Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t
9780066620992
John Collins
Notes
Think of the transformation as a process of buildup followed by breakthrough, broken into three broad stages: disciplined people, disciplined thought, and disciplined action.
Level 5 Leaders:
- Ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves.
- Do not seek personal credit, they are a study in duality. Modest and willful, humble and fearless.
- Look out the window to apportion credit to factors outside themselves when things go well (and if they can not find a specific person to give credit to, they credit good luck). At the same time, they look in the mirror to apportion responsibility, never blaming bad luck when things go poorly.
The G2G 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…The key point of this chapter is not just the idea of getting the right people on the team. The key point is that “who” questions come before “what” decisions – before vision, before strategy, before organization structure, before tactics. First who, then what – as a rigorous discipline, consistently applied.
G2G management teams consist of people who debate vigorously in search of the best answers, yet who unify behind the decision, regardless of parochial interests.
If you have the right people on the bus you will not have to spend a lot of time motivating them.
The key is to understand what your organization can be the best in the world at, and equally important what it cannot be the best at – not what it “wants” to be the best at. The Hedgehog Concept is not a goal, strategy, or intention; it is an understanding.
Avoid bureaucracy and hierarchy and instead create a culture of discipline.
Budgeting should be seen as a way of determining which business activities are working toward the goal and should be funded, and which are not and should be starved.
G2GC’s use technology as an accelerator of momentum, not a creator of it.
Good to great companies come about by a cumulative process- step by step, action by action, decision by decision, turn by turn of the flywheel – that adds up to sustained spectacular results.
Stockdale Paradox
Hedgehog Concept
Flywheel
“Turning Goals Into Results: The Power of Catalytic Mechanisms”