Small Giants by Bo Burlingham

Author:Bo Burlingham
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2005-04-06T16:00:00+00:00

Of course, such personal connections alone do not produce the kind of commitment we see in the small giants. If they did, all small businesses would have it, and they don’t. So what exactly can you do to create an environment in which people feel their lives are so intimately tied to the business that, as a matter of personal pride, they do everything they can to help it achieve its aspirations and become the best at what it does?

To begin with, you need to get the basics right. That starts with making sure you have the right people on the bus, as Jim Collins put it in Good to Great, referring to the primacy of hiring decisions. Although he was writing about large, public companies, the logic applies equally to small or midsize private ones. If you want a company that cares, you need people who care, and they need to be motivated by more than money. Not that there’s anything wrong with money. We all want to get paid well for what we do, but if money is the only reason people come to work, they probably belong on a different bus.

Thus Gary Erickson’s first impulse after turning down the $120 million deal for Clif Bar was to go to key people in the organization. “I said, ‘I think we have five years left as an independent company. I want to keep it private and see what we can do. What we’ve got here is just too good to let it go now. Sign on with me, and then we’ll figure it out.’ Later I read Good to Great and realized that’s what I’d done—get the right people on the bus. The company became a reflection of my values and their values, which were the same.”

In addition to having the right people on board, you need to keep the bus in good running condition. That may seem obvious, but you’d be surprised how many companies with wonderful intentions trip themselves up by having poor internal communications, or bad coordination between departments, or inadequate follow-through on decisions, or any of a thousand other fundamental management issues that can negate all the positive initiatives those companies undertake. I have never encountered angrier and more cynical employees than those I’ve met in socially responsible companies that have been so focused on saving the world they neglected to do what was necessary to save themselves. Some of them were famous for their mojo early on, but they lost it, in part because they didn’t take care of the basics.

That’s not to say that the companies in this book don’t have management problems of their own, but they have mechanisms for bringing the problems to the surface and working them through. “I think we have the same problems everyone else has,” said Ari Weinzweig, speaking about Zingerman’s Community of Businesses. “We just hope that we’re able to deal with them more constructively than most companies and, I guess, have more fun and be more supportive of one another in doing it.

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