This week Circuit City announced they were going out of business. I find it interesting and mildly amusing that eight years after its publication, 2 of the 11 companies profiled in the book Good to Great have gone bankrupt. The other is a company you have probably heard mentioned lately in the news, Fannie Mae.
I would like to see the author, Jim Collins, do an autopsy on the firms to examine the inner dynamics that led to their failure in the midst of the macroeconomic collapse. Except that one can't help but question the credibility of his claims when these supposedly great and enduring firms didn't even make it out of the following decade.
Maybe when I grow up I'll write a management consulting book. It's a bit like forecasting the weather in terms of the acceptability of its margin of error in predicting the future.
3 comments:
Hey, I just happen to browse the internet and stumble upon your page. Like you've already stated, it's interesting that 2 of 11 companies mentioned by Collins in Good to Great are bankrupt now.
The bankruptcy is a fact, but I don't think it proves that Collins' research is wrong, as you implied. The 11 companies did make a leap "from good to great". And Collins' conclusions were made based on evidences in the past, and he tried to identify timeless principles of great companies. Good to Great is not primarily a book of predicting the future, as you said. It's a book based on repeatable pattern of greatness.
Can Collins' theory be wrong in some ways? Yes, of course. But trying to dismiss the whole thing just by citing its weaknesses is unacceptable. Ask that to many leaders in the world who use Collins' principles.
One more thing, I find your comments rather sarcastic (your title speak for itself). Well, if you want to "forecast the weather in terms of the acceptability of its margin of error in predicting the future", by all means do it. But in my humble opinion, instead of becoming a police of ideas that critizes people, why don't you originate, find or innovate something new and better than what you think is obsolete?
Thanks for allowing me to post here :)
Blessings,
Ivan
Indonesia.
Those are appropriate criticisms, and I will take them to heart.
I guess this goes to show... Nothing in life is a sure thing.
I have never read Good to Great. But I don't know if his propositions have been empirically tested. I think any statements based on something other than empirical evidence (this can be quantitative or qualitative, but must meet certain research methodology criteria) have to be taken with a grain of salt, anyway. For instance, some social scientists turn their nose up at "Freakonomics." While statistics are used, the causality claims may be disputed.
I can say that PhD students (at least in my program) are trained to rip (I mean, critique) the work of other people to shreds. I think this is useful, but not for putting others down; rather, for reminding us that there is so much we don't know and will never know.
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