How Do You Define Greatness?

How do you define greatness in a company?

In the short run, maybe you can judge a company on its innovation, or exceptional creation of shareholder value. Dell was once a great company, but lost its edge just around the time it started crowing that "Dude, you got a PC." Apple was a great company that became decidedly mediocre before becoming great again (for the time being). Both companies turned their lonely eyes back to their visionary leaders, but Michael Dell has been thus far unable to recreate the magic, while Steve Jobs has. How about longevity? IBM and Xerox would probably qualify on that score, although Xerox is a far cry from the heyday of the Palo Alto Research Center (PARC) and the leadership of organizational guru John Seely Brown, and IBM can best be qualified these days as competent, even if it continues to fund IBM Research and has one of the richest patent portfolios of any company on earth.

How about measuring a company by how many other companies it spawns? The company I have in mind is MSA (also known as Management Science America), the alumni of which have spawned over 80 companies in the Atlanta area alone; MSA graduates continue to generate new companies even though MSA ceased to exist in 1990, when it was sold to Dun & Bradstreet. One of those alumni created a time line of Atlanta technology companies that is such a thing of beauty, visual display guru Edward Tufte should feature it in one of his books.

Internet Security Systems (ISS), which was sold to IBM for $1.3 billion, is probably the best-known of the MSA progeny, but all eighty-plus companies, including Stockholder Systems Inc. (SSI), which was a key acquisition by Checkfree, and Knowledgeware, which has since been acquired by CA, are all either still in business or have been acquired by a larger company that is itself still in business.

I spoke to Sig Mosely, a former MSA corporate vice president who worked at the company for 21 years and reported directly to legendary CEO John Imlay. Based on what Mosely told me, MSA didn't especially try to cultivate entrepreneurs or encourage executives to create new business ideas. "We were pretty much told what the plan was," Mosley told me. So to what does he attribute the success of the many MSA executives who went on to found companies?

"We believed in training employees and helping them develop to the best of their abilities," Mosley said. He added that the company tried to always recruit the best people available. Like sports franchises, some companies look for talent to address particular areas of weakness, while other companies (and teams) look for the best pure talent, and figure out how to make use of their talents later.

"When you looked at these people, was there a sense of, 'this guy is going to found his own company?'" I asked Mosely.

"No," he said. "But you always knew they could."

Kevin Canniff, another MSA alumnus commenting on software company nostalgia site Software Memories, said the company "did their homework before hiring someone:"

They definitely did their homework before hiring someone. Not only did they have to be technically proficient, they had to be "compatible" with others. I went through a 9 hour "interview" process, meeting with several different managers, HR, technical people, etc.

I would argue that MSA was a great company based on the standard of how many other companies it spawned, in part because of all that can be inferred from that fact -- great hiring, great training, great motivation. Do you agree with that standard? If not, what other standard do you think stands the test of time?

[Image: Sig Mosley and John Imlay courtesy of Technology Association of Georgia]