Predictable Success: Getting Your Organization on the Growth Track--And Keeping It There

This book was recommended by another leader so I picked it up. I just started to read it I'm completely blown away how this guy has nailed such an organizational map. I'm only a few chapters in but I've already had so many aha moments. It puts so much perspective of where I've got off track in the mistakes that I'm making daily. As he talks about you first start out it's just to survive and most organizations they found they never make it after a year or two.But he says if you can get through that stage then you go into the fun stage and that's where it's fun and people enjoy it but naturally you're going to surpass that when you grow even more because then more complexities come into place. One thing that really hit me is he said that in the fun stage in the survival stage it's just all about making sounds it's all about just getting money. But when you get bigger things get more complicated than you add a marketing department then you add a another area more staff more complexity slower communication and I found it to be so true.I just love his style of writing I love the wisdom that he packs in his book very early on you can see he has an extreme amount of authority to write on this subject I've already got my money's worth just in the first two to three chapters.

Excellent book!

Wirklich ein lesenswetes Buch! Gibt einigen Vorgängen im Unternehmen einen Namen der sich auch bei nicht Lesern des Buches schnell etabliert!

Les McKeown is Irish and he has clearly kissed the Blarney Stone before writing this book as it is full of entertaining little anecdotes and chatty commentary. It's readable and quite entertaining - the trouble is it seems to be light on anything concrete that you can actually work with. Two-thirds of the 180 page book is a description of the seven stages that the author believes a business can move through. This is interesting and there are some nuggets here - but there is quite a bit of padding too. Mr McKeown's thoughts are similar (though much lighter in tone) than other business books and studies I have read, but you could easily cover the key points in a 20 page summary.Finally, in the last fifty pages, we get to the "meat" of the book - what it is meant to be all about - how to keep a business in the "Predictable Success" stage. Here Mr McKeown provides an 11 point structure for successful businesses. This is not exactly rocket-science - anyone who has read a lot of business books, from "In Search of Excellence" onwards, will have come across all of the elements in this structure (perhaps with different labels) - but it is interesting and readable, in Mr McKeown's chatty style. His descriptions of these elements of success are pretty broad-brush, and the book does not provide the "precise road map" it claims to, but I don't really think that is the purpose of the book. The book is devised as an easily readable introduction to issues that executives need to factor in to build an effective business. They can then find the detail elsewhere. As a light introduction to these topics the book does its job well.Personally, I would have liked more detail on the elements of success and less of the nebulous description of the business life-cycle, but that might just be me. The book is an easy read for the train or plane, but for solid content on factors important to business success, I'd recommend "The Toyota Way Fieldbook" and the other books in that series, or "Lean Transformation". They are far and away superior.

Whether your business is experiencing the "death rattle" or the "early struggle", or any of the 7 Stages of Growth and Decline explained in the first few chapters, Les McKeown will help you understand what may be happening, why it's happening, and how to improve and sustain your situation. Predictable Success is there to guide you wherever your professional journey takes you. Use it as a road map, manual, and motivational guide. With helpful summaries following each chapter, for the many who crave bullet-points, and diagrams, for visual learners, the book sheds light on the numerous complex phenomena found along the corporate journey. Predictable Success is one of my favorite books to give as a client gift! A must have for any bookshelf.