Staying on Task with RRWolfgang

Thomas J. Peters, co-author of In Search of Excellence, spent the latter part of the ‘70s and the early part of the ‘80s in management consulting. Consulting, by definition, means being “employed or involved in giving professional advice to the public or to those practicing the profession” (1). The professional advice delivered by Peters and his fellow author Robert Waterman Jr. is as valuable to management today as it was twenty years ago.
As its title suggests, In Search of Excellence is fueled by the underlying theme of delivering high quality in business. It doesn’t take too much imagination to gauge how this principle might still be applicable in business today. Quality, which is always defined by the customer, may be delivering a better product to market, but it could also be providing exceptional service, as in the case of the Caterpillar Tractor Company (Peters 171). In Search of Excellence noted how Caterpillar’s success was attributable to their relentless pursuit of improving their products, and providing superb service to their customers. Does this ethic work in today’s business world? It would seem so, inasmuch as Caterpillar is still profitable enough to have been a contender to purchase Allison Transmission from the seemingly-not-so-quality-oriented General Motors.
Another book on successful business operation is Jim Collins’ Good to Great. Good to Great was published some nineteen years after In Search of Excellence and their focuses differ a bit. Collins’ book focuses not only on creating financially successful business, but creating employment positions that are fulfilling as well (Collins 100). Though Collins’ work does not have exactly the same focus of the service-oriented In Search of Excellence, the two pieces did not contradict, in my opinion, but instead offered keen insight to a more well-rounded business perspective.
In Collins’ opinion, to achieve a more well-rounded business environment with “good to great” results means having a “Level 5 leader” at the helm (Collins 21). These Level 5 leaders exude the iron determination that one might typically think of when pondering high level executives, but they also keep their ego out of the equation. As Collins puts it, “It’s not that Level 5 leaders have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious- but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves” (Collins 22). This description brings us back to the notion that an employee must find his or her work fulfilling. It is almost impossible for individuals, executive or not, to lay aside their own personal interests for the benefit of some impersonal entity that they don’t believe in. In light of this, it would seem that the pursuit of professional fulfillment has some practical application after all.