Why Can't We Get Anything Done?

In the retail world, companies benchmark the Men's Wearhouse. The Men's Wearhouse pays people on commission. And if employees sell more than $500 at one time, the company pays them a bigger commission. Other companies have adopted that system.

But what other companies don't do is look at the underlying thinking that drives that system. Founder and CEO George Zimmer had a great insight that is the key to the success of the Men's Wearhouse. He started with a question: Where is the power in retail? Most people think that the power in retail is in buying the merchandise -- that if you want to rise to the top of retail, you need to be in buying. But Zimmer had a blinding grasp of the obvious: You don't make money when you buy the merchandise -- you make money when you sell the merchandise! If you adopt that idea as the basis for how you run your company, what do you do differently? You put more emphasis on store operations. You put more emphasis on training your salespeople. If you look at everything that Zimmer does at the Men's Wearhouse, you'll see that it all connects back to one fundamental idea: that in retail, selling is the key to success.

Here's another example. Southwest Airlines is premised on another blinding grasp of the obvious: People do not pay to sit in the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport. People pay to get from once place to another. It sounds simple, but it's very hard to get people to have the courage, the wisdom, and the insight to see beyond what everybody else is doing -- and to take notice of the obvious, unexamined, and unacted-upon truths.

One final insight: For successful companies, there is no knowing-doing gap. There is no difference between how they think, who they are, and what they do.

Alan M. Webber (awebber@fastcompany.com) is a Fast Company founding editor. Contact Jeffrey Pfeffer by email (pfeffer_jeffrey@gsb.stanford.edu).