Highlights (Literally) of When Growth Stalls

One of the cool (or creepy, depending on your perspective) aspects of the Kindle e-reader is its “Popular Highlights” feature. It lets you see what other people who have read what you’re reading thought was interesting enough to underscore.

Below I’ve listed a handful of popular highlights of When Growth Stalls. I think they offer a window of insight into readers’ thinking as our economy continues to languish. And taken together they offer a nice (if incomplete) overview of the book:

I learned two valuable lessons: number one, insane market momentum can’t go on forever; and number two, even in the best-run companies, growth stalls.

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To ride out a downturn, it’s important for every company to “store nuts.”

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The most important thing to remember when hard times hit is to keep your wits about you. Protect your assets, play for the long term, and make sure your people know you have a plan.

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Trying to get everybody to agree on everything is not leadership, it’s a form of passivity. And it is impossible to boot. What consensus does mean, in this context, is agreement among an organization’s senior leadership about the nature and purpose of the company and where it’s intended to go.

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“Results are obtained only by concentration of resources, especially by concentration of the scarcest and most valuable resource, people with proven performance capacity.” (Peter Drucker quote)

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Whether your target is a CEO in the boardroom determining the fate of a multibillion-dollar contract, or a parent in the supermarket deciding between two boxes of cereal, your task is to understand your audience, determine what they’re looking for, and align your product or service with their wants and needs.

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As the “U.S. Army Leadership” manual knowingly states, “No plan survives initial contact with the enemy.”

If you haven’t picked up a copy of When Growth Stalls yet, I encourage you to do so. It’s available at most bookstores as well as on Amazon.com and Barnes & Noble online. As the highlights above (and recent reviews) indicate, its advice is as relevant as ever.