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Some Fortune Best 100 Takeaways
The anticipation and apprehension that Fortune applicants feel for the magazine’s annual magazine announcement of the Best 100 list was aggravated a bit this year when Fortune unexpectedly, on short notice and without explanation pushed back the announcement from January to February. In recent years, it had always been the magazine’s January cover story. Mrs. Bill Gates replaced it this year. One can only speculate as to why the sudden change in plans. Here are a few theories that are not founded on fact and are the editor's pure speculation:
- Bill Gates wouldn’t commit to having his wife as Fortune’s cover story unless her photo flattered the cover in January – maybe it’s their wedding anniversary month or her birthday month or her Horoscope sign? Perhaps Bill envied Google being ranked #1 for the second year in a row? Or maybe it’s the start of the Best Billionaire Spouse Award?
- Since Google was a repeater this year, the cover story would have been redundant and, perhaps, not worthy of a start-of-the-year cover story. This year’s announcement issue cover design turned out to be a series of three diagonal red bands that read: “The 100 Best Companies to Work For,” and there was no mention that Google topped the list again – the first time in my recall that the #1 company didn’t get a significant cover mention.
- Fortune changed the questions in Culture Audit Part 2 – going from seven questions to 12 and that slowed down the judging process because most applicants that had entered in past years had to re-write the qualitative section of the audit rather than just update it as they had in prior years.
I’m not going to venture a guess as to which of the three speculative theories is closest to the truth – other than to say that reason #1 comes in third on my list.
There were other interesting takeaways from this year’s Fortune Best 100 list:
- There were fewer finalists this year – only 406 compared to 446 and 466 in the prior two years.
- 23 new companies were named to the list. The churn over the prior three years averaged 20.
- Over 50% of the companies on the list are privately owned. Public companies dominated the list in the early years of the award.
- Texas tied California – perennial best-list state leader – with 13 companies on the list that are headquartered in its state. New York came in 3rd with nine. Only 27 states, plus the District of Columbia, were represented on the latest list.
- The sidebar article on how Fortune picks the list that had appeared in the magazine article for years was dropped from the magazine this year – although the information can still be found on Fortune’s website.
There were also some interesting and newly featured “bests” among the winners:
- Microsoft, Herman Miller and S.C. Johnson & Son have the “Coolest Headquarters” – I’ve been to the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed buildings at S.C. Johnson & Son. The men’s room off the main entrance to one of the buildings is simply amazing! Worth a trip just to wash your hands. (The ladies room is probably equally amazing.)
- eBay, SAS Institute and Goldman Sachs have the “Best Gyms.”
- Google, eBay and Factset Research Institute (Norwalk, CT) have the “Best Cafeterias.”
- Quicken, Perkins Cole, Nike, Microsoft and JM Family have the best “After Hours” social networking events.
I can’t wait until next year. Rich
can be reached at 203 459-0773 or RichardFFederico@yahoo.com
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