. Sharp, Chairman, CarMax

"My father, Sam Walton, stressed the importance of fundamental principles—such as humility, integrity, respect, and creating value—that are the foundation for success. No one makes a better case for these principles than Charles Koch."
—Rob Walton, Chairman, Wal-Mart

"What accounts for Koch Industries' spectacular success? Charles Koch calls it Market-Based Management: a vision that nurtures personal qualities of humility and integrity that build trust and the confidence to enhance future success through learning from failure, and a culture of thinking in terms of opportunity cost and comparative advantage for all employees."
—Vernon Smith, 2002 Nobel laureate in economics

"In a very thoughtful, creative, and understandable way, Charles Koch explains how he has used the science of human behavior to create a culture that has produced one of the world's largest and most successful private companies. A must-read for anyone interested in creating value."
—William B. Harrison Jr., Former Chairman and CEO, JPMorgan Chase & Co.

"The same exacting thought, rooted in the realities of human nature, that the framers of the U.S. Constitution put into building a nation of entrepreneurs, Charles Koch has framed to build an enduring company of entrepreneurs—a company larger than Microsoft, Dell, HP, and other giants. Every entrepreneur should study this book."
—Verne Harnish, founder, Young Entrepreneurs' Organization, author of Mastering the Rockefeller Habits, CEO, Gazelles Inc.

Customer Reviews:

Enjoyable and Intriging.......2007-06-17

While I don't think all the quotes credited to members of the Koch family were actually given birth by them, this is an interesting, albeit self-serving book.

Having said that, most anyone who writes about his own business is going to be self-serving. So one can't be condemned for that.

If you're interested in bringing success into your organization, you need to read this book. It gives you a unique look at a truly successful business and the basic philosophy that is alleged to have created and maintained it.

I had a bit of a problem with the author when he expressed his belief of doing business on a handshake. In today's world that's not something I would want to try. I'm a firm believer in a good contract to prevent most of the problems that can come up in even the best relationships.

But one doesn't have to agree with everything he reads as no one person is necessarily right. Nor is one way of doing business a good fit for everyone.

Koch Industries is indeed a highly respected company. The family is reputed to have fought a good deal over control and money yet the book makes the family sound very close. But, again, the author wants to put the best light on things and perhaps as we get older we only want to recall the good.

Nonetheless, this is a good read. It's short. It won't take long to read and you probably will dig out a gem or two that you can use and capitalize on.

The Koch family (at least the author) is a free market thinker and holds to libertarian beliefs. As a free market thinker and libertarian myself, I understand and appreciate this style of capitalism. You'll find that in this book. And that's a good thing.

Thoughtful and Enlightening.......2007-06-14

In his book, Mr. Koch has succeeded in making me think in new ways about business, personal responsibility, and the ways in which we can better society. While it was easy to understand the enlightened self-interest concepts of good business, the MBM was totally new to me, with its concepts and ways of approaching business challenges and opportunities. It provides a disciplined, yet flexible structure to use when making business decisions, ranging from hiring employees, to evaluating their value of production (to themselves, their company and society), and determining their compensation.

I especially like the way he contrasted Marx's famous statement on the communist system with MBM's "From each according to his ability, to each according to his contribution." I was also impressed with the wide range of books he has studied and quoted in the book. I also liked the way he highlighted and set apart certain principles by darkening them, ensuring that they are read more carefully.

In other words, I greatly enjoyed the book. It stretched my brain. He made it interesting, enlightening and fun to read.

Markets Work, even in firms.......2007-06-01

Charles G. Koch is the most important businessman you have never heard of.

For that matter, Koch is likely to prove to be the most significant figure in American business in our lifetimes, and that is saying a lot.

Koch is not the wealthiest man alive--Bill Gates still has that title locked up--but his business achievements are certainly the most remarkable. While Gates has amassed his fortune by being the best businessman in an emerging and vital industry, Koch has built the world's largest private company ($30 billion or so in value) in bread and butter industries such as oil refining, animal feed, and paper products where the competition is fierce and product substitution is easy.

Under Charles Koch's leadership, the family business (appropriately named Koch Industries) has increased in value at a steady clip--ten times faster than the Standard and Poor's 500. In Good to Great (another outstanding business book) Jim Collins used a benchmark of growing three times faster than the Market as the mark of a great company.

Koch has bested that growth rate by about 300%. Not bad.
But what makes Charles G. Koch the most important figure in American business today, or perhaps ever, is not the uniqueness of his achievements at all; it is the fact that Koch argues, mostly successfully, that his achievements are not a fluke at all, or even due to some special genius on his part. Instead Koch argues that his secret, if you could call it that, is that he has followed a Science of Success.

And better yet, Koch has written one of the definitive books on business in order to share his insights with the next generation. The Science of Success ((c) Koch Industries, 2007: John Wiley & Sons) will quickly become must reading for MBA students and others interested in making a go of it in business.

Readers looking for an easy-to-follow recipe for success will be disappointed, however. Success may have a science, but it still doesn't have the easy-to-follow recipe that every self-help book reader is looking for. Instead Koch shares with his readers the basic principles of what works and why, drawing heavily upon the insights of great thinkers such as Thomas Hobbes, Michel Polanyi, F. A. Hayak, Ludwig Von Mises, Peter Drucker--well, you get the idea: anyone and everyone who has had any insight into the human condition and what makes us tick.

Koch synthesizes his insights into an intellectual structure he calls Market Based Management(tm). And while Koch delineates a coherent set of principles and benchmarks to aid the aspiring manager along the path to success, the basic principle is one that ought to be familiar to anyone who has lived through the triumph of market-based societies over socialist and fascist regimes: markets are a very powerful force, and when unleashed are unmatched at productivity and the improvement of the human lot.

Charles Koch's great insight--the foundation of the amazing success of Koch Industries--is that this fact is as true within firms as it is in the economy as a whole. Using a competitive market model as a management structure unleashes the same forces as you see when market economies compete against planned economies.

And most large corporations are planned economies. Autocratic, intolerant of creativity and dissent, and run largely for the benefit of an elite few.

Looked at in this way, is it any wonder that a student of Austrian economists could run circles around the largest publicly-traded companies in the world? Matching Koch Industries up against a large publicly-traded company in today's world is like matching up the Free World against the Socialist World. He couldn't help out competing them, because his company was managed using Market Based Management(tm) (MBM).

My one quibble with the book, if you can call it that, is not so much with the substance of what Koch so generously teaches, but with his unspoken assumption that the tools he is giving us will be enough to vault us to success.
In other words, he takes too little credit for the success of Koch Industries. While it is true that his insights--if understood and acted upon by corporations--will revolutionize how business is done, it is also true that many of his readers will not be up to the task of implementing MBM. It would require the elites who benefit from the nearly socialist structure of today's large corporations to yield power, and I fear that many will never do so.

It will be left to the disciples of Koch and Market Based Management(tm) to consign them to the dustbin of history through their superior productivity and success.

Learn new tricks, update old ones.......2007-05-31

A young dog has new tricks to learn and an old dog, at a minimum, has old tricks that could use some updating. The Science of Success, which explains and explores Koch Industries' Market-based Management®, offers leaders at any point in their career, at any kind of organization, both new tricks and polish. The book's value is inversely proportional to the short time it takes to read.

One thread through The Science of Success, though not always overtly stated, is the importance of clear and honest communication. Business is about relationships, be they internal or external. And, as in personal relationships, those that endure typically are the ones where open communication is the rule. This cannot be understated. Ask Dr. Phil.

From a personnel and management perspective, the "Decision Rights" chapter provoked thinking, in particular the section "Roles, Responsibilities and Expectations" (RR&Es). Charles Koch writes, each "employee's RR&Es should focus on value creation and be tailored to his or her individual comparative advantages and opportunities." He continues, "A role is not a job title." My selection of this commonsense snippet does little justice to the worth of the chapter. There is much value in the discussion about decision-making, who gets it and why.

The "Incentives" chapter offers gems. One concept that stood out: "Within limits, the profits forgone from a missed opportunity should be considered the same as losses from a failed venture." This chapter also delves into risk-taking and how Koch Industries fosters it, something difficult to do in a large organization, let alone a smaller entity, be it a for- or non-profit.

Near the end of The Science of Success an example is highlighted that underscores the importance of open communication, in the broadest of definitions, to the process of discovery and, ultimately, an organization's success. The example: putting together a large puzzle. To speed task completion, the best arrangement is to involve a "number of helpers" and "let them work on putting the puzzle together in sight of the others so that every time a piece is fitted in by one helper, all the others will immediately watch out for the next step that becomes possible in sequence. Under this system, each helper will act on his own initiative, by responding to the latest achievement of the others, and the completion of their joint task will be greatly accelerated."

This is a simple principle. However, to implement and maintain it successfully is another thing.

To improve the book, I think it should include several short case studies. The brief examples of opportunities that went south or succeeded were just enough to whet the mental appetite.

The Science of Success demonstrates how the principles of liberty and free markets have helped guide Koch Industries' management in its long-term success, while simultaneously creating social and economic value for people throughout the U.S. and world. We would all be much better off if those who penned public policy could understand these same principles and would vote -- or not -- accordingly.

Sound Business Principles.......2007-05-28

Koch delivers sound business principles with simplicity. Anyone that Forbes estimates is worth $12B must have done something right in business. Sometimes simplicity comes from years of complexity. A foundational text for a capitalist.

Average customer rating:

Great addition to Toyota Way but not as good
Ideal companion for other Lean texts
So you wanna be lean?
Toyota Way Fieldbook
Great book

The Toyota Way Fieldbook
Jeffrey Liker , and David Meier
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill
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Binding: Paperback

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The Toyota Way
Creating A Lean Culture: Tools To Sustain Lean Conversions
The Lean Manufacturing Pocket Handbook
Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production
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ASIN: 0071448934

Book Description

The Toyota Way Fieldbook is a companion to the international bestseller The Toyota Way. The Toyota Way Fieldbook builds on the philosophical aspects of Toyota's operating systems by detailing the concepts and providing practical examples for application that leaders need to bring Toyota's success-proven practices to life in any organization. The Toyota Way Fieldbook will help other companies learn from Toyota and develop systems that fit their unique cultures.

The book begins with a review of the principles of the Toyota Way through the 4Ps model-Philosophy, Processes, People and Partners, and Problem Solving. Readers looking to learn from Toyota's lean systems will be provided with the inside knowledge they need to

Define the companies purpose and develop a long-term philosophy
Create value streams with connected flow, standardized work, and level production
Build a culture to stop and fix problems
Develop leaders who promote and support the system
Find and develop exceptional people and partners
Learn the meaning of true root cause problem solving
Lead the change process and transform the total enterprise

The depth of detail provided draws on the authors combined experience of coaching and supporting companies in lean transformation. Toyota experts at the Georgetown, Kentucky plant, formally trained David Meier in TPS. Combined with Jeff Liker's extensive study of Toyota and his insightful knowledge the authors have developed unique models and ideas to explain the true philosophies and principles of the Toyota Production System.

Customer Reviews:

Great addition to Toyota Way but not as good.......2007-05-27

The Toyota Way Fieldbook is excellent and it's a great addition to the Toyota Way. It's hard to write a book as good as the Toyota Way, this book is good, but not as good as Toyota Way.

When I started reading the fieldbook, I was highly dissapointed. The first 200 pages basically just explained the basic lean tools. It's good if you do not know them, but I felt that the book didn't add anything to the existing lean literature. I expected more from Jeff Liker, especially after the excellent Toyota Way.

Part IV of the book starts around page 200 and talks about developing people. Here, for me, the book took a turn and became better the more I continued. (I also immediately ordered the new Toyota Talent book to hope to get more information on this side of Toyota). The organizational structures and training descriptions was very concrete, as I would expect in a fieldbook. Then Part V started around page 300 and it was... excellent. It's about find root causes and continuous learning. Just chapter 14 is worth the whole book. The description of the "therefore" method and it's relationship to the 5why's is very important. (this section talks about how 5why is a method for finding the root cause, but it's just as important to abstract the problem in "the true problem" so that you got more flexibility in ways of solving it).

The last part is about managing the change. The stories are all very nice and concrete. The advise is useful.

I really like this book, especially chapter 14! It gave me, again, new insights in Toyota's way of working and especially it's culture. The stories made it concrete and they were fun to read. Recommended, after you finished the Toyota Way.

Ideal companion for other Lean texts.......2007-04-29

I got this book from a VP of continuous improvement along with a few others that they were using to implement Lean. It is important to note that Lean is the Toyota system/version of JIT, and these terms should not be used interchangeably (i.e. JIT is a subset of Lean). After reading it and taking extensive notes, here's a summary review.

Pro:
-Emphasizes Leader Standard Work as the critical element that all else hinges on and in my view is perhaps the most important lesson from this book
-Describes objectives and Toyota perspective of various tools, going beyond describing tool use that help prevent common misuses of tools, simple as they may be... focuses a great deal of energy on methodology or tool "intent" rather than "results"
-In addition to giving Toyota specific thinking and perspective, reinforces that even an aggressive multiple-year teaching/learning only provides a basic and crude level of Lean skill despite how easy the concepts are... the complexities and difficulties are really rooted in how different the methodology and thought process is
-Specifically calls out "Tips" and "Traps" behind various Lean methods
-Excellent chapter summaries

Con:
-A tempting shortcut for those who have too much work and too little time, wish to learn "the Lean toolkit," or those looking for ready-made recipes. I think that this sort of thinking is a trap which really neglects the greater opportunities Lean will present...

Bottom Line: A must have for the Lean enthusiast, however, I suggest first "The Toyota Way" and then "Creating a Lean Culture" as prerequisite readings. Also, any of the Womack series of texts are also excellent and worth reading as well to add a full and deep understanding of the Lean basics.

So you wanna be lean?.......2007-03-27

A great book. Liker and Meier provide practical insights and applications for the real world. No high brow `theory' just real, useable information. Highly recommend to anyone considering the lean journey.

Toyota Way Fieldbook.......2006-11-14

I thought the book was very good. It is not a how-to-guide but provides examples and lists things that should be considered if implementing lean. Most concepts were accompanied by a case study, tips, potential traps, and my favorite the reflect and learn section.

Great book.......2006-11-10

I thought this was a very good book and enjoyed it very much. I would highly recommend it to anyone studying or applying LEAN.

Average customer rating:

Learn a lot
very good all-around reference
Difficult to follow!
A Must Have Pub
A Book for the Project Engineer Engaged in Land Development

Land Development Handbook (Handbook)
The Dewberry Companies
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill Professional
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Binding: Hardcover

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Land Development Calculations: Interactive Tools and Techniques for Site Planning, Analysis and Design
Land Developer's Checklists and Forms
Be a Successful Residential Land Developer
Getting Financing & Developing Land
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ASIN: 0071375252

Book Description

Successfully navigate the confusing maze of land development

If you're looking for cutting-edge blockbuster coverage of the land development process, the search ends here! Written by one of the nation's premier consulting firms, this new edition delivers up-to-date coverage of planning, engineering, and surveying . . . all with over 700 illustrations, including diagrams, detailed drawings, plats, and reports generated at the various design stages, as well as charts, tables, and more.

This edition includes regulatory changes; new data on open space areas for landscape architects; coverage of the latest advances in GPS and GIS technology; new perspectives on urban growth; and updated case studies, plans, and details. You'll find a thorough description of the design and approval process for residential, commercial, and retail land development projects and access to valuable bottom-line information on:

* Environmental issues, including erosion and sediment control, storm water management, environmental impact studies and assessments, and water quality
* Types of local regulations; where to get necessary project approval; what to expect during the process
* Site analysis and selection criteria for feasibility studies
* Technical information on the design of suburban infrastructure components such as water treatment and supply systems, sanitary sewer systems, storm drain systems, and roads
* The complete spectrum of surveying methods, including Global Positioning System Surveys and Geographic Information Systems

Customer Reviews:

Learn a lot.......2007-05-13

As a novice developer, this book put me on the right track without all the confusion and terms I would have never understood. It was simple to understand and after reading it, I felt like I knew a lot more. Very interesting and satisfying. Great reference guide all the way around.

very good all-around reference.......2004-03-01

I primarily work as a structural-architectural engineer and am becoming more and more involved in civil-site work. This handbook is exactly what I was looking for in terms of something that would quickly get me "up to speed" in the fundamentals of civil-site design.
Of course, no single book could (or should) be thought of as a substitute for the experience and mentoring received from seasoned professionals in a design office, but this one has enough technical explanation and details to get you going with confidence.
I choose this one over the Colley book (reviewed both before making purchase) as Land Development Handbook has more of the technical info that engineers would seek.

Difficult to follow!.......2003-12-16

I am in a class at Community College of Baltimore County and we are using this book at this time. Our whole class along with the Professor find this book to be very difficult to follow. The book constantly repeats itself making it extremely boring to read and is not fluent at all. They have examples that reference charts that are 3-5 pages apart from the problem being discussed the formulas you almost have to figure out for yourself how they are used and there are alot of typos.
I recomend burning this book!!!!!!!

A Must Have Pub.......2002-07-04

Ever since I purchased this publication I can't stop using it. Every civil engineer should have this as part of their reference library, regardless of your area of specialty. It provides macro to micro scale explanations of general processes, design applications, etc in a very readable format. More times than I can remember I have looked to this book for an answer or at least for some guidance and was throuroughly satisfied. No it is not a definitive reference for civil engineers but its' breadth and usability overshadows any technical shortcomings. If I had to have just one reference book for my area of practice (general civil), this would be it. Yeah, yeah, the "Standard Handbook for Civil Engineers" is a more definitive reference, but I usually find out what I need in this pub.

ps - Almost everyone of my fellow employees that has used the book has purchased their own, find someone you know who has a copy and check it out for yourself.

A Book for the Project Engineer Engaged in Land Development.......1999-10-12

This book is the first book that really reflects and addresses most of the "everyday" issues encountered in site design and land development. It has a practical application and includes most of the charts, tables and nomographs that are necessary to complete a given design procedure. It also provides very appropriate and helpful examples.

The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary Into Extraordinary

Average customer rating:

Take what you want...
Not a premium blend!
How To Succeed the Starbucks Way
Move over Juan Valdez
Corporate propaganda

The Starbucks Experience: 5 Principles for Turning Ordinary Into Extraordinary
Joseph Michelli
Manufacturer: McGraw-Hill
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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Pour Your Heart into It : How Starbucks Built a Company One Cup at a Time
Tribal Knowledge: Business Wisdom Brewed from the Grounds of Starbucks Corporate Culture
The Gospel According to Starbucks: Living with a Grande Passion
My Sister's a Barista: How They Made Starbucks a Home Away from Home (Great Brand Stories series)
Setting the Table: The Transforming Power of Hospitality in Business

ASIN: 0071477845

Book Description

WAKE UP AND SMELL THE SUCCESS!

You already know the Starbucks story. Since 1992, its stock has risen a staggering 5,000 percent! The genius of Starbucks success lies in its ability to create personalized customer experiences, stimulate business growth, generate profits, energize employees, and secure customer loyalty-all at the same time.

The Starbucks Experience contains a robust blend of home-brewed ingenuity and people-driven philosophies that have made Starbucks one of the world's “most admired” companies, according to Fortune magazine. With unique access to Starbucks personnel and resources, Joseph Michelli discovered that the success of Starbucks is driven by the people who work there-the “partners”-and the special experience they create for each customer. Michelli reveals how you can follow the Starbucks way to

Reach out to entire communities
Listen to individual workers and consumers
Seize growth opportunities in every market
Custom-design a truly satisfying experience that benefits everyone involved

Filled with real-life insider stories, eye-opening anecdotes, and solid step-by-step strategies, this fascinating book takes you deep inside one of the most talked-about companies in the world today.

For anyone who wants to learn from the best-and be the best-The Starbucks Experience is a rich, heady brew of unforgettable user-friendly ideas.

Customer Reviews:

Take what you want... .......2007-06-12

Whether you love or hate big companies like Starbucks put it aside! Any business owner or worker providing service to clients (ie: most of us) can learn something from this book. The simple principal identified in this book as "surprise and delight" is so lacking in most businesses who leave us every day without any reason to talk about them. Loved the idea about the coffee cup on taxi advertising - I would have bought the book just for that idea alone! PS - I don't drink coffee, nor is there a Starbucks in my town, but I believe you can learn from any business!

Not a premium blend!.......2007-06-08

To be honest, I'm an absolute Starbucks fiend. Depending on my mood, I either order a grande-chocolate-cream-frap-w/whip cream & chocolate-syrup or a grande-house-coffee filled three-quarters full w/a tad of water. I own stock and it's the only coffee I drink at home. I picked up the book expecting to find the same experience on the page that I commonly find in the stores. I was however, a bit disappointed. I enjoyed the principles (be welcoming, considerate, involved etc) and the barista's (better known as cashier's) stories. And while none of the great stories chronicled in the book have ever happened to me, I think it's quite possible; given the upbeat attitude one generally enjoys at any of the stores, that the barista's working for Starbucks would go the extra mile. I also appreciate that Starbucks attempts to make more than a financial impact on the world, it's corporate partners and programs like C.A.R.E. But the book reads a bit too rah rah to be fair and/or balanced. Throughout the book the author, Joesph Michelli, tells us how sensitive the staff (both corporate and local) is to constuctive customer criticism; yet, he fails to deliver any evidence of company mistakes or wrongdoing, which I find hard to believe given the cut-throat arena of big business. On a personal note, I hate the term 'constructive criticism.' As far as I'm concerned, criticism is criticism and none of us like criticism very much. But I think it's essential to personal and professional growth and improvement. Nonetheless, fair apprasials of successful companies should strike a proper balance between positive and negative criticism and unfortunately the 'Starbucks Experience' falls short in that category. The second half of the book is also a bit redundant. I don't want to slam the effort because the book reads fairly fast and I learned alot about the stores, which further cemented my addiction with their coffee and "third place" experiment. But I would've liked to have heard some disgruntled Starbucks customer stories to properly temper my enthusiasm for the store and it's concepts. In the end, the overall effort gets a marginal thumbs up, but, in the spirit of the Starbucks principles; namely, being considerate, I recommend checking it out at your local library before buying it.

How To Succeed the Starbucks Way.......2007-06-01

I received THE STARBUCKS EXPERIENCE as a gift. Since I'm not in the business world by profession, I assume it was given to me because I am a loyal Starbucks customer. Venti Hot Chocolate (sometimes referred to as cocoa) is my usual beverage. I frequent about three different Starbucks and after two visits, the baristas know my drink before I order it. While I have discovered not all Starbucks are created equally, usually the service is good, the employees friendly, the atmosphere comfortable, and the beverage is how I'd like it or pretty close to it. Since Starbucks is still growing and most of the shops seem to be thriving, Starbucks has to be doing something right, and if you're curious as to what it might be, chances are you'll find the answers in this rather interesting volume.

Author Joseph Michelli is a motivational speaker for businesses and believes that the success of Starbucks can serve as inspiration for other businesses. He discusses the phenomenal growth of the company and how a successful business can grow from using a product people enjoy but take for granted, turn the use of the product into a pleasant experience, and get results, which is essentially the secret to Starbucks' many achievements in the world of business.

Michelli believes that Starbucks is guided buy five principles that make the business successful:
1. Make it your own: all people in the organization feel a true sense of ownership and believe that they have a stake in the success of the company.
2. Everything matters: What goes on behind the counter is just as important as what customers see. Cleanliness, atmosphere, a desired product, customer service, are all important and no detail should ever be overlooked.
3. Surprise and delight: Using as an example the success of Crackerjacks as a snack that people enjoyed that also caught them by surprise when first introduced, Starbucks tries to have new and innovative ways to attract new customers and keep committed customers interested so that the business never becomes static.
4. Embrace resistance: Starbucks, unlike many businesses, does not rely on good public relations to be rid of problems and criticisms. Instead, Starbucks tries to engage in discussions with its dissenters to convince where it's necessary and change when change is what is necessary. Michelli uses Fair Trade policies as a case in point as to how Starbucks has been criticized and how it has responded using this principle.
5. Leave your mark: Making money may be a goal of any business, but businesses also have a responsibility to contribute to the greater good. Starbucks does this through financial transparency, involvement in the community, a commitment to making sure that its suppliers are justly paid, and delivering a quality product.

Though Michelli's admiration of Starbucks could lead readers to believe he was hired by Starbucks as a public relations person, writing in the superlative may be a byproduct of his motivational talks. He presents a book that seems to be sound for businesses, but as someone involved in the non-profit world, namely a church, I can see how these principles would work for charities, churches, schools, social service agencies, and other nonprofit organizations. The book promotes excellence in a caring, committed, and purposeful way which can change the way corporations can do business and can help nonprofits remain innovative and relative too.

Move over Juan Valdez.......2007-05-12

Wonderful insight into Starbucks, and the way to really look at starting a business. Best read with a cup of Starbucks in your hand.

Corporate propaganda.......2007-04-27

Michelli is a very articulate commissar. He is the quintessential corporate propagandist. As he and Starbucks would say, if you're a Starbucks barista you're a "partner," a word used to emphasize the supposed "voluntary" choice of working at starbucks (downplaying the coerced set of choices available in the capitalist economy --work for a boss or starve--, the class conflict/exploitation and the undemocratic nature of Starbucks and corporations in general). It's true that by the abysmal standards of the service sector, Starbucks' benefits are slightly better than other corporations, but that isn't saying much.
Starbucks pays a poverty wage and maintains a 100% part-time cafe workforce. Starbucks boasts that it provides health insurance for part time workers even though it insures a lower percentage of its workforce than Wal-Mart. Fortune, a pro-management mouthpiece, says Starbucks is the 16th best company to work for in the United States based on a pseudo-scientific study done by a consulting firm which sells consulting services to some of the companies it ranks. Many workers complain about erratic hours and low pay. Starbucks has been cited by the National Labor Relations Board for union-busting on multiple occassions. The National Labor Relations Board recently alleged the company intimidated, threatened, and terminated workers who joined the activist IWW union.
Furthermore, corporations, apart from being totally undemocratic institutions, have a legal obligation to maximize profit for the stockholders; they are psychopathic institutions and cannot grant benefits to employers out of generosity-- they only do it like a hypocrite, if it benefits their public image (or if they are forced to do so by a union or government, of course)

Kiss Theory Good Bye: Five Proven Ways to Get Extraordinary Results in Any Company

Average customer rating:

Get Ready To Take Action NOW . . .
Wisdom you can actually use!
Move Over Jack Welch!
A must-have book for knowledge workers, managers, C-levels
The Best Book since First, Break All The Rules

Kiss Theory Good Bye: Five Proven Ways to Get Extraordinary Results in Any Company
Bob Prosen
Manufacturer: Gold Pen Publishing
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0977684806

Book Description

KISS THEORY GOOD BYE

NEW BUSINESS BOOK GIVES TEXTBOOK THEORY THE BIG KISS OFF!

Business Expert Writes the Playbook on 'How To' Rapidly Increase Performance and Profit in Any Company.

Bob Prosen cuts like a laser through the fog of political correctness and business-as-usual in his new book, Kiss Theory Good Bye: Five Proven Ways to Get Extraordinary Results in Any Company.

Prosen says he's had enough of the business books that tell readers what to do rather than how. "Forget the platitudes and feel-good anecdotes from a few CEOs and business gurus. Get to the point—the how-to details that can actually help leaders get the results they need in the companies they run," Prosen counsels.

With the same genius that he used to turn around inherited, underperforming operations within 12 to 18 months in some of the world's most prominent companies including AT&T, Sprint, Hitachi, NCR, and Sabre, Prosen delivers a straightforward, no-nonsense, battle proven guide to accelerate performance and profits in any organization.

"A smart business leader can achieve unprecedented bottom-line results by forsaking abstract discussions and vague textbook theory, shutting down endless excuses, killing off company politics, holding people accountable, and simply doing things that clearly work," says Prosen.

Kiss Theory Good Bye shows you how to quickly and consistently achieve extraordinary results in leadership, sales effectiveness, operational excellence, financial management, and customer loyalty.

Packed with easy to follow, step-by-step instructions, this book will show you how to

•Achieve consistent results, quarter after quarter
•Align your entire workforce to meet the organization's top objectives
•Increase accountability so you get the results you need
•Attract and retain top talent
•Beat your competition and lock in customer loyalty
•Reduce costs while increasing quality
•React less and have more time to plan
•Make your job easier and your organization run more smoothly

Contrary to the book's seemingly corporate focus, readers quickly point out that his business execution principles apply equally to not-for-profit organizations. As Los Angeles Unified School District Business Manager Michael A. Eugene reports, "Kiss Theory Good Bye is a compelling read, offering a toolbox to public- and private-sector managers alike to help establish clear focus, increase accountability, effective management, and measurable outcomes."

While other business books try to tell you what to do to run your business better, faster and for greater profit, Bob Prosen's Kiss Theory Good Bye gives you the tools and step-by-step directions to make it happen. For leaders who demand superior results, Kiss Theory Good Bye delivers the goods for taking immediate - and lasting - action.

My goal for sharing my knowledge and experiences is to give you the answers you need to immediately enable your enterprise to achieve its full potential. Leaders want their ideas and initiatives consistently carried out without hassle and rework. They want accountability, and value results over theory. I wrote Kiss Theory Good Bye with two principles in mind. First, theory would be replaced with proven tools, tactics, and answers that get results. Second, all of the information must be relevant and directly applicable to today's business challenges without the need for translation.

Until now this information has only been available piecemeal, leaving you to find, assemble, and translate it to fit your business. You might have gathered some of it through mentors, by trial and error, or by surviving the "school of hard knocks." But by the time you finish reading Kiss Theory Good Bye, you will have the answers you need to immediately begin improving results throughout your entire organization. And you will find that this book will remain a useful resource for quick, proven answers to resolve your most pressing business challenges.

Customer Reviews:

Get Ready To Take Action NOW . . ........2007-06-27

I'm action oriented and view theory as a necessary evil. When consulting a business management book I want to know what I can do to IMMEDIATELY impact my business. Kiss Theory Good Bye was written expressly for me.

It's not enough to know the basics, and theoretical constructs are of limited help when you're in the trenches. This book is the bare knuckle fist fight of business books; true hand-to-hand combat. It's a virtual blueprint that can be customized and followed to propel your organization to excellence. Although the book itself is a short 218 pages, no space is wasted on needless chatter on unproven concepts. It gives you the tools needed to implement practical management techniques that generate results.

The broad strokes are pretty obvious. For example, his "five attributes of highly profitable companies" that include 1) Superior Leadership, 2) Sales Effectiveness, 3) Operational Excellence, 4) Financial Management, and 5) Customer Loyalty are fairly well-known concepts. But how do you implement them? That's where Bob Prosen makes the rubber meet the road. Step-by-step he gives you a roadmap to follow that helps you put concepts and theories into practice.

Be prepared to do your homework! While the author provides the blueprint, YOU must provide the details. It's your business. If you don't thoroughly understand how your business operates (or should operate) then no book is going to help, theoretical or not. Fill in the blanks and follow the plan and you should see dramatic results in your organization.

Wisdom you can actually use!.......2007-05-05

Perhaps the most popular professor at the Edgewood College MBA program is Joe Hahn, who teaches a Strategic Management course, and is also the VP of a $13 billion company. Students love Joe because he's a no-nonsense kind of guy who focuses on making decisions, getting results, and not pondering theories and possibilities until the end of time. Well, Kiss Theory Goodbye is a book that Joe would love! Here's why:
Bob Prosen has managed to put together an action-oriented how-to manual that will make anyone a better decision maker. It's a surprisingly compelling, readable volume (most books of this type are neither) with specific ideas and real-world examples of how a business leader can obtain results in virtually every area of an organization!

Prosen's direct, disarmingly straightforward style addresses such key issues as the "victim mentality" or the office politics that can slow down an organization and keep it from moving forward. He emphasizes in no uncertain terms the critical need to measure customer satisfaction (and, indeed, anything that a company values) and focus on forging ahead rather than perpetually having ineffective, time-wasting meetings that focus on talk instead of solutions. What's the alternative to taking home countless pages of essential financial reports that ultimately never get read? How should compensation issues be addressed effectively? These are just some of the important issues this book covers.

Of course this is a handbook more than a comprehensive analysis--as it would probably take several volumes to address such a vast array of issues: But perhaps therein lies its value. It's a starting point; a spring board that can generate action-oriented thinking--and most business leaders could use precisely that kind of tool!

Move Over Jack Welch!.......2007-05-02

Bob Prosen's book should be taught in every business school in the country. He gives direct advice from what he learned in the trenches of running large corporations. I run a small business but I discovered something in every chapter of the book applied to me and what I'm trying to accomplish. I really liked the idea about having a "one page report" you can reference that tells you everything you need to know about how your business is operating. This report should have every important aspect of your business measured as a number and should alert you when one of the numbers isn't within the range you want it to be.

Bob Prosen is a great speaker as well as author. If you get a chance to attend one of his presentations, I guarantee you will take something away that will fundamentally change the way you look at your business.

Mark Morris
Dental Salon

A must-have book for knowledge workers, managers, C-levels.......2007-05-01

Bob Prosen's book Kiss Theory Good Bye: Five Proven Ways to Get Extraordinary Results in Any Company is unique. Yes, we know of balanced scorecards and strategy maps, but Prosen's book is easy to execute, not requiring corporate-wide buy in to track success. A single manager or C-level can implement any of Prosen's recommended metrics for success. It offers practical advice, not academic theories, on execution models with actionable techniques that workers, managers, and C-levels can deploy to remove roadblocks that prevent companies from achieving profitability and desired results.

If you're a knowledge worker, check out this book so you can understand how your results contribute to your company's success. Be proactive about how you can come up with ways to help sales or operations. If you're a manager or C-level, Prosen's book will help you understand why some of your company's habits may be restraining your performance. It will enhance your understanding of how superior leadership, sales effectiveness, operational excellence, financial management, and customer loyalty drive profitability, providing you with execution models and measures to achieve desired results.

The Best Book since First, Break All The Rules.......2007-04-09

Not since First, Break All the Rules: What the World's Greatest Managers Do Differently, have I read a great business book... and I've read hundreds since then. Too many business books nowadays are actually white papers that have been stretched and jammed into a hardcover.

Bob Prosen's finite insight and use cases into what makes great companies tick is dead on. Working in the software industry, we've been in the clouds since the dot-com boom and few companies have been able to capitalize on their products and services.

This book is a roadmap for anyone who wishes to succeed in modern business. If you want to learn about leading people, pick up Buckingham's book. If you want to learn how to lead a company, pick up Prosen's book. This book should be on every business leaders' reading list.

Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies

Average customer rating:

Must-read for anyone interested in business
Great insight
Excellent Research, Very Helpful Findings
Easy to read and makes lot of sense
Built To Last

Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies
Jim Collins , and Jerry I. Porras
Manufacturer: Collins
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

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ASIN: 0060566108
Release Date: 2004-11-02

Amazon.com

This analysis of what makes great companies great has been hailed everywhere as an instant classic and one of the best business titles since In Search of Excellence. The authors, James C. Collins and Jerry I. Porras, spent six years in research, and they freely admit that their own preconceptions about business success were devastated by their actual findings--along with the preconceptions of virtually everyone else.

Built to Last identifies 18 "visionary" companies and sets out to determine what's special about them. To get on the list, a company had to be world famous, have a stellar brand image, and be at least 50 years old. We're talking about companies that even a layperson knows to be, well, different: the Disneys, the Wal-Marts, the Mercks.

Whatever the key to the success of these companies, the key to the success of this book is that the authors don't waste time comparing them to business failures. Instead, they use a control group of "successful-but-second-rank" companies to highlight what's special about their 18 "visionary" picks. Thus Disney is compared to Columbia Pictures, Ford to GM, Hewlett Packard to Texas Instruments, and so on.

The core myth, according to the authors, is that visionary companies must start with a great product and be pushed into the future by charismatic leaders. There are examples of that pattern, they admit: Johnson & Johnson, for one. But there are also just too many counterexamples--in fact, the majority of the "visionary" companies, including giants like 3M, Sony, and TI, don't fit the model. They were characterized by total lack of an initial business plan or key idea and by remarkably self-effacing leaders. Collins and Porras are much more impressed with something else they shared: an almost cult-like devotion to a "core ideology" or identity, and active indoctrination of employees into "ideologically commitment" to the company.

The comparison with the business "B"-team does tend to raise a significant methodological problem: which companies are to be counted as "visionary" in the first place? There's an air of circularity here, as if you achieve "visionary" status by ... achieving visionary status. So many roads lead to Rome that the book is less practical than it might appear. But that's exactly the point of an eloquent chapter on 3M. This wildly successful company had no master plan, little structure, and no prima donnas. Instead it had an atmosphere in which bright people were both keen to see the company succeed and unafraid to "try a lot of stuff and keep what works." --Richard Farr

Book Description

"This is not a book about charismatic visionary leaders. It is not about visionary product concepts or visionary products or visionary market insights. Nor is it about just having a corporate vision. This is a book about something far more important, enduring, and substantial. This is a book about visionary companies." So write Jim Collins and Jerry Porras in this groundbreaking book that shatters myths, provides new insights, and gives practical guidance to those who would like to build landmark companies that stand the test of time.

Drawing upon a six-year research project at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business, Collins and Porras took eighteen truly exceptional and long-lasting companies -- they have an average age of nearly one hundred years and have outperformed the general stock market by a factor of fifteen since 1926 -- and studied each company in direct comparison to one of its top competitors. They examined the companies from their very beginnings to the present day -- as start-ups, as midsize companies, and as large corporations. Throughout, the authors asked: "What makes the truly exceptional companies different from other companies?"

What separates General Electric, 3M, Merck, Wal-Mart, Hewlett-Packard, Walt Disney, and Philip Morris from their rivals? How, for example, did Procter & Gamble, which began life substantially behind rival Colgate, eventually prevail as the premier institution in its industry? How was Motorola able to move from a humble battery repair business into integrated circuits and cellular communications, while Zenith never became dominant in anything other than TVs? How did Boeing unseat McDonnell Douglas as the world's best commercial aircraft company -- what did Boeing have that McDonnell Douglas lacked?

By answering such questions, Collins and Porras go beyond the incessant barrage of management buzzwords and fads of the day to discover timeless qualities that have consistently distinguished out-standing companies. They also provide inspiration to all executives and entrepreneurs by destroying the false but widely accepted idea that only charismatic visionary leaders can build visionary companies.

Filled with hundreds of specific examples and organized into a coherent framework of practical concepts that can be applied by managers and entrepreneurs at all levels, Built to Last provides a master blueprint for building organizations that will prosper long into the twenty-first century and beyond.

Customer Reviews:

Must-read for anyone interested in business.......2007-04-13

This book is the result of an elaborative research and a great data-analysis. It gives an insight into the some of the greatest companies of the world in different fields and different time-periods.

Authors have done a great job in explaining and justifying their research and data through the appendices and bibliography. A study of all the existing companies to find the visionary ones is really a daunting task and this research team has done a terrific job in establishing a definition of a "visionary company".

Must-read for professionals at any level of the organization hierarchy!!!

Great insight.......2007-03-30

Both Built to Last and Good to Great are the best business books anyone can ever read. Nice work!

Excellent Research, Very Helpful Findings.......2007-03-25

I would not necessarily agree that the predecessor was a better book. The two books have different purposes, and I believe both are very helpful.

The authors present their research process and findings, as well as 12 myths:

Myth #1: It takes a great idea to start a great company.
Myth #2: Visionary companies require great and charismatic visionary leaders.
Myth #3: The most successful companies exist first and foremost to maximize profits.
Myth #4: Visionary companies share a common subset of "correct" core values. [Note: by this, they do not mean to say that values are not important; on the contrary. However, they explain that there is no specific set of values common to all successful companies, but that these vary from one to another.]
Myth #5: The only constant is change.
Myth #6: Blue-chip companies play it safe.
Myth #7: Visionary companies are great places to work, for everyone.
Myth #8: Highly successful companies make their best moves by brilliant and complex strategic planning.
Myth #9: Companies should hire outside CEOs to stimulate fundamental change.
Myth #10: The most successful companies focus primarily on the competition.
Myth #11: You can't have your cake and eat it too.
Myth #12: Companies become visionary primarily through "vision statements".

The authors debunk each of these myths by presenting their findings.

One of the most powerful lessons, which I underlined, is this: "... most of them view their products and services as making useful and important contributions to customers' lives... they exist to do something useful..."

The authors show that companies with long-term and solid success throughout time are not simply focused on making money or growing their business by X% annually. They have a stronger and greater mission, and their products and service exist primarily to support that vision. This is why, even when products become obsolete, the company with a strong sense of purpose continues to change and evolve beyond product life cycles. An important lesson for most companies in corporate America.

Easy to read and makes lot of sense.......2007-02-16

Built to Last explains the differences between the great and the REALLY GREAT companies. The book asks the question why settle for being great when you can be monumentally stupendous? It is an impecably researched book (the appendix in the back of this book is excellent) that breaks many of the stereotypical beliefs of success experienced by large corporations.

We can learn new things and new ways of looking into things. Also we can discover why visionary companies stay forever. Money seems to be everything in our lives and it is the reason for these companies' existence. However, it is not what drives these visionary companies.

The characteristics defined to select the most successful companies are excellent measures of quantity and quality. The key idea, that success does not depend on having an early vision and charismatic leaders but on identity, culture and commitment to the company steer us into different paths for future success.

The focus is not only on the executive team to set the tone, but also on the hiring process and the freedom people are given to create. It will give you new insights and most importantly ways to implement

And by the way, nice guys (and nice corporations) DO finish first.

Built To Last.......2007-01-10

A lot of good information, found the early parts of the book a bit long-winded. I found myself skipping the 'how we arrived at this conclusion' parts to get to the information I was looking for.

Search Engine Marketing, Inc.: Driving Search Traffic to Your Company's Web Site (Ibm Press)

Average customer rating:

Professional, practical guidence on SEO and SEM
Essential reading for anybody in the web space
A very, very, very comprehensive resource
Dense, complete, recommended with a caution
Bible for Search Engine Marketing

Search Engine Marketing, Inc.: Driving Search Traffic to Your Company's Web Site (Ibm Press)
Mike Moran , and Bill Hunt
Manufacturer: IBM Press
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0131852922

Customer Reviews:

Professional, practical guidence on SEO and SEM.......2007-05-30

While I think that search engine marketing is a moving target and it's best to read current articles and journals, this book provides a great foundation for people interested in pursuing or understanding internet marketing, search marketing, or search engine optimization. It provides practical guidance and advice on what to do now but also works as a higher level strategic plan as well. It's written by IBMers, so there is definitely a level of professionalism compared to hackers or other non-corporate authors. Good book to add to your library, as I reference it from time to time.

Essential reading for anybody in the web space.......2007-05-23

I would argue that this is perhaps the finest, most concise guide to Search Engine Marketing. Developers, Marketers, CopyWriters, Managers and just about anybody else with a stake in search traffic through a website should find this material valuable. Do not expect code, expect sound advice on how to tailor your code. Do not expect copy, expect sound advice on how to focus your copy. After putting into practice what I learned form this book, I saw immediate and impactful results.

The book is also very current and is very ethical. Do not hesitate in making a decision to purchase this book. The payoff will be swift.

A very, very, very comprehensive resource.......2007-05-16

I purchased this book hoping to learn something new. What I found was an ABUNDANCE of information.

This book literally takes you from "zero to hero"..... it begins with extremely basic information and moves on from there.

If you're well schooled in the basics of SEO (such as "search engines can't read text inside of an image file") then you may want to skip the first few chapters.

If, however, you're new to the whole web game and need a thorough and complete education on the subject, this book is for you.

Dense, complete, recommended with a caution.......2007-05-07

If anything, a bit too dense. A lot of it was aimed at medium to large size businesses with big retail sites to build/maintain. If you are like me, a small business guy, there must be something that covers what you need to know in 100 pages and skips the 350 you don't.

Bible for Search Engine Marketing.......2007-02-11

This book is the best investment I ever made in a book. It starts with telling you to keep `conversion' in mind to put you in the right path, then it explains how search engine spiders work and therefore why and what you should and should not do, then gives you the step-by-step how-to-do it guide. Namely, it gives you two things: a solid foundation and concept, and practical implementation tools to get you succeed.

I signed up Yahoo! Directories as the book suggested. At first I thought to myself, "what the book said seems to be right. It would be good to do it, but maybe it doesn't make too much difference. But since the book said it, maybe I just tried." However, I saw tremendous improvement on my site traffic within one month I signed up Yahoo! Directories.

I was so happy that I marked many sentences to make sure I do everything the book suggested. Every word in the book is a goldmine (and will transform to real gold after you implement it.) I like the way the author tells you why each time it tells you what to do. It gives you confidence that you are in the right track. I also appreciate the beauty of the flow and organization of the book. Every paragraph is impeccably linked and integrated and it all comes down to conversion, conversion, conversion. It is not a do this do that and get rank high quick book. It arms you with the knowledge that will go a long way - even the algorithm changes everyday. I believe this book will eventually be recognized as a timeless classic in search engine marketing.

Jennifer Lin
CEO, MyCapital.com

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