nickshanagher

There are five things that most people get wrong about what makes great companies succeed. Great companies are not led by risk takers. They do not innovate more than their competitors. They are not quicker to react to change. They don’t change the way they work. And they don’t have more good luck. In Great byChoice , written by Jim Collins and Morten Hansen, the real attributes of success are analysed and presented in a way that will help any business leader think about what she is doing well and where she needs to improve. But first a spoiler alert. If you are a fan of Robert Falcon Scott, this book is not for you. Collins and Hansen use a discussion of the ways that Roald Amundsen and Scott approached their 1911 race to be first to the South Pole to demonstrate how the findings above make the difference between life and death. While the book runs to 304 pages, mostly to back up the authors’ arguments, you can get a great deal out of reading the stories. In just six page...

A thing that you notice about great retailers is how much credit they give their staff. While the big supermarkets project their credentials behind impressive (and often overstated) job creation numbers, collectively local shopkeepers match them. A reason society doesn't know this is perhaps the lack of a context for independents to-broadcast their success. Reading George Anders' inspiring book The Rare Find , published by Portfolio Penguin, a question springs to mind: What is the reward for local shopkeepers to recruit great staff? Anders writes about world leading talent and how it is unearthed. How is this relevant for small shops? And for their potential colleagues? Thinking about great retailers I have met, I think answers include how local shops help young staff develop, how first-employers keep track of their peoples' later career success and how shopkeepers nurture local superstars. Superstars with humble jobs like the janitor who President Kennedy met on a tour...

In Good to Great by Jim Collins he devotes a chapter to the Hedgehog Concept, the one big thing that a company must focus on to become a great company. Every business can learn from this. The retail example that he uses at the start of the chapter is a company called Walgreens, which is what Americans call a drug store and in the UK we call a chemist. Its strategy was to be the best company at operating convenient drugstores and its economic denominator was to measure the profit per customer visit rather than profit per store. The economic driver is interesting as it systematically closed all its shops that were in inconvenient locations and opened new shops in convenient locations. "If a great corner location would open up just half a block away from a profitable Walgreens store in a good location, the company would close the good store (even at a cost of $1 million to get out of the lease) to open a great new store on the corner," wrote Mr Collins. It pioneered dr...

Today is the official launch date of the Fusion ProGlide shaving system in the UK and after a brief exposure to the power of the Gillette marketing machine last week I would recommend that local shopkeepers stock it for their shoppers today - enough so that shoppers see it in your store. Behind this recommendation lies two thoughts. The first is that the product is good. People who choose to upgrade from their previous razor are not likely to be disappointed. I am already trying to work out whether to write off my three new cartridges for my old razor - and they were not cheap. Already, after a week, I remember to press the button so the razor vibrates slightly so I "barely feel the blades". The second is the track record of Gillette, now owned by Procter & Gamble, which is celebrated in Jim Collins' Good to Great. In his book, Mr Collins identifies that great companies are all powered by simple ideas. In the case of Gillette it was that it could be the best in th...

"After a while the crud kept rising. We not only had dirt, we had dirty dirt." This is a famous quote from a former A&P manager who was telling Jim Collins about why his company, which had been the leading supermarket chain in the US for most of the 20th Century failed. When shoppers no longer wanted cheap, its management simply refused to change what they did. It was not that the managers did not know that something was wrong. In fact, they set up a new store that told them what shoppers wanted. Clean stores, more choice, easy parking. But when they saw the solution meant change they simply chose to ignore it. If you are reading this column, ask yourself if this kind of thinking could affect you. Ask yourself how good your shop is. Be honest. Earlier this month, I visited 10 newspaper sellers (one a multiple) unannounced in one town centre. Only two of the shops were in pristine condition and one of these, a gift shop, did not sell newspapers. The other eight were tired...