[ehmish]

Ever since I read McKinsey's "in search of excellence" I've been a bit skeptical of these sort of "to run your company better just follow this one weird trick" pieces. The book when I read it was quite convincing, but when I read the results of the companies cited as "excellent" by the book later on, about half had gone bankrupt or otherwise ceased trading!

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/In_Search_of_Excellence

[dredmorbius]

Good to Great suffers similarly:

Steven D. Levitt noted that some of the companies selected as "great" have since gotten into serious trouble, such as Circuit City and Fannie Mae, while only Nucor had "dramatically outperformed the stock market" and "Abbott Labs and Wells Fargo have done okay". He further states that investing in the portfolio of the 11 companies covered by the book, in the year of 2001, would actually result in underperforming the S&P 500. Levitt concludes that books like this are "mostly backward-looking" and can't offer a guide for the future."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Good_to_Great#Response

[zwieback]

Of course there is the question whether a company's goal should be to be around forever or be excellent for some time.

[Ididntdothis]

GE and Jack Welch come to mind. For a long time they were held up as an example of good management but somehow this didn’t result in a long term healthy company.

[whatshisface]

If you're hearing about good anything, you're hearing about good marketing. ;)

[beckingz]

All conversation is a continuation of psychological warfare.