The Breakthrough Company: How Everyday Companies Become Extraordinary Performers
Sign in to keep track of books you’ve read and want to read.
The vast majority of small businesses stay small—and not by choice. Only the most savvy and persistent—a tiny one tenth of one percent—break through to annual sales above $250 million. In The Breakthrough Company, Keith McFarland pinpoints how everyday companies become extraordinary, showing that luck is a negligible factor. Rather, breakthrough success turns out to be associated with a clearly identifiable set of strategies and skills that anyone in any business can emulate—from small startup to industry leader.
Read more
Encouraged by experts such as business legend Peter Drucker and Good to Great author Jim Collins to identify the drivers that enable a company to push past the entrepreneurial phase, McFarland spent five years building and analyzing the world's largest growth-company performance database and interviewing more than 1,500 growth-company executives on four continents. His goal was simple: to identify the secrets of breakthrough.
The Breakthrough Companyis the result. Winnowing a study pool of more than 7,000 companies down to nine that have made the transition to major-player status, McFarland highlights real-world tools and myth-busting insights that can be used by anyone wanting his or her business to join this exclusive circle. Among the book's takeaways:
* Common wisdom holds that the founders and core entrepreneurial leaders of a company must step aside for the business to reach the next level. Not true—as long as founders "crown the company" instead of themselves.
* It's not reckless to make ever-escalating bets on your company's future, even going nose to nose with competitors many times your size. In fact, it turns out that the only safety comes in constantly upping the ante in exactly this way.
* A Business Bermuda Triangle does exist, gobbling up companies on the verge of breakthrough. Presented here are three ways to navigate this potentially deadly hazard successfully.
* However good you are—or think you are—you can't do it alone. Learn how to surround your company with networks of outside resources, aka "scaffolding," and how to enlist the aid of "insultants"—people who are willing to question a firm's existing assumptions and ways of doing business.
With powerful and specific action steps concluding each chapter—and invaluable advice on virtually every page from business leaders who've taken their companies to extraordinary levels of growth and profitability—The Breakthrough Companyis one of the most provocative, inspiring, and instructive business books you'll ever read.
From the Hardcover edition.
Liked The Breakthrough Company: How Everyday Companies Become Extraordinary Performers? Here’s where I’d start.
These suit anyone who liked The Breakthrough Company: How Everyday Companies Become Extraordinary Performers. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.
-
What the CEO Wants You to Know: Using Business Acumen to Understand How Your Company Really Works Shares business, leadership, management -
Six Disciplines Execution Revolution: Solving the One Business Problem That Makes Solving All Other Problems Easier Shares business, leadership, strategy -
Good Business: Leadership, Flow, and the Making of Meaning Shares business, leadership, management -
Strategy Rules: Five Timeless Lessons from Bill Gates, Andy Grove, and Steve Jobs Shares business, leadership, management
“People who read The Breakthrough Company: How Everyday Companies Become Extraordinary Performers tend to reach for these next.”
“If you want more of the same (business), start with these.”
-
Winning Through Innovation: A Practical Guide to Leading Organizational Change and Renewal
-
Beyond Performance: How Great Organizations Build Ultimate Competitive Advantage
-
What Were They Thinking?: Unconventional Wisdom About Management
-
Managers Not MBAs: A Hard Look at the Soft Practice of Managing and Management Development
“If it was the leadership that hooked you, try one of these.”
“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”
-
Scaling Up: How a Few Companies Make It...and Why the Rest Don't
-
The Orange Revolution: How One Great Team Can Transform an Entire Organization
-
The Startup Checklist: 25 Steps to a Scalable, High-Growth Business
-
Six Sigma: The Breakthrough Management Strategy Revolutionizing the World's Top Corporations