How the Mighty Fall / 위대한 기업은 다 어디로 갔을까?

How The Mighty Fall: And Why Some Companies Never Give In Jim Collins

반짝이는 아이디어나 탁월한 기술을 가지고 새로운 시작을 하는 경우 운과 노력이 받쳐준다면 성공할 수 있을 것이다. 그러나 운은 그렇게 자주 찾아 오지 않고, 아이디어나 기술은 조금의 시간이 지난다면 반짝임을 잃게 되는 것이 자연의 법칙. 인생이건 사업이건 단발로 끝나는 것은 아니니다. 인생은 마라톤이라고 하지 않는가. 그리고 마라톤에서 제일 중요한 것은 포기하지 않고, 내달리지 않고 꾸준한 것이다. 따라서 꾸준히 성공해 나갈 수 있는 방법을 찾는 것이 중요한 것이다. What보다 Why가 중요하다는 것, 아이디어 하나 하나보다 아이디어를 끊임없이 샘솟게 하는 방법/분위기/환경/경영이 중요하다는 것이다.

공대, 벤쳐 붐 속에서 살아왔기 때문에 많은 선후배들이 성공을 이루는 것을 지켜보았다. 그리고 그리 되고 싶었다. 하지만 성공하지 못한채 30대를 보내고 있다. 지금 사색과 독서를 통해 무엇인가 얻고자 하는 것은 일정부분 성공에의 갈망이다. 하지만 지금 주위를 둘러 보건대 돈을 많이 벌었거나 똑똑한 사람들은 넘치고 있으나 지속적으로 성공을 이루어 내고 있는 사람을 찾기가 쉽지 않다. 크지 않은 성공을 차근차근 계속하고 있는 그런 사람말이다. 그런 사람이 될 것이다. 짐 콜린스가 이야기하고 있는 성공이라는 거대한 플라이휠을 돌려가는 사람이...

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"How" is the soil where "What" is born. When we have fertile soil, the grass should grow without much effort. Management is more important that a number of idea. How is more crucial than what. After inventing one, we need to keep it going, to prosper. The way how we can keep it going is same between growing a company from good to great and rescuing a company from falling out.

"How the Mighty Fall" is a director's cut version of "Good to Great". You don't have to read this book to get enlightenment if you have read prior one. It's worse that this book is a defense of "Good To Great" in light of current economy. There's not much in a defensive argument, isn't it? However, I enjoyed various episodes and quotes from this book.

• One way to effective teaching: don't try to come up with the right answers; focus on coming up with good question.
• Every institution is vulnerable, no matter how great. No matter how much you've achieved, no matter how far you've gone, no matter how much power you've garnered, you are vulnerable to decline. There is no law of nature that the most powerful will inevitably remain at the top. Anyone can fall and most eventually do.
• We no longer have the luxury of sitting back to learn from other's mistakes before we decide on what we will do. Let others learn from us. - Armacost, Bank of America
• Bank of America changed a lot, and nearly killed itself in the process.
• When the rhetoric of success ("We're successful because we do these specific things") replaces penetrating understanding and insight ("We're successful because we understand why we do these specific things and under what conditions they would no longer work"), decline will very likely follow.
• Common "saviors" include a charismatic visionary leader, a bold but untested strategy, a radical transformation, a dramatic cultural revolution, a hoped-for blockbuster product, a "game changing" acquisition, or any number of other silver bullet solutions. Initial results from taking dramatic action may appear positive, but they do not last.
• A cycle of arrogant neglect
1. You build a successful flywheel.
2. You succumb to the notion that new opportunities will sustain your success better than your primary flywheel, either because you face an impending threat or because you find other opportunities more exciting (or perhaps you're just bored)
3. You divert your creative attention to new adventures and fail to improve your primary flywheel as if your life depended on it.
4. The new ventures fall outright, siphon off your best creative energy, or take longer to succeed than expected.
5. You turn your creative attention back to your primary flywheel only to find it wobbling and losing momentum.
• To be a knowing person ("I already know everything about why this works, and let me tell you") differs fundamentally from being a learning person.
• When the Brazilians deplaned at Bentonville, Arkansas, a kindly, white-haired gentleman approached them, inquiring. "Can I help you?" "Yes, we're looking for Sam Walton." "That's me," said the man. He led them to his pickup truck, and the Brazilians piled in alongside Sam's dog, Ol'Roy.
• Finally, the Brazilians realized, Walton - the founder of what may well become the world's first trillion-dollar-per-year corporation - sought first and foremost to learn from them, not the other way round.
• Overreaching much better explains how the once-invincible self-destruct.
• Merck committed itself to attaining such huge growth that Vioxx had to be a blockbuster, which, in turn, positioned the company for a gigantic fall if Vioxx failed to live up to its promise.
• You should be able to answer the following questions: What are the key seats in your organization? What percentage of those seats can you say with confidence are filled with the right people? What are your plans for increasing that percentage? What are your backup plans in the event that a right person leaves a key seat?
• Who is the one person responsible for a loan decision? If I've put the loan request through a dozen committees and obtained fifteen signatures, then it can't possibly be my fault if it turns out to be a bad loans. Someone else - the system! - is responsible.
• While no leader can single-handedly build an enduring great company, the wrong leader vested with power can almost single-handedly bring a company down. Choose well.
• Reorganizations and restructuring can create a false sense that you're actually doing something productive. Companies are in the process of reorganizing themselves all the time; that's the nature of institutional evolution. But when you begin to respond to data and warning signs with reorganization as a primary strategy, you may well be in denial. It's a bit like responding to a severe heart condition or a cancer diagnosis by rearranging your living room.
• "The last thing IBM needs right now is a vision. By this, Gerstner did not mean that IBM shouldn't ever have a vision, but that his first priorities lay in more basic activities: making sure he had the right people in key seats("my top priority during those first few weeks"), regarding profitability, increasing cash flow, and above all, putting the customer back at the center of everything IBM did.
• At the end of Gerstner's first 100 days, USA Today ran a cover story .. "He's done nothing." Another summed up "Clearly, he is not a miracle worker."
• The signature of mediocrity is not an unwillingness to change. The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency.
• Breathe. Calm yourself. Think. Focus. Aim. Take one shot at a time.
• "Never forget," Lazier would say. "You pay your bills with cash. You can be profitable and bankrupt."
• And when you abandon hope, you should begin preparing for the end.
• "For me, this was all about having a company that people could retire from, having a company that their kids could come and work at, having a company that actually would have pride some day in terms of its accomplishments." - Mulcahy, Xerox
• "A crisis is a terrible thing to waste" - Dick Clark, Merck
• The right leaders feel a sense of urgency in good times and bad, whether facing threat or opportunity, no matter what.
• We are not imprisoned by our circumstances, our setbacks, our history, our mistakes, or even staggering defeats along the way. We are freed by our choices.
• Clutching his notes, for he always feared that without his carefully prepared text he would be at a loss for words, Churchill issued his famous words, "We shall never surrender, .."
• "This is the lesson: never give in, never give in, never, never, never, never - in nothing, great or small, large or petty - never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force; never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy."
• Bad decisions made with good intentions are still bad decisions.