How Excellent Companies Avoid Dumb Things
Breaking the 8 Hidden Barriers that Plague Even the Best Businesses
By: Neil Smith
Published: June 5, 2012
Format: Hardcover, 240 pages
ISBN-10: 1137003065
ISBN-13: 978-1137003065
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
"How do I know your company is like all the others? Because there are two things that every single company has: hidden barriers that prevent great ideas from surfacing...and employees with great ideas for how the company can do things differently", writes CEO of Promotory Growth and Innovation (PGI), Neil Smith, in his insightful and transformational book How Excellent Companies Avoid Dumb Things: Breaking the 8 Hidden Barriers that Plague Even the Best Businesses. The author describes the eight barriers within organizations that prevent meaningful change, and shares his twelve principles for breaking through those barriers and doing the smart things that build success.
Neil Smith understands that many companies take actions that baffle their shareholders and customers. While this phenomenon can happen in any organization, the author points out that many firms avoid that mystifying problem. Neil Smith shares the often overlooked concept that every company has talented employees who have many valuable ideas for doing things better and more effectively than the current process. At the same time, however, the author also demonstrates that even within great companies, there are unseen barriers to uncovering and implementing their employee suggestions and ideas. To counter this barricade problem, Neil Smith offers twelve proven principles for tearing down the barriers, and making real and lasting change within the company.
Neil Smith (photo left) recognizes the similarities between companies, and as a result, provides a complete analysis of why companies do things that are so counterproductive for them, their employees, and their customers. The author presents evidence that the problem is a series of unseen barriers that prevent the discovery and implementation of even the most profitable employee ideas. For the author, the first step to breaking through these invisible barriers is to understand what they are, why they exist, and how to overcome them.
Neil Smith outlines eight frequently encountered hidden barriers describes by the author's acronym of A PROMISE. Those eight barriers are as follows:
* Avoiding controversy
* Poor use of time
* Reluctance to change
* Organizational silos
* Management blockers
* Incorrect information and bad assumptions
* Size matters
* Existing processes
For me, the power of the book is how Neil Smith provides a comprehensive analysis of why eight unseen barriers prevent great employee ideas from being utilized; and combines that analysis with a series of twelve principles to overcome those barriers. The author outlines his analysis in a point by point format, that is both easy to understand, but also provides for handy reference when needed. Neil Smith bolsters his case by including both case studies and anecdotal evidence of the concepts in action, in real world settings.
Unlike many books of this type, Neil Smith doesn't begin with his own theory, and then locate evidence that supports it, while denying data that disproves that hypothesis. Instead, Neil Smith follows the real world evidence and examples, and draws conclusions and makes recommendations, based on actual organizational behavior.
I highly recommend the idea filled and organizational culture changing book How Excellent Companies Avoid Dumb Things: Breaking the 8 Hidden Barriers that Plague Even the Best Businesses by Neil Smith, to anyone seeking a straight forward and real world tested guide to improving organizational performance, removing hidden obstacles to change, and boosting profits. This book will transform your company culture and prevent making the dumb mistakes that create major problems for so many other organizations.
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