Books that Matter to Me: Good to Great

One of the best books I've read on leadership and taking organisations from ordinary organisations (or at best, what could be described as 'good') to a higher level, is Jim Collins' book: "Good to Great", Harper Business, 2001.





What I love about this book is that it's based on intensive research conducted by Collins and a great team of researchers and it has lots of practical cases (albeit predominantly American examples) of companies that have risen from 'good to great' and behind every great company, guess what? Yes there's a great leader.





Each chapter has a handy summary that gives you the key points. For example:
"The good to great leaders began the transformation by first getting the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and then figured out where to drive it."

Rigorous decision making in people decisions:

• When in doubt, don't hire - keep looking
• When you know you need to make a people change, act. First, be sure you don't simply have someone in the wrong seat.
• Put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems.
• Good to great management teams consist of people who debate vigorously in search of the best answers, yet who unify behind decisions, regardless of parochial interests.
  One of the best quotes in the book is in Chapter 1: Good is the enemy of great.
  

Other great quotes: Chapter 4: from Winston Churchill:

"There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hopes soon to be swept away." Collins makes the point that many companies fail to face the real facts, as he says:

"There is nothing wrong with pursuing a vision for greatness. After all, the good to great companies also set out to create greatness. But, unlike the comparison companies, the good to great companies continually refine the 'path to greatness with the brutal facts of reality.'

Collins argues that good to great leaders embrace the 'facts of life' and they understand the importance of creating a climate within their organisation, where the truth is heard. He suggests that leaders begin with questions not answers. "Leading from good to great does not mean coming up with all of the answers and then motivating everyone to follow your messianic vision. It means having the humility to grasp the fact that you do not yet understand enough to have the answers and then to ask the questions that will lead to the best possible insights.

• Lead with questions not answers
• Engage in dialogue and debate, not coercion
• Conduct autopsies, without blame
• Build red flag mechanisms that turn information into information that cannot be ignored

Collins describes the good to great leaders as Level 5 Leaders, which is the top level of the hierarchy of executive capabilities. They:

• display compelling modesty, are self-effacing and understated
• are fanatically driven, infected with an incurable need to produce sustained results. They are resolved to do whatever it takes to make the company great, no matter how big or hard the decisions.
• display a workmanlike diligence
• look out the window to attribute success to factors other than themselves.

Level 5 leaders are not larger-than-life celebrity leaders who ride in from the outside - these are negatively correlated with going from good to great organisations.

Other tips:

• If you have 'to do lists', do you have a "stop doing" list ?
• Good to great companies think differently about technology and technological change - they become pioneers in the application of carefully selected technologies.
• No matter how dramatic the end result, the good to great transformations, never happen in one fell swoop. There is no one single defining action, no grand program, no one killer innovation, no solitary lucky break and no miracle moment!

Harry Truman once said:

You can accomplish anything in life, provided that you do not mind who gets the credit.

What I love about this book is that it debunks most of the myths that we hold dear about what makes a great organisation and a great leader. Great leadership is not about the charismatic all-knowing leader, who envisions and leads a group of followers to the 'land of honey'. The reality is that great organisations and great leaders can be ordinary people with passion, vision, direction and above, all humility to ask what they don't know and to get on and do the job with the best team of people they can assemble. Anything is possible with the right people, doing the right work and heading in the right direction!

Read the book and judge for yourself the benefits of asking the right questions and getting the right people on the bus and the wrong ones off! Enjoy!