In Small Giants: Companies That Choose to Be Great Instead of Big, Bo Burlingham explains how and why the size of a company does not determine whether or not it has these characteristics. Rather, he identifies 14 companies that he calls “small giants.” They range from Selima Inc. (a two-person fashion design and dressmaking firm) to O.C. Tanner (a company with 1,700 hundred employees and annual sales of $350-million).

Although these companies are quite different in size and nature, Burlingham has identified seven common threads:

“First, I could see that, unlike most entrepreneurs, their founders and leaders had recognized the full range of choices they had about the type of company they would create.

“Second, the leaders had overcome the enormous pressures on successful companies to take paths they had not chosen and did not necessarily want to follow.

“Third, each company had an extraordinarily intimate relationship with the local city, town, or county in which it did business — a relationship that went well beyond the usual concept of `giving back’.

“Fourth, they cultivated exceptionally intimate relationships with customers and suppliers, based on personal contact, one-on-one interaction, and mutual commitment to delivering on promises.

“Fifth, the companies also had what struck me as unusually intimate workplaces.

“Sixth, I was impressed by the variety of corporate structures and modes of governance that these companies had come up with.

“Finally, I noticed the passion that the leaders brought to what the company did. They loved the subject matter, whether it be music, safety lighting, food, special effects, constant torque hinges, beer, records storage, construction, dining, or fashion.”

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Be sure to check out Bo’s latest book, Finish Big: How Great Entrepreneurs Exit Their Companies on Top, published by Portfolio/Penguin Random House (2015). To learn more about Bo and his work, please click here.