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Superior Results

In business, performance is defined by financial results—return on invested capital—and achievement of corporate purpose. In the social sectors, performance is defined by results and efficiency in delivering on the social mission. But whether you’re operating in business or the social sectors, you must achieve top-flight results. To use an analogy, if you’re a sports team, you must win championships; if you don’t find a way to win at your chosen game, you cannot be considered truly great.

Distinctive Impact

A truly great enterprise makes such a unique contribution to the communities it touches and does its work with such unadulterated excellence that, if it were to disappear, it would leave a gaping hole that couldn’t be easily filled by any other institution on the planet. If your company went away, who would miss it and why? This does not require being big; think of a small but fabulous local restaurant that would be terribly missed if it disappeared. Big does not equal great, and great does not equal big.

Lasting Endurance

A truly great organization prospers over a long period of time, beyond any great idea, market opportunity, technology cycle, or well-funded program. When clobbered by setbacks, it finds a way to bounce back stronger than before. A great enterprise transcends dependence on any single extraordinary leader; if your organization cannot be great without you, then it is not yet truly great.

Collins, LazierBE 2.0
p.168-169

Related Quotes

But there’s also a hopeful story to tell. Companies can sustain greatness for decades, even if only a few do so. What this means is that you never get to the “end” of The Map. You’re never done with the journey. You’re never done with the need for disciplined people who engage in disciplined thought and take disciplined action. You’re never done renewing the company so that it might be built to last. You’re never done preparing for bad luck and capitalizing on good luck, getting a higher return on luck than others. Greatness is an inherently dynamic process, not an end point.

The Map doesn’t guarantee a great outcome. But those who adhere to its principles—and who do so with joyful intensity—have much better odds of building a great company that can endure than those who don’t. Along the way, perhaps as more of a by-product than a goal, they just might find the daily happiness that comes from doing meaningful work with people they truly like and deeply respect. And it’s hard to have a better life than that.

Collins, LazierBE 2.0
p.169-170

In fact, many outstanding businesses have been successful primarily because of outstanding execution. An Inc. magazine survey of its Inc. 500 (fastest growing private companies) showed that 88% of CEOs attributed their company’s success primarily to extraordinary execution of an idea versus only 12% who attributed success primarily to the idea itself.

Collins, LazierBE 2.0
p.266

The more successful an enterprise becomes, the more it wants to codify what makes it great—and that can be a good thing. It creates institutional learning, effective transfer of knowledge, and a clear sense of “how we do things.

GerstnerWho Says Elephants Can’t Dance?
p.184

There are fundamentals that characterize successful enterprises and successful executives.

  • They are focused.
  • They are superb at execution.
  • They abound with personal leadership.
GerstnerWho Says Elephants Can’t Dance?
p.217

Businesses do not maximise anything. The most successful business leaders such as Marks or Walton or Gates pursued the unquantifiable, but entirely meaningful, objective of building a great business. A great business is very good at doing the things we expect it to do— rewarding its investors, providing satisfying employment, offering goods and services of good quality at reasonable prices, fulfilling a role in the community— and to fail in any of these is, in the long run, to fall in all of them.

KayObliquity
p.155