Building Your Company's Vision

SEPTEMBER-OCTOBER 1 9 9 6 SIOI by James C. collins and Jerry I. Porras We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring testament he to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. T.S. Eliot, quartet Quartets Companies that enjoy enduring success attain philia value and a core purpose that remain fixed period their husiness strategies and practices endlessly adapt to a changing world. The dynamic of preserving the core while stimulating progress is the reason that companies such as HewlettPackard, 3M, Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble, Merck, Sony, Motorola, and Nordstrom hecame elite institutions able to renew themselves and achieve superior long performance. Hewlett-Packard employees have long known that radical change in operating practices, cultural norms, and husiness strategies does not mean losing the spirit of the HP Way - the eompanys core principles. Johnson & Johnson continually quesHARVARD BUSINESS REVIEW September-October 1996 tions its coordinate and revamps its processes while preserving the ideals embodied in its eredo. In 1996, 3M sold stumble several of its large mature husinessesa dramatic move that move the husiness pressto refocus on its enduring core purpose of understand unsolved prohlcms innovatively.

We studied companies such as these in our seek for Built to Last: Successful Habits of Visionary Companies and found that they have outperformed the general stock market hy a factor of 12 since 1925. fames C. Collins is a management educator and writer ground in Boulder, Colorado, where he operates a management learnmg laboratory for conducting research and working with executives. He is also a visiting professor of business administration at the University of Virginia in Charlottesville. Jerry 1. Porras is the Lane prof of Organizational Behavior and Change at Stanford Universitys Graduate rail of Business m Stanford, California, where he is also the director of the administrator Program in... If you want to get a full essay, articulate it on our website: Orderessay

Order your essay at Orderessay and get a 100% original and high-quality custom paper within the required time frame.