No Limits to Growth
These two incidents illustrate the fact that both in success and in failure companies remain largely unaware of the actual process of corporate success and the enormous untapped potentials that remain unutilized even during periods of peak performance. Similar experiences studying and consulting for small, medium and multi-national corporations in America, Europe and Asia have led me to three fundamental conclusions about performance in business.
The first is that doubling or tripling profits of any company is possible within a year or two, regardless of whether it is an entrepreneurial start-up or a fifty-year-old corporate giant, privately owned or nationalized. There is only one caveat to this conclusion: the owners and management of the company must really want it – seriously. Every company would like to double or triple their profits in two years, but not every company is willing for the effort needed to achieve it. That aspiration, commitment and determination are non-negotiable conditions. Greater success comes to those who really want it and are willing to work for it.
In the late 1970s the American automotive industry faced the most severe threat since its inception, due to the onslaught of low priced, high quality small imported cars from Japan. When Lee Iacocca took over as CEO of Chrysler Corporation in 1979, the company had lost $3.3 billion dollars in three years, more than any business in history up to then. Industry experts and Wall Street analysts were unanimous in predicting that Chrysler would be bankrupt within six months. Our own analysis was that the company had enormous untapped strengths and we presented a set of strategies designed to help Chrysler rebound. Iacocca thanked us for expressing confidence in the face of so much dismal pessimism. Over the next three years Chrysler earned a net profit of $3.3 billion, an increase in performance of $6.6 billion over its earlier losses and more money than it had earned in the previous 59 years of its existence.
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