Neil Smith – How Excellent Companies Avoid Dumb Things

 

Veteran business consultant Neil Smith has worked with a number of large corporations around the globe over the course of the past 20+ years and has narrowed down the common difficulties that most companies encounter to a short list of eight categories that impede their future growth and success.

He spells out the problems using an acronym and details how companies can successfully avoid them in his new book How Excellent Companies Avoid Dumb Things. He boils it down to:

Avoiding Controversy

Poor Use of Time

Reluctance to Change

Organizational Silos

Management Blockers

Incorrect Information and Bad Assumptions

Size Matters

Existing Processes

Smith cites a number of examples in each of the categories; none of them quite rising to the level of case studies, but strong anecdotes from situations he’s been in or companies he has aided.

While Smith does a solid job of encapsulating the problems and offering prescriptive ways to address them, I’m not sure that he lives up to the premise of actually helping companies avoid the problem. It may boil down to being easier said… than done. It’s easy to see how many companies, including your own, are faced with these issues; the more difficult part is answering the question “how did we get into this mess?”

Smith’s experience shows when offers the road map that can guide you through the issue and arrive successfully at your desired goal. The tough part is finding the GPS coordinates to avoid the wrong turn in the first place.