Concept
The good-to-great concept was developed by Jim Collins in 2001, after studying many successful American companies. The author then concluded that great companies are characterised by certain qualities, including influential leadership, focus, a talented team, a culture of disciplines, a core mission and values, pioneering in technology application, build to last, and strategic management. In Good to Great, Jim Collins offers a roadmap for turning the average into the exceptional. Through detailed case studies of eleven (11) companies that went from tracking the market to exceeding it by at least 3x, Collins presents the key factors that separate good organisations from great ones.
Background
Good to Great book of 2001 presents the findings of a five-year study by Jim Collins, identifying public companies that had achieved enduring success after years of performance and analysing the factors which differentiated those companies from their rivals. These factors were grouped into key concepts like influential leadership, culture, and strategic management.
How does it work?
Here is a brief description of attributes that differentiate the great from good companies, inspired by Collins’s book ‘Good to great’ 2001 (Collins, 2001)1:
- Leadership: includes a variation of behaving skills and attitudes of great leaders like self-effacing, quiet, reserved, and even shy. These leaders are a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will.
- Teams and organisation: good-to-great leaders first get the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats, and then they will figure out where to drive it.
- Never lose faith: Every good-to-great company maintains unwavering faith that it can and shall prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, and have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of its current reality, whatever they might be.
- The hedgehog concept: is based on an ancient Greek belief that states “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing”. A company can benefit from the hedgehog concept by identifying the sweet spot of the three directions: (1) understand what your people are truly passionate about, (2) identify what the organisation does better than anyone else, and (3) determine where it is good at generating revenue. This concept is about learning the art of simplicity, like a hedgehog, and creating a clear focus for your organisation.
- A culture of discipline: all companies have a culture, and some companies have discipline, but few firms have a culture of discipline. When you have disciplined people, you neither need hierarchy nor bureaucracy and excessive controls. When you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of a great performance.
- Technology accelerators: good-to-great companies think differently about the role of technology. They never use technology as the primary means of igniting a transformation. Yet, paradoxically, they are pioneers in the application of selected technologies. We learned that technology alone is never a primary cause of either greatness or decline.
- The flywheel concept: imagine that your task is to get the flywheel rotating as fast as possible. You will first face hard times rotating the flywheel, and as you continue pushing it, it becomes easier and faster. Likewise, turning a great company will require relentlessly working to build momentum until a point of breakthrough and beyond.
- Build-to-last: build to last is about how you take a company with significant results and turn it into an enduring great company of iconic stature. Making that lasting shift requires core values and a purpose beyond just making money, combined with the dynamic of preserving the core / stimulating progress.
- This post is sourced from my new book- Your Guide To Reach Innovation.
- For more information about the book: https://growenterprise.co.uk/your-guide-to-reach-innovation/
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Final note: the book- Your Guide To Reach Innovation, is an actionable guide to innovation from beginning to end. Enjoy reading the book, and I look forward to your reviews.
Author: Munther Al Dawood
maldawood@growenterprise.co.uk
References:
- Collins, J. 2001. Good to great, Harper Business, USA.
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