Breakthrough: How Great Companies Set Outrageous Objectives and Achieve Them

Every corporate success story begins with a breakthrough business model that triggers superior performance and rockets a company to a leading position. But unless a company continues to challenge itself to do more and do it better, success can be the beginning of the end for market leaders who rest on their laurels.

Breakthrough is a fact-based, practical guide that helps business leaders keep their success cycles turning with constant business innovation. Based on a landmark ten-year study of more than seventy bold, breakthrough companies–such as IBM, Countrywide, and American Standard–this book shows how the world’s best companies stay on top. The secret these high-performing companies share: challenging themselves to achieve goals that seem unreasonable.

Breakthrough shows business leaders how to develop business goals that seem outrageous, and then foster the cutting-edge thinking, the focused effort, and the teamwork to achieve breakthrough results. Leaders of breakthrough companies do things differently: they develop master plans that integrate every area of the company and they understand their organization’s core identity. Breakthrough requires more than just good ideas or extra effort–it comes from practical, real-world steps that lead to unbelievable results.

This book describes all the ways breakthrough companies separate themselves from their rivals, including:

• Starting and managing the success cycle
• Focusing on a single core strategy
• Understanding competitive realities and opportunities
• Innovating at the core of the company
• Following a framework for transformation
• Embracing program management techniques
• Tying employee compensation to transformation strategies
• Communicating effectively

Packed with case studies and revealing data, Breakthrough combines proven advice for aspiring leaders with practical strategies for effective business innovation. For market leaders and insurgent companies alike, the key to outrageous success is setting the outrageous goal–and using the power of Breakthrough to achieve it.

Walking in the footsteps of Jim Collins's business bestseller Good to Great, Davidson (The Amazing Race) offers a prescription for corporate greatness based on his study of more than 7 high-performing companies. But while Good to Great focused on lesser-known firms, this volume looks to blue chips like IBM, Dell, Schwab, Caterpillar and ADS. Davidson's premise is that "breakthrough" companies achieve what they do by setting outrageous objectives and pursuing them with single-minded intensity. The go-for-broke, swing-for-the-bleachers approach that he favors means that there are plenty of intriguing innovations on display. For example, Progressive Insurance vowed to deliver the fastest claim resolution to auto policyholders and-taking that idea to its "outrageous" conclusion - broke the industry mold by putting claims agents in vans, ready to go at a moment's notice to meet a customer at the scene of an accident. However, the emphasis here is not on storytelling but on building a case for the "breakthrough" approach that can apply to the reader's own business. What's most impressive is that the companies cited are by and large established players who've radically transformed their operations, rather than startups that begin with a "clean slate." Overall, Davidson's argument is credible and logical; the trouble is, it's a little too familiar. So much has been written about corporate transformations through technology or re-engineering during and after the Internet bubble that it's hard to muster a sense of excitement or discovery. In the end, this is a worthy title, but one that lacks the "breakthrough" spark of visionary thinking to take it to the next level. (Nov.) (Publishers Weekly, November 3, 2003)

Breakthrough will help executives lead their teams to peerless, unsurpassed performance by helping them define a grand goal and engage the organization to pursue and achieve that goal, no matter how difficult the challenge seems. Based on a ten-year landmark study of more than seventy bold, breakthrough companies such as IBM, Dayton-Hudson, Progressive Insurance, EMC, American Standard, Charles Schwab, and Dell Computer, the book shows how these remarkable companies adopted outrageous objectives and then did what it takes to achieve remarkable results.

Breakthrough - Das Ziel dieses Buches ist einfach: Es will F hrungskr ften dabei helfen, ihre Teams zu einzigartiger Leistung anzuspornen und dem Unternehmen aussergew hnliche Ergebnisse zu bescheren.

Indem F hrungskr fte ein gro angelegtes, scheinbar unrealistisches Ziel setzen - kein Ziel, das leicht erreichbar ist - k nnen sie die St rke, die Motivation und die Zusammenarbeit im Team f rdern, um dieses unrealistisch erscheinende Ziel dennoch zu erreichen.

Das Buch basiert auf einer 10-j hrigen gro angelegten Studie mit ber 70 erfolgreichen Unternehmen, wie z.B. IBM, Dayton-Hudson, Progressive Insurance, EMC, American Standard, Charles Schwab, and Dell Computer.

Es zeigt, wie diese Unternehmen sich unerh rt hohe Ziele gesteckt haben und fast alle damit beachtliche Ergebnisse erzielt haben.

Breakthrough erh lt Empfehlungen von Top-F hrungskr ften, die der Autor kennt, z.B. Lou Gerstner (IBM), Peter Lewis (Progressive Corporation), Emanuel Kampouris (American Standard), Charles Schwab (Charles Schwab Corporation), Jean Monty (BCE), Michael Dell (Dell Computer) and Dick Brown (EDS).

Autor Bill Davidson ist ein angesehener Akademiker (ehemaliger Professor f r Management an der University of Southern California), erfolgreicher Consultant (zu seiner Klientel geh ren u.a. die Bank of America, Chevron, Lockheed, NASA, Pfizer, Safeway und Target) und Redner mit ber 50 Redeverpflichtungen pro Jahr.

A renowned management consultant reveals how great companies get that way

The most successful companies in the world are constantly challenging themselves to do even better than last year. They set goals that look unrealistic— and then they achieve them. This book is designed to help executives foster the intensity, the spirit, and the teamwork to achieve the unrealistic result. By setting a grand goal— not a goal that leaders know they can reach easily, but an outrageous, seemingly unreachable goal— companies create the urgency to achieve that leads to outrageous success. Breakthrough! has a single, simple purpose: it is designed to help executives lead their teams to peerless, unsurpassed performance. It will help leaders define a grand goal and engage the organizations to pursue and achieve that goal, no matter how difficult the challenge seems. Based on a ten-year landmark study of more than seventy bold, breakthrough companies such as IBM, Dayton-Hudson, Progressive Insurance, EMC, American Standard, Charles Schwab, and Dell computer, this book shows how these remarkable companies adopted outrageous objectives and then did what it takes to achieve remarkable results. In the author’ s words, if there’ s only one lesson this book teaches, it’ s this: "No person or firm will ever achieve greatness without an outrageous objective, and none will endure unless they embrace new outrageous objectives."

Williams H. Davidson (Palos Verdes, CA) is a former tenured professor of management at the Marshall School of Business, University of Southern California. He founded MESA Research, a management consulting firm acquired by Deloitte and Touche in 1996.

"Teams that embrace bold goals and breakthrough strategies can accomplish remarkable results. This book will be invaluable to anyone embarking on that path."

– Bart Butzer

Executive Vice President, Target Corporation

"Yellow’s continued industry leadership will result in large part from embracing Bill Davidson’s philosophy and approach."

– Bill Zollars

CEO, Yellow Corporation

"Strategic change is a high-risk, high-return proposition. Davidson’s framework provides a sure, firm foundation for success."

– Roger MacFarlane

CEO, UTi Worldwide

"This is a serious piece of work which should be required reading for all business leaders. If you plan on remaining or becoming number one in your industry, have your top management team read this right away."

– Bob Herson

CEO, Executive Focus International, Inc.

"I could not put it down–stunning insights into corporate strategy and tactics."

– Randall Lunn

General Partner, Palomar Ventures

BILL DAVIDSON was a tenured professor of management at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California from 1985 to 1998. He is the author of several other books on management, including The Amazing Race and 2020 Vision (with Stan Davis), which was selected as Best Business Book of the Year by Fortune magazine in 1992. He is Chairman of MESA Research (www.mesaresearchgroup.com), a strategy and leadership services group.

Chapter One: Breakthrough Dynamics.

Chapter Two: The Enterprise Principle.

Chapter Three: The Strategic Setting.

Chapter Four: Champions of Breakthrough.

Chapter Five: The Mindset of the Market Leader.

Chapter Six: Advice to Incumbents.

Chapter Seven: Aim, Ready, Fire.

Chapter Eight: The Leadership Factor.

Appendix I: Breakthrough Profiles.

Appendix II: Breakthrough Performance.

Post Face.

Index.