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Jan. 05, 2009
From Good to Great... to Mediocre
By Graham Hill, Customers & More
Remember Jim Collins' book, Good to Great? It was one of the all time favourite management books of the last decade, selling millions of copies worldwide in many languages. The book identified 11 companies that had gone from being good to great and identified five management principles that explained their success. Like Tom Peters' In Search of Excellence before it, Good to Great claimed to have found the magic elixir of management success. Well, maybe not. Two recent studies by economists suggests that the companies that went from being good to great have continued their evolution to become, just mediocre. The first by Resnick & Smoot found that none of the 11 companies identified in Good to Great delivered superior market performance over subsequent periods using modern market performance measures. The second by Niendorf & Beck found that the 11 companies in fact performed no better than an average S&P 500 company. Another popular management book bites the dust. Who can you believe these days? Not management gurus, that's for sure! Post a comment or email me at graham(dot)hill(at)web(dot)de to get the conversation going? Tip of the hat to Peter Klein at the Organisations & Markets blog. Graham Hill Further Reading: Jim Collins, Good to Great Tom Peters, In Search of Excellence Peter Klein, Good to Great: Neither Good nor Great  MarketPlace Customer Service as a Differentiator: The Road to Excellence at Overstock.com Companies are beginning to realize they don’t have the option of ignoring the quality of their customer’s experiences. Overstock.com realized that customers want service that is excellent, regardless of which channel is used. But they had to overcome some serious obstacles on the road to excellence. Read their story. New Research Report: Customer Experience Maturity Monitor Discover the five levels of customer experience maturity, ranging from Limited Capability to Experiential Master. Find out where your company stands, and explore what it takes to move from the base level to the peak. Download free research report here. Selling the "New Consumer" with Smart Conversations, Not Blind Automation Learn how to engage your customers in a great cross-channel conversation that will set your company apart. CustomerThink founder/CEO Bob Thompson reveals his latest research on the multi-channel buying experience, and Lisa Abbott of Genesys explains how to solve cross-channel challenge. Four Strategies to Shift Your Support Center from Surviving to Thriving With an economic upturn on the horizon, it's time to focus on how to gain a sustainable competitive edge. In this webinar, contact center guru Bill Price reveals how to improve the customer experience, reduce operational costs and retain top technical talent. TCE (Total Customer Experience) Model Building e-Workshop for Financial Services Providers [August 27, 09:00-10:30 GMT] This program is designed to help Marketing, Sales and Service Executives of Financial Services Providers to build a TCE model to monitor, manage, and enhance the total customer experience across multiple channels and touch-points throughout the whole customer lifecycle. Global Customer Experience Management Certification Program [Sep. 30-Oct. 1, Paris] Learn cutting-edge CEM methods from a team of international gurus. This 2-day course applies CEM essentials, strategies and methodologies on Marketing, Sales and Services; provides a framework with relevant guiding principles and tools for designing the best experience to your customers. Featured Links
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Debunking Management Myths
Peter Klein at the Organisations and Markets blog has another interesting post that debunks a number of other popular management classics, including Peters & Waterman's 'In Search of Excellence', Collins & Porras' 'Built to Last' and the 'Evergreen Project'.
Phil Rosenzweig's book 'The Halo Effect' shows that all of these books (and probably most popular management books) suffer from a number of sampling, methodological and even inductive logic failures that makes their conclusions almost meaningless as a guide to what you should do.
As Peter Klein points out in his blog post, these books become runaway hits not because of the quality of their authors' research, or their thinking, but because of the quality of their authors' storytelling.
Graham Hill
Independent CRM Consultant
Interim CRM Manager
Further Reading:
Peter Klein
The Best Business Book I’ve Read This Year
http://organizationsandmarkets.com/2007/09/08/the-best-business-book-ive...
Phil Rosenzweig
The Halo Effect
http://www.the-halo-effect.com/book/index.html
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