Advice for CEOs

In an earlier post I described how critical it is that an entrepreneur capture much if not most of the value that you create (versus your customers realizing the value because you lack pricing power).There is nothing more important to an emerging growth company than its value proposition; the reason why customers buy your good or service - versus buying another product category or another product like yours from a competitor.

A couple of days back, at a meeting with my partners, we were discussing two of the four M’s in No Man’s Land: Management and Business Model. I asserted if I had to choose between great management and a really strong business model, I’d take the strong business model every time. The gasp from my partners caused the room to drain of oxygen. After all, the collective management experience in the room was a little more than 200 years, and we all considered ourselves to be capable managers and leaders.

Jim Collins was Wrong Jim Collins was wrong……and so was I. You remember Collins. He wrote the book, Good to Great. It was a huge best seller, selling more than four million copies in 35 languages. We’re told Collins used a large team of researchers who studied 6,000 articles and generated more than 2,000 pages of interview transcripts during the five year project to develop and write the book. He described seven characteristics of companies that went from good to great, one of which was. “First who, then what; get the right people on the bus, then figure out where to go.” I disagree.