Last week while headed back from California, I picked up Fortune Magazine to see if Sage Concepts, Inc was listed as one of the top 100 companies to work for. I couldn't believe we weren't in there since every employee I have believes we are the best (both of us)!

I did read the article, How Great Companies Turn Crisis Into Opportunity by Jim Collins. If you have worked with me you know one of the first assignments I give in coaching is to read Good to Great also by Jim Collins. I wanted to see what he had to say about the present crisis we are in and thought I would share the highlights with you.

He has most recently done some research on what distinguishes companies who prevail in times like this from those who don't.

"We have this very arrogant view that we're the first people to experience change; we're the first people to experience volatility and uncertainty. But when you look over history there have been other difficult times. If you go back and look at Built to Last (published 1994), 15 of the 18 companies in it had lived through the Depression, and all of the 18 are standalone companies today. What made them standout is in times of duress, tumult and uncertainty you have to have moorings. Companies like P&G, GE, J&J, and IBM had an incredible fabric of values, of underlying ideals or principles that explained why it was important that they existed. The more challenged you are, the more you have to have your values. You need to preserve them consistently over time."

"If you go back in history, a few companies used difficult times to bolster their legions of talent. After WW II, all the government labs were shutting down, and engineers were streaming out. Hewlett Packard was actually going through a layoff. But at the same time, Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard said the greatest opportunity they ever got wasn't technology; it was the opportunity to hire those engineers."

"Great companies manage for the quarter century...if you talk with firefighters about the dangers of firefighting, they say that under duress there's a tendency to zoom in on the specific square area in front of you. But (some people) have the ability to do the opposite, to get above the fire, zoom out, and look at this with a whole different lens."

"One of the lessons we have learned is turbulence is your friend.If you were disciplined and prepared before the storm came, you should be thankful for those times. As a rock climber, the one thing you learn is that those who panic, die on the mountain. You don't just sit on the mountain. You either go up or down, but don't just sit and wait to get clobbered. You have to ask the question, What can we do not just to survive but to turn this into a defining point in history?"

"I don't care how hard this period is. You have to have the combination of believing that you will prevail, that you will get out of this...you have to say you will be in this for a long time and we will turn this into a defining event...Our characters are being forged in a burning, searing crucible."

It seems he was hinting that companies in tough times, like people, have the best chance of making it when they have clarity about who they are, what they're all about, and what they're trying to accomplish. There are no short cuts, no magic potions but dedication to what you believe in and an ideology that is central.

rb