Uno de esos libros que se puede resumir en 8 hojas. "La gente más importante en una organización es la que está realmente prestando un servicio o produciendo un artículo o agregándole valor, y no los que administran la actividad"

Despite it's age and some companies are not considered excellent any more it is still a "must read" book

this books was a pleasant surprise, lending humor and drama flawlessly. The witty dialogue and well-developed relationships made for an engaging read.

Among the top books about business fundamentals and strategy.

In the early 1980s, a time when it felt like the rest of the world was leaving the United States behind, two management consultants search the country to find out what America’s best-run companies had in common. In brief this us what they found:
•tA bias for action
•tStaying close to the customer
•tAutonomy and entrepreneurship
•tProductivity through people
•tHands-on value driven
•tStick to the knitting
•tSimple form, lean staff
•tSimultaneous loose-tight properties
As a manager at the time, I devoured this book and put as much of it into practice as I could.

3.5 Stars rounded down

Dated but useful.

Why I Read this Book: I was interested to know what it is that makes companies excellent. If I plan to do any type of work at all, be it start a business or work for one, it is fundamental to understand how the great companies of the world have done it.

Review:

Most of you have probably heard of McKinsey & Company, Inc. For those of you who have not, let me quickly note that McKinsey & Company is the most prestigious top tier management and strategic consulting firm in this world. The majority of its clients are of similar rank and stature. Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman, the two authors of this book, have many years of combined experience working at McKinsey & Company. This experience led them to decide to go out and find the most successful companies in existence and understand what values, principles and techniques made them this way. This was their “search of excellence”.

I had the pleasure of growing up around my father who spent the first part of his career after business school at McKinsey & Company while Waterman and Peters were in their tenure. Many of the stories he has shared over the years relate back to what he learned being around what he describes as “the sharpest and brightest people in the world”. As far as I’m concerned, the road to McKinsey & Company lead him to a rarely-traveled place in the world that he may not have seen otherwise.

Tom Peters and Bob Waterman are amazing. As you read through the often dense, but intriguing chapters full of examples and stories from the best run companies in the world, you will begin to notice that only a very small bit of their findings are really groundbreaking. You might say “sure, that obviously makes sense” and “I would do that if I ran a company”. As we should all know by now, common sense is not common practice. My guess is that most companies, both large and small, know these fundamentals and best practices. The key difference between being good and being excellent is that few companies have been able to take that knowledge and transform it into reality and in turn into excellence. This is the true story of the ones that did.

What is most valuable about this read is that it is the type of book that can relate to any business situation that you encounter whether you are the employee or the boss and owner. This book was written over 20 years ago and it is still 100% relevant and applicable to business as we know it today. It is to every single person’s advantage to understand what it takes to be excellent. You may not be in charge of a big company, you may not be in charge of a big division, and you may not even be in charge of a small company or division. What is important to remember is that at any and every point in your life, you are in charge of the success of something. I can assure you that you will always be in charge of something in your career. And we all know that we are the presidents and CEO’s of our own success.

It is up to us to create and find the excellence in every part of our life. This book provides a perfect modelfor excellence. Read it, understand it, and allow it to live in your business and personal life. I wish you well with your search for excellence. May it never end.

-Reading for Your Success

Book : In Search of Excellence
Author: Tom Peters & Robert H Waterman

In search of Excellence is a book on research using 7S (Strategy & Structure (hardware), Style, systems, Staff, Skills, and shared Values (software)) framework of McKinsey as the authors were working with McKinsey. The book was first published in 1982 and thought that was striking the mind is after 22 years is it makes relevant to today’s competitive and technology companies. To identify the rational of the excellence companies the author had chosen over 43 companies out of the Fortune 500 and held them up as defenders of excellence, measured by six financial yardsticks such as Compound asset growth, Compound equity growth, Ratio of market value to book value, Return on capital, Return on equity and Return on sales to validate the secrete behind driving excellence. The best part is even today these companies are doing well and there are case studies shard in the book. However one drawback is the analysis and comparison of these shortlisted companies are not been reported. My key insights from the book are
•tQuality and Service are invariable hallmarks. The excellent companies require and demand extraordinary performance from average man. Service, Quality, Reliability are the strategies aimed at loyalty and long term revenue stream growth. Three themes in an effective service orientation
1.tIntensive, active involvement on the part of senior Management
2.tA remarkable people orientation
3.tHigh intensity of measurement and feedback

•tExcellent companies has the ability to manage ambiguity and paradox. Excellence companies had gotten to be the way they are because of a unique set of cultural attributes that distinguish them from the rest. The excellent companies have developed cultures that incorporated the values and practices of the great leaders.
•tTools are biased towards measurement and analysis. Paralysis through analysis syndrome. Tools didn’t substitute for thinking. Intellect didn’t overpower wisdom. Analysis didn’t impede action. Rather these companies work hard to keep things simple in a complex world.
•tEight attributes of excellent, innovative companies are
1.tBias for action, for getting on with it
2.tClose to customer
3.tAutonomy and entrepreneurship
4.tProductivity through people
5.tHands-on, value driven.
6.tStick to the knitting
7.tSimple form, lean Staff
8.tSimultaneous loose tight properties

•tGood mangers make meanings for people, as well as money. Treating people – not money, machine, or minds as the key natural resource. Majority of businessmen are incapable of original thought because they are unable to escape from the tyranny of reason. Gamesmanship replaces pragmatic action. Mangers job is decision making. Make the right calls. Make the touch calls. Managers job is to keep things tidy and under control. Get the incentives right and productivity will follow. Three items – inventories, profits and sales – form a crucible for managers.
•tThe exclusively analytic approach run wild leads to an abstract, heartless philosophy. To be narrowly rational is often to be negative. Today’s version of rationality does not value experimentation and abhors mistakes. The excellent company response to complexity is fluidity. The rational model causes us to denigrate the importance of values. Fluidity, chunking and experimenting are interestingly abetted by the character of the excellent companies’ formal system.
•tManaging process is an interactive flow of three variables; Path-finding, decision making and implementation.
•tOur control systems are designed under the apparent assumption that 90 percent of the people are lazy. Association with past personal success apparently leads to more persistence, higher motivation, or something that makes us to do better.
•tNegative reinforcement will produce behavioural change, but often in strange, unpredictable, and undesirable ways. Positive reinforcement causes behavioural changes too, but usually in the intended direction. Two ways to accomplish shift – First we attempt through positive reinforcement to lead people gently over the time to pay attention to new activities. Secondly the reinforcement should have immediacy. Third system of feedback mechanisms should be account to achievability. Listening carefully, frequently speaking with encouragement and reinforcing words with believable action.
•tExcellent companies tap the inherent worth of the task as a source of intrinsic motivation for their employees. Excellent companies know to manage Paradox. Excellent companies are learning organisations. Human needs in the organiatisation are
1.tPeople need for meaning
2.tPeople need for modicum of control
3.tPeople need positive reinforcement to think of themselves as winners in some sense
4.tDegree to which actions and behaviours shape attitudes and beliefs.

•tSmall group is the most visible of the chunking devices. Small groups are quite simply the basic organisational building blocks of excellent companies. The true power of the small group lies in the flexibility.
•tFive fundamental attributes of companies close to the customer
1.tAstute technology manipulations
2.tPricing skill
3.tBetter segmenting
4.tA problem solving orientation
5.tWillingness to spend in order to discriminate.

•tExcellent companies have 5 attributes of communication system that seems to foster innovation
1.tCommunication systems are informal
2.tCommunication intensity is extraordinary
3.tCommunication is given physical supports
4.tForcing devices
5.tThe intense, informal communication system act as remarkable tight control system.

•tExcellent companies do acquire; but they acquire and diversify in an experimental fashion.

This was not an especially interesting or exciting book but there are some valuable insights into what makes a good company good, especially as it grows larger. I feel like the authors tried a little too hard to come up with new theories. Worth the read if you are in a leadership position within a large or rapidly growing company.

This story is very well written.

Lacks microanalysis

The timing for having read this book, In Search of Excellence I was on my own search for it somewhere between shoulder pads for women's suits and a dresser drawer I had popping full of panty hose. Curiously it was also about the same time my mom wanted me to write a personal request to Lee Iacocca of Chrysler and ask him for a personal scholarship to help pay my college semester after my family moved yet again. She had just bought a LeBaron covertible. She was almost fully convinced this would be effective.

I wrote the letter. He was supposedly sponsoring a specific program from a different book on his business acumen with Chrysler and was offering hope to college students.

I did not get a response to my letter of request to Mr. Iacocca.

This book, In Search of Excellence was in the vein of the virtue of giants and was extolling their business practices. It was a copy pulled from my family bookshelf and I read it. It had paper quality like that of newsprint. And since the new house was short of tp, when i had enough of its excellence i...