Been reading a lot thanks to getting Covid, and I can’t get this flywheel out of my head.
(From Lessons From The Titans; h/t , who I swear supplies me with most of my book recommendations these days).
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The overarching point that the authors make is that operational excellence is the bedrock from which everything else springs.
(As a person who enjoys running — or even seeing! — tightly-run ships, this just confirms my biases. Though it also drives home how far I have to go.)
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Even the premise is fascinating. The authors argue that industrials are worth studying because they were once the tech companies of their era … decades ago.
They have experienced more disruption & squandered competitive advantage than just about every other sector.
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“Most of the failures in American business are subtle (…) the companies fade away, usually merged into a bigger entity for a fire sale price.”
But, the authors say, if you take a step back, you’d realise this M&A activity is the source of much returns for mature companies.
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Finally got to the end, where the authors draw conclusions from all the industrial case studies they present in the book.
This bit on talent stands out, mostly because CEOs would never admit that focusing on average folk is key to their success.
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Could you imagine a scenario in which the CEO says “actually the secret to our success is paying top dollar for some stars, filtering out the bottom 15%, and building an org that demands above-average performance out of average folk?”
Not exactly inspiring. 🙃
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This remains my bugbear with the book. The authors don’t address how radical this claim is, and explain why orthodox strategy is wrong.
I think they have an argument around resilience and long standing markets B2B being less prone to counter positioning. But it’s only hinted at
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Agreed. I struggle with this bit (pictured below), but it’s really thought provoking. I can’t really disagree with it, even though my initial reaction was ‘wait, what?’
