Credit: Lila Aryan Photography
Rich Meeusen is chairman and chief executive officer of Brown Deer-based Badger Meter Inc. He’s retiring from his position as CEO at the end of the year. He has been CEO since 2002 and joined the company in 1995.
“Every day, business leaders waste their time reading books about other successful businesses. This trend started in 1982 with the release of ‘In Search of Excellence’ and was further advanced by 2001’s ‘Good to Great’ – two of the most quoted and least read books since the Bible. Worse yet, these books provided source material for business school ‘case studies,’ ensuring that our future business leaders will continue to believe that they can only succeed by emulating other successful businesses.
“Unfortunately, it’s not that simple. Modeling oneself after the companies highlighted in those books is like standing outside of the Potawatomi Casino and interviewing only the winners. You quickly get a distorted view of the risks involved.
“Those books recommended that business leaders adopt the practices of companies like Wang Laboratories (bankrupt in 1993) and Circuit City (bankrupt in 2008), among other failed companies. Leaders that read those books and copied those business models inevitably followed the failed companies off the cliff.
“So years ago I changed my business reading list to emphasize books about business failures. I read books about Sears, RCA, Woolworths and Blockbuster. My 113-year-old company, Badger Meter, has survived that long by avoiding the mistakes that doomed other companies, not by trying to emulate companies that may be temporarily successful.
“My suggestion for living a long life is check out the graveyards. Find out what killed other companies. Success can be temporary, but death is permanent.”
Badger Meter Inc.
4545 W. Brown Deer Road, Brown Deer
Industry: Manufacturing
Employees: 1,570
