BOOK REVIEW

Guts! Companies that Blow the Doors off Business-as-Usual

Guts! Companies that Blow the Doors off Business-as-Usual

Introduction

GUTS! is a sequel to the Freiberg's first book, “NUTS! Southwest Airline's Crazy recipe for Business and Personal Success” and unfortunately, GUTS! falls victim to the sequel syndrome that befalls many successful motion pictures - its not as good as the original. As I read this book I kept thinking that the authors simply picked up literary litter from the editing room floor of their first book. GUTS! relies far too much on regurgitating the Southwest Airlines story told in NUTS!.

The book truly enlightening is the discovery that while these companies belong to diverse industries, their brand of gutsy leadership, culture and philosophy share a common thread and are the very reasons for their remarkable success despite a very challenging business environment. The Freibergs unravel seven gutsy secrets that is nothing too complex that cannot be replicated by other companies. Nevertheless these qualities require lots of guts to copy and hence, can only be role-modeled by truly gutsy organizations.

Gutsy Secret One: Gutsy Companies Brand An Employee-First Culture

Gutsy leaders believe that people are not like capital, fuel, oil or machines that can be dispensed with anytime. Employees are valuable partners that must be managed with lots of heart, soul, care, and humor as well as with discipline and tough love. Gutsy companies believe that when one puts people first, employees will do a better job and put customers first.

Gutsy companies have employee-first brand cultures where people want to work and choose to stay. Employees are not merely satisfied but are overwhelmingly enthusiastic. They become ambassadors of culture, advocating the company brand.

Gutsy Scenes

The SAS Institute believes in family and work life balance. The company offices and workspaces are designed to maximize comfort, minimize stress, and increase performance and productivity. SAS provides employees with a generously subsidized Montessori daycare program, said to be the largest in North Carolina; flexible seven-hour workdays; unlimited sick leaves; fully paid kid days where parents can stay home with a sick child or attend important events like class plays, parent-teacher meetings, etc.; free round the clock medical treatment at the Health Care Center; workplace with great park-like landscape and filled with 3,000 pieces of original works of art and high-touch employee benefits like M&M candies delivered every Wednesday and life-size chess set gaming on campus.

Dan Edelman breathes new life to Bon Marche' with an integrating life and work balance program, BonLife. With BonLife, desktops are replaced with docking stations to allow telecommuting; flextime, casual dress code, pets on the job, bonuses, morning coffee and pastry became the norm. Moreover, Edelman began employee dialogues. Not only did Edelman solicit and read employee e-mails, he acted on many of the well-meaning and objective suggestions.

Gutsy Lessons

Employees first, not just customers. Create a workplace that anticipate and address workforce needs, not just customers. Pay attention to employee needs. When SAS Institute was still a start-up; Jim Goodnight realized that most of ...