Good to Great  Jim Collins

Recently, many of BARQ's clients - from companies with as few as 6 employees to hundreds - are embracing principles found in Jim Collin's book Good to Great, taking their organizations to the next level. Since it is of utmost importance to BARQ that he stays attuned to what is important to his clients' business cultures, BARQ "boned up" on Collin's principles as well. Here's what he thinks:

What BARQ Says
Increasingly, I find in my travels that many companies today struggle with what Collins' refers to as the doom loop. Mergers and acquisitions, management turnover and other influencers regularly put marketing initiatives at risk. A new leader enters, for example, and out go the formerly laid marketing plans. Or more likely, how often is a marketing strategy commenced only to be stopped dead in its tracks when other things take priority?

Doom loops in marketing are dangerous because they jeopardize the two Cs that Collins emphasizes are necessary for a company, small or large, to go from good to great - cohesion and consistency. Isn't it true that stop-and-go, knee-jerk behaviors lead to treacherous ills within a company culture? Flavor-of-the-week marketing results in a sales team grumbling, "What is marketing sending down the pike next?" And then aren't inter-departmental rifts or silos a common result?

After studying 1,435 companies, Collins pinpointed the traits that were critical if a company was serious about going from good to great. I was surprised... was it a top notch CEO? No. The latest technology? No. Innovative change management? Not exactly. How about a fine-tuned business strategy? Nope. The 11 companies out of those 1,435 that earned good to great status had the following common denominators-

• A corporate culture of disciplined people, disciplined thought and disciplined action. People who hold both themselves and their peers accountable for results. Or as Collins puts it "the right people on the bus." Disciplined thought, like confronting the brutal facts of your market. And disciplined action as everyone does whatever it takes -whether or not it's in their job description - to inch by inch, rotation by rotation, move the company flywheel with cohesion and consistency in order to get where it needs to go.

• A clear identification of the product or service their company could truly be the best at, that fuels the company's economic engine and that everyone within the organization can be passionate about. Collin's bundles these 3 key traits into what he coins the Hedgehog Concept.

• A 15 year period of level or sales declination followed by 15 years of "market-crushing" growth.

I was pleasantly surprised while Googling one evening to find that Jim Collins offers myriad tools on his website (at no charge may I add) to help his readers achieve success. No doubt, he is passionate about his findings and wants to see more companies go from Good to Great. You can find these tools at www.jimcollins.com

For those whose hectic schedules don't allow for much time to read, visit www.audible.com to download an unabridged audio version.