Great by Choice

One of the great benefits of air travel is to get caught up in our reading. I took two books with me on my latest vacation. Great by Choice by Jim Collins and Morten Hansen, and A Passion for Adventure by Saad Al-Barrak, my old boss at Zain.

GREAT BY CHOICE

Collins is a well known management researcher and former faculty member at Stanford University. His other books include Good to Great, Built to Last, and How the Mighty Fall. Hansen is less known but he too has a formidable background in the academic world at INSEAD and Harvard. 

Together, Collins and Hansen spent five years searching for historical cases that met three criteria: 1. The enterprise sustained truly spectacular results for at least 15 years relative to the general stock market and relative to its industry. 2. The enterprise achieved these results in a particularly turbulent environment, full of events that were uncontrollable, fast-moving, uncertain, and potentially harmful. 3. The enterprise began its rise to greatness from a position of vulnerability, being young and/or small at the start of its 10X journey. The final choice of companies that met these criteria included: Amgen, Biomet, Intel, Microsoft, Progressive Insurance, Southwest Airlines, and Stryker. 

Their research soon questioned the validity of these well entrenched myths: ...The best leaders did not have a visionary ability to predict the future. ...Being the most innovative is not necessarily a prerequisite for success. ...Fast decision making and fast action do not necessarily lead to advantage. ...Just because the world is rocked by radical change, it may not be wise to inflict ...radical change on oneself. ...The most successful companies did not generally have more luck. In the book, Collins and Hansen introduce the reader to a 10x leadership model composed of three elements: Fanatic Discipline, Empirical Creativity, and Productive Paranoia coupled with level 5 Ambition. This model can help the reader diagnose and improve his/her own organization's desire to become great. 

A PASSION FOR ADVENTURE

In his book, Saad Al-Barrak chronicles his life and how he turned Zain in a telecom giant. Having worked for Saad, I was able to ride along his incredible story telling and witness first hand Zain's rise to world class level. In his journey, Saad broke all the rules, challenged all the assumptions, and led the organization toward unequalled levels of performance. His charisma and intellectual brilliance left a deep mark on both the culture and stature of Zain. When in 2003 Saad took over at Zain, the company's valuation was $ 1.5 billion dollars; when he left in early 2010 the company's valuation had climbed to $ 28 billion dollars. Zain would surely meet the 10X criteria that Collins and Hansen write about, albeit he did not stay at Zain for the full 15-year period. 

 In this short blog, it is not possible to do justice to either book. The intent is to wet the appetite for you to read them yourself. I learned much from doing so. I came away with the reinforced idea that there is no single best way, that it all depends on a number of factors. The older I get, the more skeptical I am of "the best way" to do anything. Neatly packaged, these recipes for success are often just that, interesting recipes. There are too many outliers out there that show us that there are many, although unequal, different ways to skin a cat. I am sure that you have seen a cat or two traveling along your learning curve.