Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big, 10th-Anniversary Edition

Whatever their particular ownership structure, all of the companies guarded their equity zealously to make sure it remained in the hands of people committed to the same goals.

“To me, a good client is a good corporate citizen, honest and good to the community,”

The shareholders who owned the businesses I was looking at had other, nonfinancial priorities in addition to their financial objectives. Not that they didn’t want to earn a good return on their investment, but it wasn’t their only goal, or even necessarily their paramount goal. They were also interested in being great at what they did, creating a g

“Soul can’t exist unless you have active, meaningful dialogue with stakeholders: employees, customers, the community, suppliers, and investors. When you launch a business, your job as the entrepreneur is to say, ‘Here’s a value proposition that I believe in. Here’s where I’m coming from. This is my point of view.’ At first, it’s a monologue. Gradua

to customers, having great relationships with their suppliers, making great contributions to the communities they lived and worked in, and finding great ways to lead their lives.

Third, each company had an extraordinarily intimate relationship with the local city, town, or county in which it did business—a

Because of their success, they find themselves faced with so many opportunities that it takes a conscious effort on their part to keep from heading off in the wrong direction.

level of customer service so natural, so warm, and so apparently effortless that patrons didn’t experience it as service at all, but rather as the kind of hospitality they might receive if they were guests in the home of a person whom they perhaps didn’t know very well but who clearly felt honored by their presence. Meyer called it “enlightened hos

Success means you’re going to have better problems. I’m very happy with the problems I have now.”