Built to Last

In the best selling business book "Built to Last" Jim Collins and Jerry Porras profile 18 "visionary" companies that have had sustained success relative to the market. They looked at companies at least 50 years old. It's just one example of how in North America our conception of time is so different than here in Israel and the Middle East, where history is measured in centuries and millennia, and not years and decades.

Two things in particular have stood out to me as being "built to last". Many of the ruins I have seen are two thousand years or older, yet they are still standing. I am talking about walls, structures, even columns. It just makes me laugh when I think about all the condo's in Toronto that were thrown up overnight in the past ten years. A friend of mine once commented to me that his condo was "old" when I asked it's exact age he said about ten years. I won't be surprised if some of these buildings don't even last fifty years before being knocked down due to poor building standards or materials.

The other thing that stuck with me was my visit to the Israel Museum earlier today. Some of the books and scrolls on display are over one thousand years old. In contrast I bought a brand new copy of George Orwell's "Homage to Catalonia" in Cambodia last summer and pages started falling out within days. Today we no longer "build to last". We build for cheap and now.

In a funny kind of way this relates to my interest in family business. Since most family businesses are private, they are not pressured to make long-term sacrifices to hit short-term profit targets like many public firms often are. It's easier for them to take the long view, which is something that appeals to me.