The Breakthrough Company: How Everyday Companies Become Extraordinary Performers

The Breakthrough Company: How Everyday Companies Become Extraordinary Performers | Keith R. Mcfarland | Excellent book for startups and young companies

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The Breakthrough C...

	The Breakthrough Company: How Everyday Companies Become Extraordinary Performers Keith R. Mcfarland Crown Business, 2008 - 288 pages average customer review:based on 12 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

The vast majority of small businesses stay small—and not by choice. Only the most savvy and persistent—a tiny one tenth of one percent—break through to annual sales above $250 million. In The Breakthrough Company, Keith McFarland pinpoints how everyday companies become extraordinary, showing that luck is a negligible factor. Rather, breakthrough success turns out to be associated with a clearly identifiable set of strategies and skills that anyone in any business can emulate—from small startup to industry leader.

Encouraged by experts such as business legend Peter Drucker and Good to Great author Jim Collins to identify the drivers that enable a company to push past the entrepreneurial phase, McFarland spent five years building and analyzing the world’s largest growth-company performance database and interviewing more than 1,500 growth-company executives on four continents. His goal was simple: to identify the secrets of breakthrough.

The Breakthrough Company is the result. Winnowing a study pool of more than 7,000 companies down to nine that have made the transition to major-player status, McFarland highlights real-world tools and myth-busting insights that can be used by anyone wanting his or her business to join this exclusive circle. Among the book’s takeaways:

• Common wisdom holds that the founders and core entrepreneurial leaders of a company must step aside for the business to reach the next level. Not true—as long as founders “crown the company” instead of themselves.
• It’s not reckless to make ever-escalating bets on your company’s future, even going nose to nose with competitors many times your size. In fact, it turns out that the only safety comes in constantly upping the ante in exactly this way.
• A Business Bermuda Triangle does exist, gobbling up companies on the verge of breakthrough. Presented here are three ways to navigate this potentially deadly hazard successfully.
• However good you are—or think you are—you can’t do it alone. Learn how to surround your company with networks of outside resources, aka “scaffolding,” and how to enlist the aid of “insultants”—people who are willing to question a firm’s existing assumptions and ways of doing business.

With powerful and specific action steps concluding each chapter—and invaluable advice on virtually every page from business leaders who’ve taken their companies to extraordinary levels of growth and profitability—The Breakthrough Company is one of the most provocative, inspiring, and instructive business books you’ll ever read.

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A True Differentiator

Keith is a man who can tell a story. Unlike other books which seem to lecture, The Breakthrough Company moves with the ease of an easy tale. Keith paints pictures and uses concrete examples which put one in the shoes of the entrepreneur and make us empathetic to their challanges.

An interesting and wonderful read. You will find yourself paraphrasing or quoting from this book in the future.

Excellent book for startups and young companies

One of the toughest things to do as a leader of a startup is find others who understand your unique predicaments and can help give you solid (read executable, detailed, thoughtful) advice. Bankers, consultants, lawyers are all helpful in the general advice category, but finding those who have been there and truly understand the pain points is very difficult. Mcfarland succeeds, in no small part because (a) he has been there and (b) his careful company analysis yields truly relevant themes. A smart man to find AdTran from among the multitude of public companies.

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GREAT, GOOD & BAD

GREAT; as a betting man myself, i loved Chapter 4 'Upping the Ante'. It covers the psychology of betting, why gambling gives betting a bad name and physics of bets, types of bets (i.e. market bets, process bets) and the art of linking bets together to build reald advantage over your competitors.

GOOD; The author chose companies from the Inc 500 list in order to analyze the key features of success, i.e. becoming a breakthrough company. Here the author chose well since most of the books concentrate either on very small companies or very large companies while neglecting the Inc 500.

BAD; Examples of successful companies/case studies suffer from two BIG problems. One, the selection problem. Do you want to find a business case where betting big and capturing market share, despite losing money was successful? Sure, no problem. We can find causes to support our theory. Do you want to find a business case where betting big and capturing market share while losing money leads to failure? Again, we can find it. No matter what business philosophy, we can select companies supporting our theory. Two, the attribution problem. What we attribute success may not be correct at all. The very same attribute might lead to failure in an another company.

If you enjoy case studies, this might me a good read for you. I don't. Chapter 4 on betting saved the book my four star rating.

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reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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