The Road to Organic Growth: How Great Companies Consistently Grow Marketshare from Within [Hardcover]

Edward Hess (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 13, 2006

Why is Organic Growth a Smart Long-Term Strategy for Your Company?

A rigorous two-year study of the top 800 value-creating public companies found that growth generated internally through a commitment to customer satisfaction, employee engagement, and profitability resulted in consistent employee retention, stock value improvements, and better returns on investment.

In The Road to Organic Growth, Edward Hess shares the full results of his breakthrough study, providing fresh, and often-surprising perspectives on what it really takes to foster organic growth. Using instructive examples from leading companies such as SYSCO, Best Buy,Tiffany & Company, Outback Steakhouse, and Stryker Corporation, Hess reveals the strategies these trailblazers used to achieve long-term growth from within.

Drawing upon original research, interviews, and in-depth corporate studies, Hess identifies the six keys to achieving organic growth and-most important-explains how to seamlessly and consistently incorporate them into a formula for sustainability and competitive advantage to

• Develop a simple, easy-to-understand business model and growth strategy
• Be entrepreneurial at the point of customer contact
• Measure everything-from finances to operations to behaviors
• Build an engaged, loyal, and multi-talented people pipeline
• Find humble, internally-focused operators to lead your company
• Be an execution and technology champion

The Road to Organic Growth proves that you can build a sustainable, successful business without the expense of acquisitions, financial manipulations, or devaluing your employees. By exceeding customer expectations, building an employee-centric organization, and focusing intensely on measurement and performance, your company will achieve consistent, solid growth from within.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Achieve Solid Progress from Within by Following the Road to Organic Growth

“Ed Hess has created a brilliant book. It is a must read for anyone interested in how organizations succeed. He provides compelling evidence that popular prescriptions for business success are frequently misguided. This book will be a classic and may cause business management to rethink its fundamental assumptions.”-Professor Kim Cameron, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan

“Ed Hess provides actionable takeaways for businesses looking to grow organically. He clearly sees the future of business and the workplace.”-Patrick S. Flood, Chairman & CEO, HomeBanc Mortgage Corp.

“The Road to Organic Growth illuminates the keys that separate the best performers. One of the must reads of the year.”-Gary Bouch, Senior Vice President, Operations, FedEx Freight

“Ed Hess has done a wonderful job of teaching us to look beyond the numbers to the character and soul of great enterprises.”-Darren Jackson, Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer, Best Buy Co., Inc.

About the Author

Edward D. Hess, B.S., J.D., L.L.M., is an adjunct professor of organization and management, and the founder and executive director of both The Center for Entrepreneurship and Corporate Growth, and the Values-Based Leadership Institute at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. For more information, visit him on the Web at www.edhltd.com.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 224 pages
• Publisher: McGraw-Hill; 1 edition (December 13, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0071475257
• ISBN-13: 978-0071475259
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6.5 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #463,242 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Edward D. Hess is a Professor of Business Administration and Batten Executive-in-Residence at the Darden Graduate School of Business, The University of Virginia.He spent over 30 years in the business world prior to joining academia as a lawyer, investment banker, strategy consultant, and entrepreneur.

He is the author/editor of 9 books, over 60 business school cases, and over 60 articles dealing with high performance organizations, growth, values-based leadership, and family businesses. His current research is in the areas of Smart Growth, managing the challenges of private company growth,growth leadership, growth systems, growth processes, and enduring organizations. His work can be found @ www.EDHLTD.com. His work has appeared in over 200 media outlets worldwide the last 4 years including WSJ Radio, Dow Jones Radio,Bloomberg Radio, CNBC, NPR, Fox Business News, Forbes, Bloomberg, Business Week, Investor's Business Daily, CFO Magazine, Leadership Excellence, Chief Learning Officer, Washington Post, Financial Executive,Big Think, Business Insider, MSNBC Radio, and Money Magazine.

He has extensive experience advising and financing growth companies and multi-generational family businesses. He also has extensive research and consulting experience in the areas of public company organic growth and is the co-author of the Darden Growth/Innovation Model. His organic growth research has produced the concepts of The Growth System, The Growth Risks Audit, The Organic Growth Index financial model, and The Organic Growth Progression.

His business experience includes tenures with Warburg Paribas Becker, Boettcher & Company, The Robert M. Bass Group, Jones Lang Wooten, and Arthur Andersen Finance.

He is a Magna Cum Laude graduate of the University of Florida, and obtained a J.D. from the University of Virginia and an LL.M. ( Taxation) from New York University.

He was raised in Carrollton, Georgia and worked his way through college as a student football mathematician for the Florida Gators. He is happily ( most days) married, loves to cook, travel, read, and play with his grandchildren and two tibetian terriers.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars This book is about building a sustainable and successful biz the old-fashioned way - by growing from within., May 5, 2007

By 

Jeff Lippincott "JLIPPIN" (Princeton, NJ USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Road to Organic Growth: How Great Companies Consistently Grow Marketshare from Within (Hardcover)

A great book! I loved it. It is broken into nine chapters as follows:

1. Why is organic growth important?

2. Discovering the DNA of organic growth.

3. The organic growth winners: Interesting Facts.

4. An elevator-pitch business model.

5. Instill a "small-company soul" into a "big-company body."

6. Measure everything.

7. Build a people pipeline.

8. Leaders: humble, passionate, focused operators.

9. Be an execution and technology champion.

Chapters 4 - 9 are the ingredients to building a company through organic growth. If a biz can be explained in a just a few words while riding up an elevator, then it's leaders/managers can probably focus well on growing the business from within. If a biz is comprised of workers who care about the company instead of just showing up to work and collecting a paycheck, then the business will probably grow from within. The business will probably also have a pipeline of new managers if the employees care about coming to work for reasons other than just collecting a paycheck. These are the types of things discussed in the last six chapters of the book.

Generally speaking, companies either grow through "organic growth" or by "mergers and acquisitions." Many companies grow by using both methods, but the author only discusses the organic growth method in this book. There is talk that growth may take place by playing accounting games and engaging in financial manipulations. However, this really is not a method to create growth. Manipulations are just that - shifts of revenues and expenses from one accounting period to another. If there is gain today via manipulation, then there is going to be a loss next week or next month - guaranteed.

A small company soul is what this book is about. And I really enjoyed reading it. I liked the list of "Growth Questions" at the end of each chapter. They helped pull the chapters together for me. If you are putting together a business plan for a start up company, then I recommend you read this book. You will want to incorporate many of the ideas and concepts discussed here into your business plan and your implementation of your business plan.

I would have liked the book better if the print had not been so large. And since the spine of the book was not all that thick I got the feeling that the book was padded by increasing the font size of the text. The book could have been longer if there had been more examples of real world situations regarding what was being discussed. And I would have liked a chapter comparing organic growth to mergers and acquisitions. To discuss organic growth as the best way to grow a company, and to ignore M&A's as though they were a bad way, just didn't feel right to me. In fact, M&A's are a great way to grow a business. But the book was well-written and informative. 5 stars!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic insight with startling conclusions, February 3, 2007

By 

Scott W. Hawley (Atlanta, GA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Road to Organic Growth: How Great Companies Consistently Grow Marketshare from Within (Hardcover)

Professor Hess' groundbreaking work is a breath of fresh air for those of us who have always been suspicious of the notion that "greed is good". As Professor Hess shows in The Road to Organic Growth, this is clearly not the case. Sustainable results are not built on fancy Wall Street transactions or egomaniacal leadership. They are built by leaders who roll up their sleeves, measure everything, and value the members of their organizations. That is good business. I highly recommend The Road to Organic Growth to business students as well as people suspicious of corporate America. Everyone can learn something from this book.

3.0 out of 5 stars Grow or Buy - this talks about grow., July 11, 2008

By 

Jim Estill (New York) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Road to Organic Growth: How Great Companies Consistently Grow Marketshare from Within (Hardcover)

I recently read, The Road to Organic Growth How Great Companies Consistently Grow Marketshare From Within by Edward Hess. Companies do it by:

1. They are generally in one business most can define their business in one sentence.

2. The companies are relentlessly focused and disciplined - they do not take their eye off the ball.

3. They drill down to the line-employee level to ensure that their people understand the business and why their job is important, why certain measurements are being made, and how employees can contribute to their own success.

4. They incrementally improve with continual top-line and bottom-line initiatives by

They involve and engage their staff:

The people doing the work need to understand the business and the importance of their individual jobs, as well as how their success will be measured and what is important to the success of the business.

Everyone has to buy into a system of accountability and a culture of constant improvement.

Only by giving employees "ownership" of their jobs can a company truly have a constant improvement culture that works.

People need constant, reliable, and objective feedback in order to learn and improve. So they have a high focus on measuring results.

It was a good book - not great but just good. I did get some ideas and it was an easy, quick read. Certainly was attracted to the title.