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Book Review: Bricks & Mortar
Built to Last: James Collins and James Porras: HarperBusiness, New York: 1994.
Building to Last: Colin Hutchinson: Earthscan Publications, London: 1997.
There are clear distinctions between Built to Last, by James Collins and Jerry Porras, and Building to Last by Colin Hutchinson. The similarities are notable as well, but in both are profound lessons about our changing times. Collins and Porras present thorough and compelling research into what has made successful corporations survive, grow and continually prosperous in the 20th Century. Their case examples are sharp and meaningful, and the data they extract from the experiences they relate are reliable. Furthermore, the insights about basic leadership strategies, like providing clear and meaningful purpose and ideologies, as well as distinct and highly motivating business goals, are very useful. In fact, with tongue in cheek, I'm sure, but also with great affect, they gave us the phrase "Big Hairy Audacious Goals" (B-HAGS), and made it clear to us how they differ from vision and core ideologies. If you want to build a company that will last in this economy and thrive on the principles and constructs inherent to the beliefs and driving forces of an emerging global capitalism, then their insights are the ones to follow. When asked if they believe the guiding forces of clear ideologies and visionary direction will be the mechanisms of durability for the 21st Century, Collins and Porras answer with a resounding "yes" (see pages 746-748). That answer seems right. If anything, the power of the attributes described by Collins and Porras will become more and more important in the future. This will be especially true as the move to infuse work with real meaning gets more and more credibility within companies.
But if you want to build something to last in the 21st century, you'd better add to your reading list Hutchinson's book. Here there is also solid research and real numbers and examples, but just as often, some necessary speculation. Here we also hear about goals and visions, about core purpose and values, as well as business goals that are big and exciting. However, the focus and ethics of Hutchinson's emerging formula for success differ from those of Collins and Porras in content. Hutchinson's work challenges the assumptions of everlasting and infinite resources to drive a greedier and greedier world. His models and strategies suggest a combination of natural balance with everyday consumption, and of conservation with the development of new possibilities.
In short, Collins and Porras offer bland viewpoint about what kinds of values, visions, core ideologies and missions, or even what flavor of B-HAGS provide value beyond the need for the organization to survive, grow, make money, and do all the "good" things companies are supposed to do to respond to the customer's need to consume. It's enough to have whatever mix of core purpose and B-HAG's to reach business goals. And we take the book as a valuable look at that process, attempting to answer the question: "What allows businesses to last and thrive in a competitive capitalist arena."
On the other hand, Hutchinson asks the question, "What role does business play in sustaining not only itself, but also the natural resources and environment that allows it to exist at all?" Porras and Collins map out strategies for ongoing commercial success with some scant attention to ethics and moral behavior. When issues like that are raised, they are generally within cases and as examples of how the misalignment of perceived values and actual behaviors produced survivability crises for companies. For Hutchinson, all the working values of the business organization must support, indeed, revolve around, issues of planetary sustainability that will characterize our ability as a life form to continue creating and selling anything.
To read the two books in tandem is to see an enlightened but weathering paradigm of business development and management face to face with a newer more broad based one. For our money, we're glad to encourage many of the tenants and techniques offered by Collins and Porras, but only in the service of a more environmentally responsible world view aptly and clearly laid out for business interests by Hutchinson. In the end, if Porras and Collins have defined the bricks, Hutchinson has supplied mortar.
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