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The "Greatest Business Book of All Time" (Bloomsbury UK), In Search of Excellence has long been a must-have for the boardroom, business school, and bedside table.

Based on a study of forty-three of America's best-run companies from a diverse array of business sectors, In Search of Excellence describes eight basic principles of management -- action-stimulating, people-oriented, profit-maximizing practices -- that made these organizations successful.

Joining the HarperBusiness Essentials series, this phenomenal bestseller features a new Authors' Note, and reintroduces these vital principles in an accessible and practical way for today's management reader.

Price: $11.53

User Reviews about In Search of Excellence: Lessons from America's Best-Run Companies (Collins Business Essentials)

"In Search of Excellence" was written nearly 30 years ago (in 1982) and appears to have stood the test of time. One of the most interesting chapters speaks of the development of management theory from the 1930s all the way through the 1970s. The well written summary of evolution of corporate strategy is extremely helpful to those who wish to broaden their knowledge, without reading thousands of pages of classical management theories.

The authors selected eight key factors that they reasoned to be drivers of success. They then identified a number of companies that they considered to be "excellent" performers, and used examples of their respective organizational structures to highlight the eight factors. The key factors include:

* Bias for Action: getting things done, open communication between employees and the management, experimentation;
* Close to the Customer: obsession with reliability, service, and quality to gain and retain customers;
* Autonomy of Entrepreneurship: in-house competition, encourage creativity, ability to tolerate failure;
* Productivity through People: treating employees with respect, make them feel important, management by wandering around the office and communicating;
* Hands-on, Value Driven: emphasizing the importance of corporate history and tradition using stories and myths, rather than bureaucratic policies;
* Stick to the Knitting: understanding what the company's primary business is, and not diversify into ventures where experience is not currently present;
* Simple Form, Lean Staff: avoiding complex management structures, increasing the ability to implement changes to the processes quickly and easily in accordance with the dynamic environment;
* Simultaneous Loose-tight Properties: balance of central direction and individual autonomy, combination of control and innovative entrepreneurship.

Many ideas developed by Peters and Waterman do appear to have a universal truth quality to them. Most successful companies today do in fact possess the aforementioned characteristics.
Interestingly, nearly two-thirds of all "excellent" companies discussed in the book, have gone bankrupt or were acquired by other firms. It appears that excellence cannot be sustainable over a long-term period, and eventually meritocracy sets in. This issue was not discussed by the authors, but one could explain it by attributing it to changes in management, which in turn led to the disappearance of the key factors.

For example, consider the recent competition faced by General Motors. With increasing prices on non-renewable resources and rising environmental awareness, American consumers began demanding more fuel efficient automobiles. Japanese competitors, such as Toyota and Honda, were able seize this marketing opportunity by delivering vehicles that outperformed those of GM. GM was too late with becoming "close to the consumer," leading to a massive loss in a market share, in turn leading to an overall fall in sales.

Another example can be provided by a once excellent mass-market electronics retailer, Circuit City. The company was praised for its level of superior service. The company spent significant amount of time on staff development, which differentiated it from other retailers. The change in management in the early 2000s also brought cost cutting measures which replaced well-trained service employees with minimum wage personnel. Forgetting its history and unique selling proposition drove consumers away from Circuit City, ultimately leading to bankruptcy of the organization in late 2008.

Some could mistakenly conclude from this that excellence is simply a temporary state, and cannot be sustained over a long-term period. Looking at the decline of some of the once great companies clearly shows which one of the eight factors had gone awry, and if addressed in time could have kept the company at its excellent condition. The authors of the book could not have perceived the fall of some of the great companies mentioned in the book, yet they did clearly say that excellent companies must not lose sight of the key factors, as doing so will lead to disappearance of overall excellence and could even escalate to complete failure, as it has been shown in the examples above. -- Standing the test of time

C.S. Lewis said, "It is a good rule after reading a new book, never to allow yourself another new one till you have read an old one in between."

In his book, Know Can Do!: Put Your Know-How Into Action, Ken Blanchard urges leaders to read a book four times to bridge the chasm between knowing and doing.

Last year I reviewed The 100 Best Business Books of All Time: What They Say, Why They Matter, and How They Can Help You. Co-authors Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten write, "In Search of Excellence marked a turning point in the evolution of business books, and so it makes the appropriate starting point for our recommended books on strategy. Prior to its 1982 release, historians and academics controlled the discussion about the organization of business, and to no one's surprise, their reportings were often dry and outdated."

Tom Peters and Robert Waterman, Jr. changed the discussion--and the vocabulary--for business when they wrote In Search of Excellence. Last week, I pulled this 28-year-old treasure off the shelf and paged through hundreds of underlined pages. Blanchard is right--every book deserves four readings.

Even if you read it in the 1980s it's even more relevant and helpful today. If you've never read it (or perhaps were born in the 1980s) it's a must on your Top-100 book list. Let me try to tempt you with just some of the underlined gems in my copy:

"The complaints against American management seem to fall into five main categories (1) the business schools are doing us in; (2) the so-called professional managers lack the right perspective; (3) managers don't personally identify with what their companies do; (4) managers don't take enough interest in their people; and (5) top managers and their staff have become isolated in their analytic ivory towers."

"Today's version of rationality does not value experimentation and abhors mistakes. The conservatism that leads to inaction and years-long `study groups' frequently confronts businessmen with precisely what they were trying to avoid--having to make, eventually, one big bet."

"The systems in the excellent companies are not only designed to produce lots of winners; they are constructed to celebrate the winning once it occurs. Their systems make extraordinary use of non-monetary incentives. They are full of hoopla." (See "The Hoopla! Bucket" chapter in my book, Mastering The Management Buckets: 20 Critical Competencies for Leading Your Business or Non-profit.)

"Most acronyms stink. Not KISS: Keep It Simple, Stupid!"

"Many of these companies eliminate paperwork through their use of quick-hit task forces, and among the paperwork fighters P&G is legendary for its insistence on one-page memos as the almost sole means of written communication."

"Rene McPherson, when he took over at Dana, dramatically threw out 22 ½ inches of policy manuals and replaced them with a one-page statement of philosophy focusing on `productive people.'"

There's more--hundreds of gut-check insights and quotable lines. Our leadership and management lexicon owes much to Peters and Waterman. If you don't know the background of "stick to the knitting," or "a bias for action," or "close to the customer" or "skunk works," read the book. If you don't know why IBM's Tom Watson, Sr., was famous for "his ubiquitous use of butcher paper on a stand," read the book. If you still have four-person break room tables, instead of long rectangular tables, read the book!

-- Excellence X 4

Stick to the knitting, is one of the mantras in this book. The authors, Peters and Waterman, study a handful of companies (including McDonalds and CocaCola) in a quest for their formula for success and longevity. They find what they are looking for. The mantra above is one of the ingredients in that formula. -- Ingredients for success

"In observing excellent companies, and specifically the way they interact with customers, the consistent presence of obsession was most striking. This characteristically occurred as a seemingly unjustifiable overcommitted to some form of quality, reliability, or service."

First published in 1982, this book went on to become the first management blockbuster. Based on research into America's most successful companies, the authors identify eight management principles common to each of them:

1. A bias for action, active decision making - "getting on with it."
2. "Close to the customer - learning from the people served by the business.
3. Autonomy and entrepreneurship - fostering innovation and nurturing "champions."
4. Productivity through people - treating rank and file employees as a source of quality.
5. Hands-on, value-driven - management philosophy that guides everyday practice - management showing its commitment.
6. Stick to the knitting - stay with the business that you know.
7. Simple form, lean staff - some of the best companies have minimal HQ staff.
8. Simultaneous loose-tight properties - autonomy in shop-floor activities plus strong centralized values.

This book was groundbreaking both for it's highly readable style and for it's rejection of the rational model of management. The insights from this book still resonate today and the influence of the research-based approach can be seen in other authors work. -- A Classic With Insights That Still Resonate