Summary: Think Big Act Small

Review and Analysis of Jennings' Book

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• Verlag: Must Read Summaries
• Jahr: 2016
• ISBN:
  9782511020371
• Thema: Business
• Thema: Organisational Development

The must-read summary of Jason Jennings' book: `Think Big Act Small: How America's Best Performing Companies Keep the Start-up Spirit Alive`.

This complete summary of the ideas from Jason Jennings' book `Think Big Act Small` reveals the results of a study that was carried out in order to identify the organisations that were growing revenue and profits by 10% for at least ten years. Based on these results, Jason Jennings has compiled this guide for what an organisation needs to do to prosper over the long term - think big, but act small. This summary explains how companies can do this by coming up with big ideas that solve their customers' problems or making better products, but they should never stop acting like a start-up.

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To learn more, read `Think Big Act Small` and discover the most important way to keep your company growing.

Summary of Think Big Act Small (Jason Jennings)

1. Always be humble and down to earth.

The people who lead steady growth companies are genuinely humble. They don’t seek celebrity status or to have their accomplishments acknowledged far and wide. Instead, they’re too busy doing their job to worry about who gets the accolades. They leave their egos at home and get to work.

High growth organizations have leaders who are humble and down to earth. They typically share seven key attributes:

1. Humble leaders view their role as a steward first and foremost – entrusted with the responsibility to guide the organization and move it forward rather than worry about their personal remuneration packages. They work hard so their organization can be in charge of its own destiny and progressively make the world a better place.
2. Humble leaders act transparently – they make all knowledge and information available to everyone in the company. That allows everyone to focus on the goals of the company rather than worrying about internal politics.
3. Humble leaders are accessible – they will meet with anyone who has a good idea rather than hiding behind layers of assistants. This allows them to keep in touch with what’s happening personally. They even let customers and workers contact them at home if they want to.
4. Humble leaders have a great work ethic – they love what they do and continue to put in long workdays even though they could afford to be off vacationing year round if they wanted to. These people can’t imagine themselves doing anything else.
5. Humble leaders stand for something – they have a set of guiding principles which go beyond making a dollar. Their personal code of conduct is clearly articulated and genuinely lived rather than being reduced to a page in the employee manual nobody ever reads.
6. Humble leaders have no time for superficial distractions – but dress the same way their employees do. They create a mind-set that we’re all equals in this rather than attempting to build a class structure where the boss dresses differently to the workers. In fact, casual dress is the standard at all these companies for everyone including the boss.
7. Humble leaders don’t have lavish offices – but have working space that keeps them accessible and lets them interact with everyone. In this way, these leaders genuinely have their finger on the organization’s pulse rather than relying on filtered information.

“Does humility really set these organizations up to win the revenue and growth game? The answer is an incontrovertible y-e-s! If these organizations had been incapable of holding on to their humble values, each would have become as distracted as the hundreds of thousands of companies that perish annually by spending time on the wrong priorities.”

– Jason Jennings

“You won’t find a slick, overconfident, swashbuckling sales type leading any of the companies that do the best job of consistently increasing revenues. In fact, you’ll find just the opposite: very humble people leading and managing equally humble enterprises.”

– Jason Jennings

2. Keep getting your hands dirty on the details of your business.

Never feel that you’re too important to be wasting time on customers. Instead, make yourself available to anyone who wants to do business with you. This is the only way you can stay up to date with changing customer needs and emerging consumer trends.

Getting your hands dirty doesn’t mean you spend one or two days a year doing frontline jobs. Instead, it involves being closely involved in the workings of the business on a day-to-day basis. In practical terms, that means you’ll need to be in frequent contact with three groups of people:

1. Your customers – by getting into the trenches and interacting with them. First-hand experience is vital in finding new and different ways to create value. Your customers will have loads of ideas you’ll only pick up on if you’re interacting with them personally. This applies especially to those at the very top of the organization.
2. Your workers – by changing their status from cogs in the production machine into valued team members. A great idea is to form a worker’s advisory council who approve and endorse any new initiatives or developments. Get your people completely on your side and you will be harnessing everyone’s combined abilities to maximum effect.
3. Your vendors and suppliers – by turning these organizations into partners. Acknowledge openly your suppliers need to make a reasonable profit and form a working partnership with them. You might consider hosting one open day a month where your vendors know they can turn up without an appointment and speak with anyone they like. Involve your suppliers as full partners in any planning sessions and make it clear their best interests are important to you as well. This creates a fertile environment for win-win ideas to be put forward.

“When leaders and companies keep their hands dirty, they’re better able ...