Good to Great

by Paul Crookall

Jim Collins is author of the best-seller “Good to Great” and co-author of “Built to Last”. His research distils the essential ingredients that distinguish companies that made the leap from good to great. Alex Himelfarb, the top federal manager, recently observed that our public service can stack up against the best in the world, but our aspirations should continue to pull us forward – an observation relevant to many agencies at all levels of government, and good reason to reflect if there are things we can learn from Collins' work to help us on that path.

I recently attended one of Collin’s presentations and spoke with him backstage. Collins was surprisingly passionate about public service. One of the key ingredients, Collins found, is a ‘Level 5’ leader – someone who combines a compelling personal humility with a fierce professional will and unwavering resolve. Their focus and ambition is for the enduring success of the company, not themselves. These leaders are usually from within the company and serve for a long time.

This contrasts with the public sector model where ministers, deputies, and the executive team move frequently. They don’t get to know the people. If you work in a unit where that is happening, how can you lead? Collins advises: "You have more forces out of your own control, that are unpredictable; they can be political or a change in management or moving to another country to fight a war. My first and biggest message is you can't control the factors above you, so focus on building your particular 'minibus' into a pocket of greatness.”

Your top priority as leader, Collins says, is to get 100% of the seats filled with the right people. “People are our greatest asset is wrong thinking – the right people are your greatest asset.”

We’ve all got the message from the auditors, and Collins echoes it: for public sector success you must change the focus from process to results.
• Focus on things you are passionate about.
• Work with people you really like.
• Assume there are timeless principles that underlie what you do, that can be discovered, learned and applied – then discover, learn and apply them.
• Good is the enemy of great. If good government and good schools are accepted, then you won’t achieve greatness.

Leader selection should be based on a person’s ability to:
• deliver on commitments
• become better at what they do
• not take excessive credit for results
• build a ‘mini-bus’ that continues to perform well after they've been transferred to another bus
• simultaneously achieve current objectives while building organizational capacity for the future.

It was refreshing to hear him say the primary solution is not for government to become more business-like. Why import that mediocrity? Instead, compare good organizations to great ones, and seek to become great. Over time, business will become more like the public service. As they have fewer degrees of freedom, they will need to develop more legislative skills, more partnering skills, more networking.

And it was encouraging to hear that you don’t have to sacrifice life balance to be a great leader. Collins found half had terrible personal lives, but half had great ones. He concluded life balance was a matter of individual choice. There is an old Greek parable Collins refers to that describes the fox as knowing many things, but the hedgehog as knowing one big thing. The goal is not to be the best, but to build an understanding of what you can be the best at. Hedgehogs ask, what am I deeply passionate about? What can I be best at? What drives the economic engine of this business?

In the public sector the three hedgehog circles are Passion, Be the Best, and Access to Resources.
“Have the discipline to stay with that concept,” Collins says. In the private sector, the research team found it took the ‘good’ firms about four years to find the best strategy, once they were at the transition point. SouthWest Air, one of the great companies, started with ten key business points in 1973. After the crises of deregulation, 9/11, and the shakeout in the industry, they still had nine and a half of the same key points. “People talk about being able to change, but sometimes the key is having the courage not to change in a crisis – to keep the discipline of the flywheel, to be consistent, to be right. Many of the great companies kept the same strategy for 40 to 60 years.”

They made the effort, turn by turn, to get the flywheel rolling. They worked for results today in a way that would get better results tomorrow. Every one of the leaders studied had a ‘to do’ list. Only 1% had a ‘to stop doing list’. The solution, I suppose, is to put a ‘stop doing’ item on your ‘to do’ list.

The ultimate discipline framework is not rules, but core values. Core values never change. Core purpose doesn't change. What changes is what you do to stimulate progress, the specific sub-goals and strategies, the cultural and operational practices.

For example, Frances Hesselbein, when she was CEO of the Girl Scouts, realized that the ongoing core business should remain to help young women become competent in life. But they needed to change away from the tactics of teaching cooking and saying ‘no’ to boys.

A final paradox in Collins’ work is that innovation is not the key driver of success. His recent data suggests that the more your world is discontinuous and changing, the more success comes from the discipline to stay with your hedgehog.

The key is being so right that when the world changes you know you are still right and can stay with the cause. Trust the flywheel.

Returning to the opening question, is Collins’ research relevant to public sector managers? Many have found it to be so. And he will soon be publishing a monograph on “Good to Great and the Social Sectors.” We will keep you posted.



Jim Collins is a professor, researcher and author. Visit www.jimcollins.com. “Good to Great”, Harper Business Books, 2001.