When you typically think of a "business," the image that comes to mind is an enterprise existing for the purpose of profit - and the more profit the better. That's what capitalism is all about, right? The entrepreneurial dream of starting from nothing and making it big - like Ray Kroc did with McDonald's, or Michael Dell with Dell Computers.
That image makes a 180-degree turn in Bo Burlingham's book "Small Giants". He's identified and analyzed 14 businesses that "choose to be great instead of big."
Why would a business intentionally try to keep a lid on growth? Quite simply, so it doesn't lose its soul. Burlingham calls it "mojo."
How does a company get this mojo to begin with? The author notes these common elements in the companies he profiled:
o A "culture of intimacy"
o Close ties to their communities
o Personal, one-on-one relationships with customers and suppliers
As a business grows, it becomes harder and harder to keep these elements in place, so consequently the "Small Giants" chose to keep "bigness" out of their business equation.
Of particular interest was Burlingham's discussion of the "culture of intimacy" fostered in the Small Giants. He identified three imperatives that are pursued to create it:
1. Articulating, demonstrating, and imbuing the company with a higher purpose. This is not a "mission statement" - rather, it's a framework that makes the work meaningful for employees, and "continually reminds them how their contribution matters, and why they should care about giving their best effort."
2. Reminding people in unexpected ways how much the company cares about them. This goes beyond the usual perks, awards, and bonuses, by "doing what most companies wouldn't dream of doing or by using one of the standard tools in an unusual way."
3. Collegiality. Burlingham is referring to "feelings that employees have towards one another, the mutual trust and respect they feel, the enjoyment they get out of spending time together, their willingness to work through any conflicts that might arise, they collective pride in what they do, and their collective commitment to doing it well."
It's understandable how this would be easier to achieve in smaller scale companies, but does that mean that it's folly to believe that the culture of intimacy could be achieved in a high growth, dynamically expanding company?
Burlingham doesn't suggest it's impossible. It's just more difficult.
However, in a business environment where ownership changes hands fairly often and the private equity or public shareholder "return windows" take over, going for the true "mojo" Burlingham describes is not possible, because, in his words, if these types of investors choose to acquire or invest in a company, "...it won't be because (they) share the passion or believe in the mission (whatever the new management may say). They'll want to own it only if they think it will improve their financial returns. People will work there mainly because they need a job. Customers will buy its products and services only if they offer the best value for the money. The company will be an economic mechanism and little more."
Anything really wrong with that? Burlingham says no, but acknowledges that there are some people who are looking for more - they want to build companies that "allow them to pursue their passion and follow their bliss". They want a business that will contribute "something great and unique to the world."
Burlingham has delivered a great read that 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.
While doing research within these companies, Burlingham outlined The 7 Qualities of Small Giants that ran through all of the profiled companies:
1. They consciously questioned the usual definitions of success and imagined different possibilities than the usual ones. This concept had surfaced in the world of professional businesses, such as CPAs, physicians, and architects, where people talk about having a profession rather than a job.
2. The leaders had to overcome enormous pressures to take traditional paths to success. Often this meant rejecting outside capital and growth opportunities outside their usual geography.
3. Each company has an extraordinarily intimate relationship with its local community in which it does business.
4. Each company cultivated exceptionally intimate relationships with customers and suppliers based on personal contact, one-to-one interaction, and mutual commitment on delivering on promises.
5. They had unusually intimate work places, which were in effect functional little communities that strove to address a broad range of their employee's needs as human beings, creating an emotional, spiritual, and social, as well as the economic ones.
6. This sample represents a broad variety of corporate structures and modes of governance that they have come up with to help them achieve their driving force.
7. The passion that the leaders brought to what the company did-they loved the subject matter, whether it was music, safety, food, lighting, special effects, or constant torque hinges. They had deep emotional attachments to their business, and this deep emotional attachment extended, as mentioned earlier, to employees, vendors, customers, and their community.
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, the author reflects on the similarities and learning lessons from the small giants he covers in the book.
