Good Enough Isn't Enough
Book

Good Enough Isn't Enough

Nine Challenges for Companies That Choose to Be Great

Alan Weiss
AMACOM, 2000
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Editorial Rating

8

Qualities

  • Applicable

Recommendation

Alan Weiss’s clarion call for corporate excellence may remind you of your parents’ stern guidance in your youth. You weren’t sure you wanted to listen to their traditional viewpoints, but you knew they were right. Weiss cites today’s watered-down sense of social accountability as the bad seed that has spoiled corporate standards. He insists that constantly lowering standards is not the way to achieve lasting excellence. He warns that executives need to exercise common sense rather than chase every management fad they encounter or succumb to high-priced consultants. Similarly, he warns that executives who surround themselves with sycophants will get carried away with their own egos. At times, Weiss seems to get a bit carried away himself, regaling how he browbeat the service rep when his bottled water delivery went to the wrong address. But getAbstract recommends this book as beneficial to executives - and even to consultants - as a refreshing throwback to days before the advent of kinder, gentler management.

Summary

Ten Factors of Greatness

Every company wants to attain a lasting degree of excellence, yet very few do. A great product might get you to the top, but only great management will keep you there. To emulate the great companies that stay great, follow these 10 rules:

  1. Align Goals - Ideally, everyone from the receptionist to the guy who installs the computer network should "buy in" to the company’s goals. But most executives focus strictly on the business side. Truly exceptional managers also focus on the cultural side of the company - worker morale and motivation, values, employee recognition and behavior. Cultural issues affect the bottom line in numerous, invisible ways.

Corporate culture is the key mechanism you must use to align individual goals with corporate goals. Simply campaigning for "customer focus" and "servant leadership" won’t do. You must encourage behavior that brings individual goals into alignment with corporate goals - whether that means sharing production or yield goals with all levels of your organization, broadening your incentive schemes or getting people involved in new ways that stretch their concept of the job. "Organizational...

About the Author

Alan Weiss,  Ph.D. is president of Summit Consulting Group. A regular on the consulting speakers’ circuit, Weiss has written more than 400 articles and 10 books, including Money Talks and Our Emperors Have No Clothes.

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