Small Giants | A Book Review

During March and April, I vowed I would begin a new habit of reading books from my industry to share with my community.  Sort of, sharpening the saw, as it were.  If you're not striving to learn more about your field and those who have come before you, you will be fated to make the same mistakes they did, and be equally surprised at the mishap.

This month I read Small Giants: Companies that Choose to be Great Instead of Big, by Bo Burlingham.  Burlingham was (as of 2005 when the book was published), the Editor at Large of Inc. Magazine, and Coauthor of The Great Business Game.

I bought this book while losing my ever-book-lovin' mind in the business section of my local ValueVillage -- which is often chock full of slightly old but well-cared-for books on nearly any subject.  This thrift shop happened to have an entire bookcase full of books on business, for dollars per book.  For a fist full of singles, I came away with great knapsacks of delightful reading material.  If you are looking to become an autodidact in business basics, I highly recommend a thorough scour of your local thrift shop shelves.

Alright, enough about my obsession with discount books.

From the introduction: "The companies I was looking for all operated on what you might call human scale, that is, a size at which it's still possible for an individual to be acquainted with everyone else in the organization, still possible for the CEO to meet with new hires, still possible for employees to feel closely connected to the rest of the company."  In evaluating businesses to spotlight, Burlingham sought out businesses that were privately held, often family-run, and which contained a certain 'mojo' among their employees, customers, vendors, and communities.

Throughout this book, intimate depictions of the personalities of a dozen or so companies and their owners or founders helped to paint a picture of what it means to be a small giant.  While this was not a book for tactics, or specific management strategies, I was left with a very strong impression of how a small giant chooses, every day, to be small and great.

"If the business survives, you will sooner or later have a choice about how far and how fast to grow."  This is a regular theme: by choosing to be privately-held, or otherwise limit growth, these companies are unrestrained in their ability to invest in what they want to invest in.  With little or no outside investment, there is no one watching over the CEOs shoulder, chiding about overhead costs and frivolous employee benefit spending, chastising every action that is not breakneck-speed-growth oriented.

Burlingham warns about the dangers of catering to outsiders, and the investment-reinvestment treadmill that can only be broken by saving or borrowing more capital.  But to achieve the 'mojo' Burlingham regularly references, "... you could argue that a small giant's mojo comes, in part, from an active appreciation of a business's potential to make a positive impact in the lives of the people it comes into contact with."

Becoming fixtures in the communities they serve means doing more than just being good neighbors to the towns where they operate. "For lack of a better term, we might refer to the process as building a sense of community -- that is, a sense of common cause between the company, its employees, its customers, and supplies.  That sense of community rests on three pillars.  The first is integrity... The second pillar is professionalism...  The third pillar is ... the direct, human connection."  These three pillars can hold up a business as it strengthens a massive network up and down the supply chain, while also digging deep roots into the actual communities the business serves.

The most important group served by these three pillars, is a company's workforce.  The employees of a company won't become loyal unless the business is worthy of that loyalty, and shows it to their employees in return.  Putting more trust in employees to do their job and do it well, the extension of faith that we're all here for the same reason, and the willingness to offer a hand to members of the team who need a little extra help -- all of these are behaviors that small giants have in spades.

Of course, one great difficulty is in carrying on the established tradition -- the mojo -- to the next owner.  Often the failure after bringing on outside funding and investors is the breakdown of the critical elements of culture that the business had worked so hard to establish.  Similarly, passing a business on to the next generation of owners and operators, while keeping the original spirit alive, is a real challenge.  Some businesses are better prepared than others, but most small giants have at least some idea of where their business will go once they are gone.

Burlingham finishes by discussing the 'art of business'.  The founder of Inc. Magazine, Bernard A. Goldhirsh helped to redefine what it meant to be entrepreneurial in America. " Although it's hard to imagine now, there was a time when it was not considered a compliment to be called "entrepreneurial.... Bernie frequently talked about an aspect of entrepreneurship that other people sometimes overlooked -- the intensely creative, almost artistic, part of the process."

"Entrepreneurship, Bernie realized, was the means by which an economy continually renewed itself.  Without it, a country would lose its vitality, its energy, and become impoverished -- just as a culture would become impoverished without the ongoing creation of art."

There are a million and one little nuggets of gold from this book, small quotes, personal asides from CEOs themselves, and ancillary stories that all together, leave you with an invigorating idea of how to become great without 'selling out'.  Small Giants is as much a tale of character, innovation, and perseverance, as it is about business.

I highly recommend Small Giants to anyone who has wondered how many paths there are to greatness.

Available on Amazon, and on discount bookstore shelves near you: http://amzn.to/2oLpfrG