Talk:In Search of Excellence

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Intro - "it is one of the best selling business books ever"

It's certainly a best-seller. It's hard to ascertain if it's one of the best-selling business books ever, because Neilsen didn't start tracking book sales till the 2000s so it's hard to find objective data other than whatever the publisher released.

Here are some relevant stats (below)

It is influential ...

It's easier to track if it's influential, e.g. https://www.forbes.com/2002/09/30/0930booksintro.html#1f84979229e1

It had sold at least 4.5M copies by March 1999 ...

https://www.inc.com/magazine/19990515/4703.html

"Before they published In Search of Excellence in 1982, coauthors Thomas J. Peters and Robert H. Waterman Jr. conducted some book-industry sales research--being McKinsey & Co. consultants, after all. "We found that Peter Drucker's books did about 100,000 copies," recalls Waterman, "and Theory Z, the biggest seller of the moment, sold about 150,000. And we thought, 'Wouldn't it be great if we could do 200,000 books?"

As of March 1999, In Search of Excellence had sold roughly 4.5 million copies, both in hardcover and softcover, in the United States alone and had been published in almost every country in the world. Having hit the top spot during its three-year stint on the New York Times best-seller list, it proved that a book aimed squarely at company managers could indeed "find a mass audience," says HarperBusiness publisher Adrian Zackheim. "It expanded the range of possibilities for management books.""

That probably makes it the best-selling business book ever ...

Forbes also posted a list of best-selling business books ever in 2016 - https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2016/10/20/the-bestselling-business-books-from-blink-to-the-big-short/#2dda521e79f0

The #1 book on the list - Strengths Finder 2.0 - sold 4.5M copies. If the Inc article is accurate then In Search of Excellence equalled or exceeded that volume of sales in 1999 ... and presumably surpassed it later.

So a case can be made that it is "the best-selling business book of all time," but the data is a little fuzzy - presumably the 4.5M was from the publisher, and the publisher would have updated 2019 figures if they chose to disclose them.

Lauchlanmack (talk) 16:11, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

Performance of the Excellent companies over two decades

In Search of Excellence has been criticised because some of the companies subsequently performed poorly. However, as a whole they performed well and beat the market over a 5, 10 and 20 year period:

https://www.forbes.com/2002/10/04/1004excellent.html#78240f5512af

That is worth noting in response to the criticism. The authors highlight this in 2012, in a foreword to later reprint of the book.

Lauchlanmack (talk) 15:45, 6 December 2019 (UTC)

IBM and the search for excellence

It's probably worth mentioning that the theme for "in search of excellence" basically derived from Thomas Watson at IBM and his book A Business and Its Beliefs published in the 1960s.

The In Search of Excellence themes #4 and #5 (Productivity through people, Hands-on values-driven) are literally defined in ISOE (pp. 14-15) using quotes from Thomas Watson's A Business and its Beliefs.

ABAIB is also referenced liberally throughout the In Search of Excellence book, for example on p. 280 of the edition I have.

IBMs three core "beliefs" were:

1. Respect for the individual
2. Service to the customer
3. Excellence must be a way of life

The third, of course, is what In Search of Excellence is about, and the other two IBM values underpin ISOE's eight key themes.

The mapping of IBM beliefs to the eight ISOE key themes is roughly

IBM: Respect for the individual: maps to ISOE themes -

• Productivity through people - creating in all employees the awareness that their best efforts are essential and that they will share in the rewards of the company’s success.
• Simultaneous loose-tight properties - fostering a climate where there is dedication to central values of the company combined with tolerance for all employees who accept these values.
• Hands-on, value driven - insisting that executives keep in touch with the firm’s essential business. (This one's really about developing a culture based around shared values and beliefs)
• Simple form, lean staff - few administrative layers, few people at the upper levels.

IBM: Service to the customer maps to ISOE themes -

• Staying close to the customer - learning his preferences and catering to them.
• Autonomy and entrepreneurship - breaking the corporation into small companies and encouraging them to think independently and competitively

IBM: Excellence must be a way of life: maps to ISOE themes -

• Stick to the knitting - remaining with the business the company knows best.
• A bias for action: a preference for doing something - anything - rather than sending a question through cycles and cycles of analyses and committee reports
• Hands-on, value driven - insisting that executives keep in touch with the firm’s essential business.
• Autonomy and entrepreneurship - breaking the corporation into small companies and encouraging them to think independently and competitively

See for example

https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/ibm100/us/en/icons/bizbeliefs/

https://www.ibm.com/ibm/history/documents/pdf/management.pdf

http://www.sastre-asociados.com/upload/documentos/20130801133820.ibm_basic_beliefs.pdf

Lauchlanmack (talk) 22:21, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

Connect with Jim Collins' Built To Last?

There is a lot of overlap between Peters and Waterman's theme of "Hands-on, value driven" and Jim Collins' concept of "core ideology" in Built to Last.

It's probably worth spelling out some of the connections between Collins' work and Peters and Waterman's work.

Lauchlanmack (talk) 22:25, 1 December 2019 (UTC)

"Structure is not Strategy" article in Business Horizons, 1980

FWIW at the time of writing the full-text of the 1980 article introducing the 7S model is at https://managementmodellensite.nl/webcontent/uploads/Structure-is-not-organization.pdf

I'm not sure how this relates to the version on sale at https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0007681380900270

Lauchlanmack (talk) 02:47, 9 December 2019 (UTC)

Additional critique

See the last half of http://businesshistorytoday.blogspot.com/2007/12/in-search-of-excellence-25th.html

Lauchlanmack (talk) 06:29, 9 December 2019 (UTC)