Companies should hire outside CEOs to stimulate fundamental change. In 1,700 years of combined lifespans across the visionary companies, we found only four individual incidents of going outside for a CEO - and those in only two companies. Homegrown management rules at the visionary companies to a far greater degree than at the comparison companies. Time and again, they have dashed to bits the conventional wisdom that significant change and fresh ideas cannot come from insiders. The most successful companies focus primarily on beating the competition.
Visionary companies focus primarily on beating themselves.
In some cases they have asked this question day in and day out for more than 150 years. You can't have your cake and eat it too. Instead, they embrace the genius of the and - the paradoxical view that allows them to pursue both A and B at the same time. Creating a statement can be a helpful step in building a visionary company, but it is only one of thousands of steps in a never-ending process of expressing the fundamental characteristics we identified across the visionary companies. The lessons of these companies can be learned and applied by the vast majority of managers at all levels.