Bold decisions and innovation pay off for some companies
Given the thousands of business decisions made every day by company executives and business owners around the world, selecting the 18 greatest business decisions of all time is no small feat. In The Greatest Business Decisions of All Time, nine Fortune magazine editors have compiled such a list, including modern and historic decisions from companies around the globe. Verne Harnish, the Fortune magazine contributor who launched the idea of the book and whose succinct summaries precede the case study on every decision, explains: “In the end, the 18 management decisions that made our final list stood out from others because they were counterintuitive — they went against the grain of popular practice.” For example, Harnish continues, “What executive in his right mind would give his employees time to daydream — but that’s exactly what 3M CEO William McKnight did in 1948.”
New Takes on Familiar Tales
Many business book readers will be familiar with McKnight’s decision to give employees a certain percentage of free time to work on the project of their own choosing. Other familiar stories include Johnson & Johnson’s decision in 1982 to take action in the wake of the Tylenol poisonings that caused the deaths of seven people in the Chicago area; Jack Welch’s revitalization of GE’s corporate university at Crotonville, NY; and Nordstrom’s focus on boundaryless customer service.
In the knowledgeable hands of the Fortune editors, the short chapters of even these well-known cases make for interesting reading, thanks to unexpected details.
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