W h y s o m e c o m p a n I e s m a k e t h e
R INS ING YOUR COTTAGE CHEESE
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| R INS ING YOUR COTTAGE CHEESE Throughout our research, we were struck by the continual use of words like disciplined, rigorous, dogged, determined, diligent, precise, fastidious, systematic, methodical, workmanlike, demanding, consistent, focused, accountable, and responsible. They peppered articles, interviews, and source materials on the good-to-great companies, and were strikingly absent from the materials on the direct comparison companies. People in the good-to-great companies became somewhat extreme in the fulfillment of their responsibilities, bordering in some cases on fanaticism. We came to call this the "rinsing your cottage cheese" factor. The analogy comes from a disciplined world-class athlete named Dave Scott, who won the Hawaii Triathlon six times. In training, Scott would ride his bike 75 miles, swim 20,000 meters, and run 17 miles-on average, every single day. Dave Scott did not have a weight problem Yet he believed that a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet would give him an extra edge. So, Dave Scott-a man who burned at least 5,000 calories a day in training-would literally rinse his cottage cheese to get the extra fat off. Now, there is no evidence that he absolutely needed to rinse his cottage cheese to win the that's not the point of the story. The point is that rinsing his cottage was simply one more small step that he believed would make him just that much better, one more small step added to all the other small steps to create a consistent program of superdiscipline. I've always pictured Dave Scott running the 26 miles of the marathon- hammering away in hundred-degree heat on the black, baked lava fields of the Kona coast after swimming 2.4 miles in the ocean and cycling 112 miles against ferocious crosswinds-and thinking to 128 Collins himself "Compared to rinsing my cottage cheese everyday, this just isn't that bad" I realize that it's a bizarre analogy. But in a sense, the good-to-great companies became like Dave Scott. Much of the answer to the question of "good to great" lies in the discipline to do whatever it takes to become the best within carefully selected arenas and then to seek continual improvement from there. It's really just that simple. And it's really just that difficult. Consider Wells in contrast to Bank of America. Carl Reichardt never doubted that Wells could emerge from bank deregulation as a stronger company, not a weaker one. He saw that the key to becoming a great company rested not with brilliant new strategies but-with the sheer determination to rip a hundred years of banker mentality out of the system. "There's too much waste in banking" said Reichardt. "Getting rid of it takes tenacity, not brilliance" Reichardt set a clear tone at the top We're not going to ask everyone else to suffer while we sit on high. We will start rinsing our own cottage cheese, right herein the executive suite. He froze executive salaries for two years despite the fact that Wells was enjoying some of the most profitable years in its He shut the executive dining room and replaced it with a college dorm food-service He closed the executive elevator, sold the corporate jets, and banned green plants from the executive suite as too expensive to He removed free coffee from the executive suite. He eliminated Christmas trees for He threw reports back at people who'd submitted them infancy binders, with the admonishment Would you spend your own money this way What does a binder add to Reichardt would sit through meetings with fellow executives, in a beat-up old chair with the stuffing hanging out. Sometimes he would just sit there and pick at the stuffing while listening to proposals to spend money, said one article, "and a lot of must-do projects just melted Across the street at Bank of America, executives also faced deregulation and recognized the need to eliminate waste. However, unlike Wells Good to Great B of A executives didn't have the discipline to rinse their own cottage cheese. They preserved their posh executive kingdom in its imposing tower in downtown Francisco, the CEO's office described in the book Breaking the Bank as "a northeast corner suite with a large attached conference room, oriental rugs, and floor-to-ceiling windows that offered a sweeping panorama of the San Francisco Bay from the Golden Gate to the Bay We found no evidence executive chairs with the stuffing hanging out) The elevator made its last stop at the executive floor and descended all the way to the ground in one quiet whoosh, unfettered by the intrusions of lesser beings. The vast open space in the executive suite made the windows look even taller than they actually were, creating a sense of floating above the fog in an elevated city of alien elites who ruled the world from Why rinse our cottage cheese when life is so good After losing $1.8 billion across three years in the B of A eventually made the necessary changes in response to deregulation (largely by hiring ex-Wells But even in the darkest days, B could not bring itself to get rid of the perks that shielded its executives from the real world. Atone board meeting during Bank of America's crisis period, one member made sensible suggestions like "Sell the corporate jet" Other directors listened to the recommendations, then passed them Download 3.69 Mb. Share with your friends:
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