Contrary to what I thought it was going to be, it’s not about building products that last but businesses that last. Collins and Porras dove deep into 18 companies they deem visionary - companies whose median founding year is 1897. Some of these companies were founded so early that Napoleon was still wreaking havoc all over Europe. There are plenty of interesting findings from the research, but the message is reminiscent of other business books of the genre. Collins and Porras also provided the counterparts for each of the visionary companies, labelled as comparison companies — those who have enjoyed similar success but fell short. These companies are not by any means failed companies, but due to whatever reason do not enjoy the same success as the visionaries.
Yet another business bestseller
If we put it side by side with other business and self-help books, there is a lot of Start with Why in this, as Collins recommend companies to put teeth into their credo instead of having it as just a mere document. The principles of success of these companies are similar to what Covey lists down in the 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, as the basis of success for these companies are these principles themselves. I’m sure if we relate any management books in the New York Times Bestseller list, we’ll find very similar ideas that’s ever-present in the last 25 years.
And like other business books, there are some useful insights:
- There is no homogeneity of what the visionary companies on what they focus on. It could be product, their own people, innovation. What matters is the systems in please to uphold this focus.
- In a lot of cases, the comparison companies enjoy more initial success than the visionary companies. For example, Walt Disney’s cartoons were crap compared to the initial success enjoyed by Columbia.
- A lot of these companies don’t even know what they were doing to begin with. Sony’s early starts is a bit LOL as they started off selling products from rice cookers to tape recorder systems just after the war. When they found a sweet spot in the product they just go at it.
- It is not about who’s in charge, but instilling the process of succession so that the company just ticks. Like clockwork.
In fact, it is the concept of clock-building is central to the book, as well as the yin and yang of maintaining the core and stimulating progress (which is stamped at the beginning of almost every chapter). Everything needs to be in balance, but growth is mandatory. The challenge for companies is to maintain their organisational values and ethos while adapting to the ever changing world. The authors suggest that visionary companies also need big, hairy audacious goals to aim towards, such as IBM’s changing to IBM 360 which made redundant all the tech that they developed before it. Boeing gambled big and thankfully successfully on Boeing 747 to change passenger air travel.
All big visionary companies must juggle between their core and the risk of progress. While BHAGs are long-term huge goals, the authors also recommend small, achievable incremental growth that allows gradual evolution, paralleling Darwin’s idea of natural selection. Good ideas will thrive and become part of the ethos, bad ideas will just die off. The systems in place for businesses should allow independent thought for those in the ground. The engineers in HP will always push back the profit-minded sales reps if the request is not within their missions of providing valuable engineering for the users at large.
History is written by winners. The same with business books.
I’ll be honest that I have a tendency to get bored fairly quickly with business books. Call it business-bookitis if you will. There are always valuable ideas or two to pick up here, but much of it is repetitive. And much of it you’ve read somewhere before already. But I personally think it is a good idea to keep reading these business books because at least it will make you think of how you can improve your business, even at a manager level, what tweaks here and there can you make? I think for a lot of companies, sometimes the vision is not clear, the culture isn’t quite as defined (even though you know what it’s supposed to be and what it feels like).
The tyranny of the cult is a real thing in most of these visionary companies, and I have mixed feelings about that. It is what bothers me the most in the book. The authors didn’t bat an eyelid when they mentioned that the Disney employees are mostly caucasian, clean-cut and blonde, the typical prototype of the Aryan line. They did mention that if you don’t fit then you should get out. I can’t say. I would have cringed and my soul would have whinged miserably if I had needed to sing a company song like IBM did back in the day.
The authors also acknowledged the potential false positives however — that although these visionary companies might have made it, there would have been others potentially with similar frameworks which flopped. We won’t know how big that number is. Just like history, business books are written from the point of view of the winners, and though these companies provide a valuable case studies and for the most part, I think the ideas are quite valid, it may be just as easy to find companies following the same framework and not making it.
