It's an axiom of business that great companies grow their revenues and profits year after year. Yet quietly, under the radar, a small number of companies have rejected the pressure of endless growth to focus on more satisfying business goals. Goals like being great at what they do . . . creating a great place to work . . . providing great customer service . . . making great contributions to their communities . . . and finding great ways to lead their lives.
In Small Giants, veteran journalist Bo Burlingham takes us deep inside fourteen remarkable companies that have chosen to march to their own drummer. They include Anchor Brewing, the original microbrewer; CitiStorage Inc., the premier independent records-storage business; Clif Bar & Co., maker of organic energy bars and other nutrition foods; Righteous Babe Records, the record company founded by singer-songwriter Ani DiFranco; Union Square Hospitality Group, the company of restaurateur Danny Meyer; and Zingerman's Community of Businesses, including the world-famous Zingerman's Deli of Ann Arbor.
Burlingham shows how the leaders of these small giants recognized the full range of choices they had about the type of company they could create. And he shows how we can all benefit by questioning the usual definitions of business success. In his new afterward, Burlingham reflects on the similarities and learning lessons from the small giants he covers in the book.
Small Giants is a finalist for the Financial Times / Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award
"One is tempted to say 'the only book you'll need on starting a business.' Brilliant! Genius! Choose your superlative-it'll fit."-Tom Peters
People starting out in business tend to seek step-by-step formulas or rules, but in reality there are no magic bullets. Rather, says veteran company-builder Norm Brodsky, there's a mentality that helps street- smart entrepreneurs solve problems and pursue opportunities as they arise.
Brodsky shares his hard-earned wisdom every month in Inc. magazine, in the hugely popular "Street Smarts" column he cowrites with Bo Burlingham. Now they've adapted their best advice into a comprehensive guide for anyone running a small business.
There's a great experiment going on in business today that involves literally thousands of companies and millions of people, but it's one of the best-kept secrets around. I know about the experiment because my company, SRC Holdings Corporation (formerly Springfield ReManufacturing Corporation), is part of it. For twenty years now, my colleagues and I have been trying to develop a particular type of culture at SRC. In the process, we've come into contact with thousands upon thousands of people who are trying to do the same thing at their companies. A lot of those people have visited us in southwestern Missouri. By conservative estimates, we've had more than 4,600 people from 1,600 companies come to see what we're doing and learn about the Great Game of Business, the management system we've developed to teach everybody in our company about business and to turn our employees into owners. That's prompted Business Week to label SRC a "management Mecca." Another 5,000 people from 1,700 companies have attended the various conferences we hold for current and would-be practitioners of open-book management, which is the generic term for what we do. There we've been joined by our kindred spirits in the corporate world, including some of the most revered companies around--Southwest Airlines, Harley-Davidson, VeriFone, Outback Steakhouse, AES Corp., Whole Foods Market, Kingston Technology, and ServiceMaster, to name a few.Meanwhile, the book we wrote about our management system in 1992 has sold more than 200,000 copies and been translated into Russian, Spanish, Hungarian, Chinese, and Korean. People have applied the principles of the Game to an awesome array of businesses--from oil companies to hair salons, from Internet start-ups to roller coaster manufacturers, from fast-food chains to law firms, landscapers, mining operations, even not-for-profit social service organizations.Not just in the United States, either. SRC has become famous in places we once barely knew existed. There are companies in Zambia and Malaysia that practice the Great Game of Business. The Australian 60 Minutes did a segment on our company, and it became one of the program's most requested videotapes. Delegations have come to see us from as far away as India, South Africa, Singapore, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Japan, wherever--all interested in finding out as much as they can about the way we do business.At a certain point, you have to ask yourself, Why? What could all these people be looking for, and why would they trek all the way to the Ozarks to find it? I like to think of SRC as a leading-edge business, but let's face it: We're not a high-flying star of technology, and we don't live in a hot zone of the new economy, or even a major metropolitan area. While we have our own Internet-based subsidiary, most of the companies we operate are involved in the making and selling of engines and engine components, an old-economy industry if there ever was one. Nor can you explain the interest by our business sucess alone. Yes, we've done well. A share of SRC stock that was worth 10 cents in 1983, the year we started, had an appraised value of $81.60 as of January 31, 2001, and increase of 816, 000 percent in eighteen years. During that time, we've grown from $16 million to $160 million in sales; from 119 to more than 900 employees; and from one company to 22. After losing $60,000 in our first year, we've had seventeen straight years of unbroken profits. It's a good record, and I'm proud of it, but many companies can marshal equally impressive growth...
