Last month I was in a client meeting where we talked briefly about Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...and Others Don't by Jim Collins. We were working through some strategy discussions and it was a helpful reference point to utilize. It got me thinking about why it's still such a solid point of reference even 20+ years later.
Anyone who knows me knows that I love reading, but I find business books to be so. freaking. boring. So when my new boss at a previous company gave me Good to Great as a welcome gift with an expectation that I read it, naturally I was thinking to myself, 'oh $h*t, I am going to hate this, it will take me forever to read and my boss is going to think I'm not serious'. Luckily I will say, it is a fascinating, very fast read of a book. And unlike most other business books, I actually read it cover to cover, in less than a week.
Now the book itself was researched and published in 2001 so this was done before social media was a thing or smartphones existed and many of the companies featured in the book as great companies are either falling apart or gone. To me it's not the example companies that Jim Collins gives that matter here, it's the principles he walks through that do. They are fundamentally how I have always thought businesses should run and are instinctually how I approached building business, brand and marketing strategy - even before I knew how to articulate it.
So what makes this book so great (pun intended)? I have way too many thoughts to make a single blog post about it so am breaking it up into 3 parts. This is part 1 of 3 and is all about the team, the team, the team.
Disciplined People
The first section of Good to Great focuses on disciplined people. I've always maintained that what makes an organization strong and ultimately valuable is the people. The right people on the bus—including the ones leading or driving the bus—go a very long way towards creating the value. Regardless of the endless conversations around AI, at least as of right now, you can't get big ideas, passion or creativity without people. People are what take an organization from good to great. Period.
Leadership is Ground Zero
It always start with leadership though. I've worked for some phenomenal leaders and I've worked for some horrible leaders. The horrible ones are not clear on what the word 'leadership' means and are generally egotistical—often with volatile temperaments, self-absorbed with an expectation that everyone around them fawn all over them, many will micromanage everything but will always be the first to point fingers at everyone else or will look for someone to scapegoat when something goes wrong or an organization isn't doing well.
(Hint: if you're looking for a new job and are researching a company, a giant red flag is if you see announcements about multiple of executives or team members exiting over the course of 18 months. It's a solid sign that you might be dealing with one of the horrible leaders. Just sayin')
Conversely, the phenomenal ones are able to blend extreme personal humility with intense professional will. These leaders are ambitious, but their ambition is directed toward the success of their organization and the people who make up that organization rather than personal gain. Good leaders understand the big picture and the long game—if you take care of your people, they will take care of your business. They are also even-keeled, bringing a consistent demeanor, calm to the storm when issues arise and motivating employees by training them, trusting their expertise and empowering them every day.
"First Who, Then What"
Next up is making sure you have the right team members on the bus and that they are all sitting in the right seats. Again, the people are what make the company great. And that doesn't always mean they have the exact perfect skillset that matches all 82 bullet points on a fairy tale job description that HR spits out. Or that they do every single thing perfectly every single time. They aren't robots. It means they bring the right demeanor, passion, creativity and energy onto the bus.
An additional caveat I would add to this part if the book about who are your bus riders, is making sure it's a diverse group of people on the bus. Diversity in thought, background and perspective is invaluable to driving any business forward. I've been in organizations who intentionally bring diverse team members to the table and I've been in organizations who only want rich white men at the table.
I know there are naysayers out there who want to roll their eyes and there are organizations out there who are rolling back their DEI initiatives, but according to this McKinsey report the companies with executive teams who are in the top quartile for both gender (>30% are female) and ethnic diversity (>30% are nonwhite) are on average 9 percent more likely to outperform their peers financially. In my personal experience, the ones where leadership was diverse were AMAZING to work for. The ones where leadership was a bunch of old white dudes...not so much.
Put simply: skills can and should be taught, diverse perspectives, attitudes and passion cannot.
Considerations
I know that many out there would say various things like "Fine, people are important, but we can't hire and retain people if we don't have any money to pay them and we can't make money if we don't sell products."
To which I would respond, "Cool, so how exactly are you planning to sell these products for you to make the money then? Or fulfill the orders when they come in?" Even if you're an eCommerce company, or you are automating even part of your operations, you still need quality people to process sales and fulfill the orders.
We live in a world where fleeting business trends and crazy technology innovation is accelerating everything. So it's natural for leaders to want to focus on keeping up. But at the end of the day, we don't live in a world where products or services can simply "sell themselves". Which means companies cannot grow and move with and around the chaotic business world without dedicated people who are truly aligned behind quality leadership.
For those leaders out there who aspire to do great things and lead their teams or companies forward in a meaningful way, I always recommend you read this book (obviously) but mostly start with your people. Don't be afraid to look at your own leadership style and think through its effectiveness by asking yourself:
Are you leading with a consistent demeanor? Or are you a screamer?
Are you focused only on your personal gain? Or are you looking at the bigger picture and how your actions and decisions affect the rest of your team?
Do you have the right people with the right energy and demeanor on the bus with you? And are they in the right seats?
Do you actually see the people on your bus as people? Or do you see them as numbers on a spreadsheet?
How you answer those questions should show you where you sit on the scale of quality leadership and where there's opportunity for improvement.
Conclusions
I could go on and on about why people matter so much to drive success in any company. While I would agree that people are just one component of a company, in my view they are the most important component to drive towards success. In the end, it's only after you get your bus in order that you can focus on everything else. And guess what? You'll have a team of people who can help you manage on everything else!
This is part 1 of a 3 part blogpost series focused on Good to Great. More to come.
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