Business

Book: “Empresas que Sobresalen”



Introduction


Probably you have someday thought of becoming very good at something, but why don´t you think of becoming not only good, but great at something? That is what you will see through this book, the way to identify the difference between being good and great, how to take a good company and turn it into an outstanding organization withgreat results.

Summary

What to do to get from good to great. That is the main point of this book and I personally felt that some of the best tips were in chapter 3.

We have heard that if you don´t know where to go then you will get lost, but what captivated my attention was the opposite and it is certainly true, maybe you do not know where your bus is going, but if you havecompetent and suitable people in it, you will find soon a great destiny where to go.

The good companies started by selecting the direction and place where the bus should go, and then they worried about the people who were going to help them to get there, on the other hand the great companies started by selecting the people who should be in the bus, and by doing so they could have some certaintythat they would find a perfect destiny where to go.

What they did was to get the best people in the bus and get the unsuitable and incapable people out of it, just right then they were able to think of the direction the bus should take.

The great leaders were aware of three simple actions:
1. If you start based on the “who” instead of the “what”, is easier to get adapted to achanging world.
2. If there are competent and suitable people in the bus, the issue of motivating people disappears.
3. If there are incompetent and unsuitable people in the bus, is useless to find a great direction, you will not have a great company anyway.

Another important difference between a good and a great company is the fact that the great companies gather a strongadministrative and managerial team, unlike them, a lot of good companies use the model of “ a genius with a thousand assistants”.
In this model the enterprise is a platform for the talent of an extraordinary individual.

The geniuses seldom create a great team because they don´t need it and sometimes they do not want it, the only thing they need is a good soldiers team to do what he want them to do,however, when the genius get separated from the company, the assistants get lost or even worse, they try to fix it up with visionary measures, meaning they act as geniuses when they are not even close to be one.

Another factor I agree with is that not everyone inside the company is the best asset in it, but only the most suitable people.

We have always heard that education andspecialized knowledge a person owns, are the main factors considered to recruit that person in an organization, but something I learned when I was working in a company, was the fact that even the ones without a degree but with excellent values, get the chance to be in very strong and high positions inside the company.

I knew a man, he was and still is the Plant Manager in the company where Iused to work, and even with all his experience and knowledge, I and almost every single person in the company consider he has not the capabilities to be there, in the opposite side we have a very clever girl in the planning area who has not even get her degree, however she has strong ethics and values, and she knows how to make that company to grow up; Everyone without exception consider her as theengine of that company.
What great companies do is to select people without experience but with great values, something that many other organizations should start doing.

Is it possible to create a great company and to have a great life at the same time?
Many people believe it is not, but one of the things that I liked the most of this chapter was the answer to this question,” yes it is...