I really don't mean smart and diligent, although they were those things. Individually smart and diligent workers are very common in my experience.
I really mean that the management culture is good. The management culture is not based on the whims of individual managers, bureaucracy for bureaucracy's sake, or assignment of blame to the least powerful. The bureaucratic processes are focused on the work results through defining work processes. For example, PG has a work process where a failure must be examined five levels deep to find the root cause of a failure.
It is amazing to me how many companies don't even look at their work processes. This is obviously a pet peeve of mine, but I find is very refreshing to find a company that is well managed and it does affect my investment decisions.
I really mean that the management culture is good. The management culture is not based on the whims of individual managers, bureaucracy for bureaucracy's sake, or assignment of blame to the least powerful. The bureaucratic processes are focused on the work results through defining work processes. For example, PG has a work process where a failure must be examined five levels deep to find the root cause of a failure.
It is amazing to me how many companies don't even look at their work processes. This is obviously a pet peeve of mine, but I find is very refreshing to find a company that is well managed and it does affect my investment decisions.