Friday, July 21, 2006

Built to last companies & the Ecosystem

By the time I had read Jim Collins’ Built to last, I had worked for one. The experience and the philosophies he shared seemed to hit at home. I was living and breathing all the little things and also the big things he mentioned. It was so interesting, then few years after he wrote his next book that and called it Good to great. Jim referenced a conversation with a McKinsey partner that influenced him to think about Good to great and rest is history. When I finished his second book I felt liberated! I felt all those things I had learned, absorbed and embodied from reading Built to last I practiced and made me sort of like one of the companies he talked about that changed from a Good company to a Great company. I was transformed! I had started to think laterally, be proactive, change one thing at a time, little by little until the flywheel begins to spin.

My lateral thinking lead me to compare myself to an Ecosystem; Adjusting, learning, improving, and at cause. The fundamentals were quite simple to be honest. Learn from every action, adjust a little, act on things, don’t let things happen to you and make them happen for you, acknowledge the challenges, rid yourself of the bad, embrace the good and opportunities will follow. At the end of the day it is all about balance, 'The Ying & the Yang'... if you don’t create it some one else will.