Monday 25 June 2012

Good to Great...

Recently I have just finished reading a book called "Good to Great" written by Jim Collins. I absorbed alot of useful information and key points.
The opening line of the book grabbed my attention and I feel spoke heavily of the truth:

"Most businesses- like anything in life- fall somewhere between mediocre and good. Few are great"

Which is true. Very few exceed good. Which may be down to the businesses discipline within the company. If everyone in the business is not committed to achieveing only the best how can you possibly expect to be a great business. You need to have everyone on board the best express! A great business that no one will forget once they have crossed paths with you.

To find such passionate people it is said they must have the quality that is described in the book as "productively neurotic". People that everyday get up and strive to do their best and anything less than that is not good enough. That is the kind of person you want in your business. However you cannot simply find out if a person is like this whilst you are interviewing them. As some people in an interview can tick all the right boxes that you are looking for but it is different once you put them in the working enviroment. As quoted from the book it states:

"You can only know for certain about a person by working with that person."

I agree with this tremendously as someone can have an average interview, perhaps due to nerves, but put them into the business and they may excell. It works the other way too, someone may exceeded all your expectations in an interview but put them to work when its sink or swim time and you may find them drowning in the depths.

So once you have found all the "right" people to go into your business with getting the funding is usually difficult. However this book believes that:

"The right people can often attract money, but money itself can never attract the right people."

Some may think that money should be the heart of a business. Turning a profit is numero uno priority, whilst its important to sustain a profit, to me its more important to make sure you are constantly trying to improve the business. Even when things are going well, there will always be new things to improve.

"Consistency distinguishes the truely great."

Tuesday 19 June 2012

Summer Reading List...

Now that university is finished for a summer break, I have looked into some business and marketing books I would like to read through out this time to help with my business proposal. I have ordered 5 of them today, they all get great reviews. I bought:
  1. What the customer wants to know
  2. Made to stick
  3. Who moved my cheese
  4. Good to Great
  5. Positioning
Hopefully I will gain something different from each individual book and it will help me on my way with ideas towards my business proposal which is now like our disertation in 4th year. I can't wait to learn more about the business side of things and marketing as this will help to prepare us for when after we leave our uni days behind. Can't believe it is about a year until we are finished our textiles at university. By golly gosh how time flies!