Sunday, March 15, 2009

There's no such thing as "best companies"

The current issue of Fortune Magazine has a list of the "world's most admired" companies. They're also keeping track of the "100 best companies." There's no such thing as a "good company," there are only good people. If a company is good, it's because the people who founded it were smart, they made good decisions and established good policies, and they hired good people. A "good company" can be run into the ground by a handful of bad executives. Decades of progress and achievement can be lost in a matter of a few years, or in extreme cases, a few months. Ask the investors in Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Washington Mutual, Merrill Lynch, AIG, Citigroup and Bank of America. At the end of the day, a company is nothing more than the quality of its people. Nothing else really matters.

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