The Wisdom of Resilience Builders

Rick Tirrell Ph.D.

Description

What wisdom do Resilience Builders have that gives their enterprises the ability to grow, survive hardships, and return to growth? How do they build their organizations on competitive platforms that give their companies a strong and well-defined identity to suppliers, employees, and customers? How do they alter those platforms as their industries are impacted by predictable and unpredictable changes?

 

Resilience Builders create lasting prosperity for those around them despite the shocks that come their way. These great leaders are members of a unique breed. Their stories are told and their methods examined in this pioneering book.

 

This work proposes four essential elements of resilience and it shows how Resilience Builders masterfully use these elements to build firms that are impact-resistant growth generators.

 

Neither stunning profits nor a huge market cap are needed in order to be resilient. Fame is not needed, nor is a celebrity CEO. To achieve resilience all that is needed is the ability to create healthy growth and to return to growth, despite adversities.

 

In The Wisdom of Resilience Builders Rick Tirrell, Ph.D., reveals the skills of these remarkable leaders and shows how they build the world’s most durable organizations. Their unique abilities can be imitated by all who have enough curiosity to read this book and the patience to guide their firms carefully.

 

You can gain the wisdom of Resilience Builders; know what they know, and do what they do.

Sujets

• Economics
• Business

Informations

• Publié par: AuthorHouse
• Date de parution: 04 décembre 2009
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781449053246
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Wisdom of Resilience Builders
 
 
 
 
 
How our best leaders create the world’s most enduring enterprises
 
 
Rick Tirrell, Ph.D.
 
 
 
 
 

 
AuthorHouse™
1663 Liberty Drive
Bloomington, IN 47403
www.authorhouse.com
Phone: [phone]
 
 
 
 
 
 
© 2009 Rick Tirrell, Ph.D.. All rights reserved.
 
 
No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.
 
First published by AuthorHouse 12/22/2009
 
ISBN: 978-1-4490-5324-6 (e)
ISBN: 978-1-4490-5323-9 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-4490-5322-2 (hc)
 
 
 
Library of Congress Control Number: 2009912380
 
Printed in the United States of America
Bloomington, Indiana
 
 
Contents
In Gratitude  
Chapter 1  
Chapter 2  
Chapter 3  
Chapter 4  
Chapter 5  
Chapter 6  
Chapter 7  
Chapter 8  
Chapter 9  
Chapter 10  
Chapter 11  
Notes and References  
 
 
To the great men and women who have created lasting prosperity. And to the many who have had the courage to try.
 
In Gratitude
The list of people I feel a great sense of gratitude towards goes well beyond those named here. The process of creating this book began with those kind leaders who were willing to openly talk about their life’s work with me, reveal the secrets of their enterprise and allow me to share in all that succeeded and failed. Their candor and their openness are treasured. It is incorrect to think of this book as having had only one author. They authored it as well.
I am grateful to my editor, Michael C. Shaner, Ph.D., Professor of Management at the John Cook School of Business at Saint Louis University. His ability to carefully study the manuscript as well as the abstract concepts in this book is remarkable. His understanding of the real work of every business leader kept this book focused on its true intent. His skill at rendering valuable corrective feedback in a pleasant and considerate way is sincerely appreciated.
I thank the leaders of several of companies who gave me the gift of their time even though time is their greatest scarcity. To Chester Cadieux, Alvin Howerton, and Jim Denny at QuikTrip Corporation; Brian Matt at Altitude, Inc.; Bill Geiger and Steve McDonald at Geiger Ready Mix Co., Inc.; Todd Sanders and Regina Davidoff at Steinway & Sons; and Tom Nightingale at Con-way, Inc. I send my sincere thanks.
Anthony Alaimo and Apryl Mathes worked for me as researchers when they were students at Kansas University and Kansas State University several years ago. Their ability to gather large amounts of information, sift through it quickly and present it succinctly is remembered and appreciated.
I offer thanks to Nick Harn, Ph.D., for his thoughtful discussions about how the inputs and outputs that create balance for a resilient enterprise are so similar to the inputs and outputs that create balance in chemical equations. His insights influenced this work.
I thank my colleagues at Navigator Group, PA, for being so good at what they do that it allowed me many mornings and afternoons off to write. I benefited greatly from their eagerness and insight as they considered and discussed the concepts in this book. Above all, they were willing to adopt the strong Navigator Group culture and values and use them every day to deepen our relationships with those we serve. For all of this I am grateful to Shannon M. Huebert, Ph.D., Gena D. Staggs, Ph.D., Casey Talent and Linda Turner.
My deepest gratitude goes to my wife and daughters, Barbara, Kate, Sara, and Lisa. To my wife, Barbara, I say thank you for allowing this book to be one of many projects that so absorbed me. Thanks for letting my stacks of papers and reprints overflow my home office into the rest of the house. And thanks for marrying a guy whose life’s work is such a large part of his life. Your love and support are cherished. To Lisa I offer thanks for your remarkable expertise on finance and the world of business, as well as for editing several parts of this book along the way. Thanks also for gathering all of those dissertations from the library, so long ago. To Kate I give thanks for your constant interest in this book, and its progress. I have gratitude for you actually reading, understanding, and dissecting so many parts of this theory and seeing the endless places in the world where it applies. I thank Sara for being a person with so many diverse interests, and for enriching our lives by sharing those interests so freely. You used your background in anthropology to teach me about how artifacts, rituals, ceremonies and heroes all join together to form a culture. To all in my family, I thank you for making my work important and always being willing to talk about it and listen. I have been blessed.
 
Chapter 1
Building Resilience
Our most remarkable leaders seem to have some special wisdom about how to move their enterprises beyond just being successful, or even astonishingly successful. They know how to create organizations that have the ability to prosper, become injured, and then return to prosperity. They have the ability to build firms that thrive in good times and survive the bad times. I call these leaders Resilience Builders.
We might believe it is impossible to guide an enterprise to long term prosperity in hard times. Haven’t we learned that all boats are beached in low tide? Wasn’t success taken away from all firms in the Great Depression, the stagflation of the 1970’s, and the global economic crisis of 2008? The simple answer is no. The most resilient enterprises of the Great Depression, for example, created ongoing prosperity. In Illinois, brothers Paul and Joseph Galvin started a radio manufacturing company in 1928. When markets collapsed they looked for ways to adapt. The new firm made small radios that had good reception while moving, so they sold them to automobile makers and in 1930 they changed the name from Galvin Manufacturing Corporation to Motorola. Remember that although the Great Depression’s unemployment rate was 24%, that means 76% of workers had jobs and bought cars, along with many other things.
Likewise, it might seem that all firms prosper during times of economic expansion, like the post-World War II boom, the technology growth cycle of the 1990’s, and the recent development of a truly global economy. Can’t we assume that growth, survival and affluence are guaranteed to any competent enterprise in the best of times? Again, no. Each of these boom-times was littered with false starts, bankruptcies, and failures. In the United States from 1950 to 1959 there were 111,000 failures of commercial and industrial firms (excluding railroads, banks and insurance). Sixteen car manufacturers went out of business during those years. Some were new ventures that are now only footnotes in the industry, like the Powell, Glasspar, and Cunningham automobiles. Others were venerable names that had been in existence for more than 40 years, like Packard, Hudson, and Nash.
Resilient Enterprise
At first glance it seems impossible to understand which firms will and will not last. We have seen too many companies achieve meteoric success, only to quickly fade away in good times as well as bad. We have witnessed so many famous and respected firms generate prosperity for all, only to disappear with the next product cycle or economic downturn. And those of us who look inside businesses have seen how internal conflict can cause an organization to lose its ability to adapt.
But there is another story to tell. There are companies that produce long histories of strength and adaptation. They recover from the predictable and unpredictable crises that come their way. Their story is about resilience and the people who build it. We see it all around us.
Johnson & Johnson was started by Robert Wood Johnson and his two brothers in 1866 as an attempt to supply their newly invented pre-packaged sterile antiseptic dressings to treat wounds and prevent infection. In its first year it had 14 employees and established a caring culture. Today Johnson & Johnson has 119,000 employees, owns over 200 operating companies, and it still maintains that “J & J” culture. The strength of its culture has given it the powerful virtue of stability. As a result it has produced 76 consecutive years of sales growth and 46 consecutive years of dividend growth. It has built more than a great culture. It has built resilience.
Heinrich Steinweg founded the famous piano maker, Steinway & Sons three years after he emigrated from Germany to New York at 53 years old in 1850. He had the single goal of building the absolute best pianos in the world. From the beginning Steinway invented one design improvement after another, eventually receiving 126 patents. In fact, most of the important characteristics of all modern pianos were originally developed by Steinway & Sons. Today Steinway pianos are still perfect. The wood that makes the soundboard comes from a managed forest in Alaska where only ½ of 1% of a chosen sitka spruce tree has acceptable quality. 1 The loggers get to these trees by foot and the trees are removed by helicopter. This wood is dried for over 1 year before it is worked, and then it takes 400 Steinway employees another year to make the piano. Steinways have been the chosen instrument of hundreds of famous performers including Duke Ellington, Sergei Rachmaninoff, and Vladimir Horowitz. John Lennon composed Imagine on a Steinway. This remarkable company has survived the Civil War, two World Wars, and the Great Depression. Steinway & Sons has built more than great pian