On November 25, 2009, a select audience of 60 CEOs, company chairmen, entrepreneurs and business owners attended an Exclusive VIP Dinner event with Professor Donald Sull, titled How Good Companies Can Get Better. The event began with a cocktail reception followed by a talk based on professor Sull’s best-selling book Why Good Companies Go Bad.
During his especially interactive talk, Professor Sull discussed with participants the various factors that can “make” or “break” a company, and the different issues that have been faced by successful companies around the globe. Those who attended, participated in the discussion and took part in an online vote, introduced by KPMG in Greece for the first time, during which the opinions of these influential people were recorded and discussed further.
Voting Results
- When asked the question “Why do Good Companies Go Bad”, 53% of the evening’s participants voted that “executives do not see changes coming”, whereas 14% judged that managers were complacent. Another 11% attributed the fact to corporate fraud, and, finally, 11% to their executives not being smart enough to react effectively.
- Answers from the second and final question of the evening showed that Greek executives blame inflexibility and complacency as a major issue. When asked the question ““Why do commitments harden?”, 26% of participants answered that “top executives are wed to the existing way of doing things”, 23% answered that “companies reinforce existing commitments to differentiate themselves from competitors”, 20% said that “over time, commitments are taken for granted”, and another 20% admitted simply “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”.
The evening ended with participation in an exclusive dinner reception with the professor.
Professor Donald N. Sull is a global authority on achieving strategic agility in unpredictable markets. He is a Professor of Management Practice in Strategic and International Management and Faculty Director of Executive Education at the London Business School, but was also Professor of Entrepreneurship at Harvard Business School.
He has been identified as a guru by the Economist, which named his theory of active inertia “an idea that has shaped business management over the past century”. Fortune has listed him among the “ten new management gurus to know”.
Participants at the Exclusive VIP Dinner watch Professor Sull’s talk.