Scaling Up Excellence

Getting to More Without Settling for Less

By: Robert I. Sutton, Huggy Rao

Narrated by: Rob Shapiro

Wall Street Journal Bestseller

"The pick of 2014's management books." –Andrew Hill, Financial Times

"One of the top business books of the year." –Harvey Schacter, The Globe and Mail

Bestselling author, Robert Sutton and Stanford colleague, Huggy Rao tackle a challenge that determines every organization’s success: how to scale up farther, faster, and more effectively as an organization grows.

Sutton and Rao have devoted much of the last decade to uncovering what it takes to build and uncover pockets of exemplary performance, to help spread them, and to keep recharging organizations with ever better work practices. Drawing on inside accounts and case studies and academic research from a wealth of industries-- including start-ups, pharmaceuticals, airlines, retail, financial services, high-tech, education, non-profits, government, and healthcare-- Sutton and Rao identify the key scaling challenges that confront every organization. They tackle the difficult trade-offs that organizations must make between whether to encourage individualized approaches tailored to local needs or to replicate the same practices and customs as an organization or program expands. They reveal how the best leaders and teams develop, spread, and instill the right mindsets in their people-- rather than ruining or watering down the very things that have fueled successful growth in the past. They unpack the principles that help to cascade excellence throughout an organization, as well as show how to eliminate destructive beliefs and behaviors that will hold them back.

Scaling Up Excellence is the first major business book devoted to this universal and vexing challenge and it is destined to become the standard bearer in the field.

a MUST read, regardless age of your organization

Very informative and straight to the point on examples of what works and what does not, tips and recommendations on scaling a business.

Must read

If you own or manage a business, this book is a must read. I often cringe at business books written by an MBA with models dehumanizing the customer's experience of serving others. This book is the exact opposite. It helps us all remember the "must do's" required for any organization to thrive, and much more.

Enjoyed it had some great ideas and stories

Very practical and insightful and the ideas are backed up. I recommend it if you are working on scaling.

Definitely some good learnings for scaling up

I would suggest is for anybody who is involved in scaling up an organization or department. The only drug that are that the authors seem to rely only on stories and best practices that they have personally come into contact with as a result of their internal research at Stanford. It would have been nice for them to go out and find some other examples as well, but that leaves some room for a second book! Overall a worthwhile read.

Fun to read, but not very helpful

it's a lot of helpful experience-based advice, that is categorized in helpful chapters but if I was going into a season of needing to scale up an organization, I wouldn't think of this book first.