Book Review – “Good to Great” by Jim Collins - 2nd Installment
This is a reprint of an article I wrote for my newsletter. I read it again and feel the same. Even in light of our current economic challenges…
Enjoy…
As mentioned in our last installment, “Good to Great” by Jim Collins is one of the finest reads in the modern business literature genre. It is based on a meticulous and statistically comprehensive comparison of “good” versus “GREAT” companies. Great companies are defined as having “sustained, market-beating” financial performance. After the great versus good companies were selected, Collins and his research team dug deeply into factors separating the great financial performance from the good.
It’s Leadership…what a shock!
Not surprisingly, Collins and his research team found that leadership was a key to success in all cases. However, the type of leadership that Collins discovered was not archetypal. Collins makes a clear case that the type of leadership made famous by such leadership luminaries as Lee Iaccoca and Jack Welch rarely leads to “sustained, market beating” performance, especially when these powerful personalities leave the helm.
Please, tell me I don’t have to be obnoxious…
Rather, Collins describes leaders of the great companies by such terms as modest, self-effacing, workmanlike and understated, not words generally attributed to the likes of Welch or Iaccoca. He also points out that these leaders are generally ignored by the popular business press, that is until their companies “blow the doors” off the competition. To be sure, the great company leaders are not push-overs either. They are ambitious, fanatically driven and incurable in their desire for excellence. They also genuinely like what they do, surround themselves with like-minded leaders, and desire honest and vigorous challenges to their ideas from the individuals they groom to be a part of their team.
In short, these leaders, referred to by Collins as Level 5 leaders (ie. the top level), are ambitious for the company and not themselves, focused on the company’s future and its people, willing to take personal responsibility when things go wrong, unwilling to take personal credit when things go right and unconcerned about hard decisions that may make them uncomfortable.
The book documents the behaviors of these leaders and often contrasts their style with more charismatic leaders. Collins makes a convincing case for this type of leadership.
If you’ve gotten this far, you may be asking, “OK, I might agree but how can this be translated to benefit my organization, or perhaps even me, personally?”, or “How can I be a Level 5 leader?”.
Can a monkey lead…?
There is good news! Leadership can be taught and developed. Collins has developed a good deal of training materials, workbooks and other resources to help you do just that. His website is also an excellent resource and can be found at http://www.jimcollins.com/.
Additionally, the jury is in. Leadership can be taught and taught effectively. The question is, “where do I get the insights I need?” Resources such as Collins’ are available and digestible by the busiest of us.
