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

• good to great book, business and investing

The Webster’s dictionary defines destiny as a “predetermined course of events.” In 1987, I’m a recent college graduate and beginning to live my destiny. I wake up early on a cold day in April to report to the Naval Aviation Officer’s Candidate School in Pensacola, Florida. I’ve spent years preparing mentally and physically for the program which is described as one of the most difficult programs in the US military.

When I arrive I am immediately immersed in learning how to march, stand, and eat like an AOCS Candidate. In the initial physical tests I am near the top of the class and I’m selected to become Class Leader. My preparation is beginning to pay off.

This is part 2 of my story and picks up as I arrive at AOCS and follows me on my first day of training as I "sweat" my way through the first 12 hours in the ba! rracks. I am constantly being tested by my instructors and I am starting to make mistakes. As I copy the text into my "Poopy Gouge" I hear a loud noise moving down the hall towards my room. What is that noise? Is this another test? I flinch when the sound echoes off of the empty hall. It is getting closer. Should I hide? As the noise nears my door I'm forced to make a decision.The Webster’s dictionary defines destiny as a “predetermined course of events.” In 1987, I’m a recent college graduate and beginning to live my destiny. I wake up early on a cold day in April to report to the Naval Aviation Officer’s Candidate School in Pensacola, Florida. I’ve spent years preparing mentally and physically for the program which is described as one of the most difficult programs in the US military.

When I arrive I am immediately immersed in learning how to march, stand, and eat like an AOCS Candidate. In the initial physical tests I am near the top of the class and ! I’m selected to become Class Leader. My preparation is begin! ning to pay off.

This is part 2 of my story and picks up as I arrive at AOCS and follows me on my first day of training as I "sweat" my way through the first 12 hours in the barracks. I am constantly being tested by my instructors and I am starting to make mistakes. As I copy the text into my "Poopy Gouge" I hear a loud noise moving down the hall towards my room. What is that noise? Is this another test? I flinch when the sound echoes off of the empty hall. It is getting closer. Should I hide? As the noise nears my door I'm forced to make a decision.Foreword by Morgan Spurlock

From the bestselling author of Buyology comes a shocking insider’s look at how today’s global giants conspire to obscure the truth and manipulate our minds, all in service of  persuading us to buy.
 
Marketing visionary Martin Lindstrom has been on the front lines of the branding wars for over twenty years.  Here, he turns the spotlight on his own industry, drawing on all he! has witnessed behind closed doors, exposing for the first time the full extent of the psychological tricks and traps that companies devise to win our hard-earned dollars.
 
Picking up from where Vance Packard's bestselling classic, The Hidden Persuaders, left off more than half-a-century ago, Lindstrom reveals:
 
   • New findings that reveal how advertisers and marketers intentionally target children at an alarmingly young age â€" starting when they are still in the womb!
   • Shocking results of an fMRI study which uncovered what heterosexual men really think about when they see sexually provocative advertising (hint: it isn’t their girlfriends).
   • How marketers and retailers stoke the flames of public panic and capitalize on paranoia over global contagions, extreme weather events, and food contamination scares.
   • The first ever neuroscientific evidence proving how addicted we all are to our iPhones! and our Blackberry’s (and the shocking reality of cell phon! e addict ion - it can be harder to shake than addictions to drugs and alcohol).
   • How companies of all stripes are secretly mining our digital footprints to uncover some of the most intimate details of our private lives, then using that information to target us with ads and offers ‘perfectly tailored’ to our psychological profiles.
   • How certain companies, like the maker of one popular lip balm, purposely adjust their formulas in order to make their products chemically addictive.   
   • What a 3-month long guerilla marketing experiment, conducted specifically for this book, tells us about the most powerful hidden persuader of them all.
   • And much, much more. 
 This searing expose introduces a new class of tricks, techniques, and seductions â€" the Hidden Persuaders of the 21st century- and shows why they are more insidious and pervasive than ever. Foreword by Morgan Spurlock

From the bestselling author of! Buyology comes a shocking insider’s look at how today’s global giants conspire to obscure the truth and manipulate our minds, all in service of  persuading us to buy.
 
Marketing visionary Martin Lindstrom has been on the front lines of the branding wars for over twenty years.  Here, he turns the spotlight on his own industry, drawing on all he has witnessed behind closed doors, exposing for the first time the full extent of the psychological tricks and traps that companies devise to win our hard-earned dollars.
 
Picking up from where Vance Packard's bestselling classic, The Hidden Persuaders, left off more than half-a-century ago, Lindstrom reveals:
 
   • New findings that reveal how advertisers and marketers intentionally target children at an alarmingly young age â€" starting when they are still in the womb!
   • Shocking results of an fMRI study which uncovered what heterosexual men really think about whe! n they see sexually provocative advertising (hint: it isn’t ! their gi rlfriends).
   • How marketers and retailers stoke the flames of public panic and capitalize on paranoia over global contagions, extreme weather events, and food contamination scares.
   • The first ever neuroscientific evidence proving how addicted we all are to our iPhones and our Blackberry’s (and the shocking reality of cell phone addiction - it can be harder to shake than addictions to drugs and alcohol).
   • How companies of all stripes are secretly mining our digital footprints to uncover some of the most intimate details of our private lives, then using that information to target us with ads and offers ‘perfectly tailored’ to our psychological profiles.
   • How certain companies, like the maker of one popular lip balm, purposely adjust their formulas in order to make their products chemically addictive.   
   • What a 3-month long guerilla marketing experiment, conducted specifically for this book, t! ells us about the most powerful hidden persuader of them all.
   • And much, much more. 
 This searing expose introduces a new class of tricks, techniques, and seductions â€" the Hidden Persuaders of the 21st century- and shows why they are more insidious and pervasive than ever. 

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Amazon Exclusive: Steven D. Levitt Reviews BrandWashed

Steven D. Levitt is the best-selling author of Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics and a professor of economics at the University of Chicago. He is a recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded to the most influential economist under the age of forty.

Why do we always grab for the-second-newspaper-from-the-top of a stack of newspapers? When we talk o! n our cell phones why do most of us walk in a slowly decreasin! g circle ? Do you know that "Competitive Altruism"--e.g. keeping up with that neighbor of ours who also owns a spiffy Prius--usually lies behind our decision to buy a bagful of organic apples and shut off the sprinkler?

The strange ways in which we consumers walk, talk, and whip out our wallets underscore BrandWashed, Martin Lindstrom's fascinating, entertaining, occasionally shocking expose of the drivers advertisers and marketers use to make us buy. I consider Martin a kindred spirit. He enjoys nothing more than uncovering the hidden incentives behind all kinds of human behavior and social phenomena, and the differences between how we say we act versus how we actually act (in econo-speak, we call this declared preferences versus revealed preferences).

Marketing and advertising are smarty-pants industries. They know a whole lot about us. A global marketing guru for such companies as Pepsico, Disney, McDonald's, and Microsoft, Martin takes us backstage t! o expose the ruses and tricks companies and marketers use to get us to spend mad money. Such as nostalgia, fear, peer pressure, celebrity, and the inclusion of magical ingredients and elixirs that promise to banish all human worry and make you look sixteen forever--well, at least until you die. Last but never least, there's sex. I promise you'll get a kick out of reading who the real audience for pretty-boy teen singers is, how men really respond to male-underwear ads, and the drunken research Unilever commissioned before the company rolled out its randy TV ads for Axe deodorant and body spray.

I've read the first chapter of dozens of business books over the last five years; rarely do I make it any further. Indeed, I've only read two business books from cover to cover in that time period: Buyology and BrandWashed. It is no coincidence that Martin Lindstrom is the author of both of those books. Simply put, Martin Lindstrom is the most innovativ! e and creative marketer on the planet. BrandWashed i! s smart, thought-provoking, and laugh out loud funny. It's even better than Buyology, if that is possible. --Steven D. Levitt

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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 compani! es 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 greatn! ess -- 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 o! f our modern business culture and will, quite frankly, upset some people.”

Perhaps, but who can afford to ignore these findings?

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 pr! omoted 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