Strategy, execution, culture and structure form the foundation practices of “What Really Works”. When a firm embraces an excellent strategy and executes it flawlessly within a performance oriented culture, success will no doubt follow. However for a performance oriented culture to flourish, the structure of a firm needs to be simplified and bureaucracy reduced. The complementary areas to exceed in are; finding and keeping talent, committed leadership, innovation and creating positive mergers. I believe the reason for the different conclusions of each article is the difference in methodology and the size of the task attempted. The approach used by Stadler is criticised heavily in “selection bias and the perils of benchmarking”. In the article it tells of the dangers of generalising from examples of successful companies. By looking at successful companies you only see firms that won big on risky business ventures and strategy’s not the losers who may have the same traits. When the flaws of benchmarking are coupled with the small sample that Stadler worked with, it is hard to trust the reliability of his conclusions. The findings of Joyce form a valuable tool because not only has it given the findings it shows how the theory would work and help a firm improve depending upon whether it was a loser, climber, tumbler or winner. It is not only the theory within this article that leads me to believe the Joyce article has more reliable findings; the employment background of the three co-authors together is impressive. Overall I think that it is near impossible to find a reliable formula for lasting success. Even though Joyce’s sample is larger I don’t believe his findings could be applied to all of the countless companies that operate in the numerous industries across the world. The complex make up and diversity of every different company is part of the reason why so many attempts at finding the answer to the million dollar question of what makes a business successful...