Why "Good To Great" Is Still...Well...Great: Part 3 - Disciplined Action

Yeah, I'm way, way behind on blog posting in general. I could say that I had every intention of posting this 3rd and final blog in this blog post series last quarter. But client engagements got busy and quite honestly I wasn't feeling overly inspired to write, so here we are another 5 months later. Still busy over here, but feeling like I need to get back on track!

Anyway, refer back to Part 1 and Part 2 of this blog post series to get my perspective about Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...and Others Don't by Jim Collins for a memory refresher—or just to read both of those first before you read this last post.

Friendly reminder that 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 3 of 3 and will be focused on disciplined culture.

A Disciplined Culture Leads to Disciplined Action

After you've identified who the right people are and you've completed your Hedgehog Principle work, it's time to create a culture of discipline in the organization. While steps 1 and 2 are vital to setting the foundation for a company, the disciplined culture is probably the most important in order to transcend mediocrity and achieve sustained excellence.

To be clear, this idea of discipline is not about rigid control or strict top-down control and micromanagement to make sure the strategy is fulfilled—it’s about fostering an environment where self-motivated people take consistent and disciplined action aligned with your now clear strategic vision.

This concept is not optional—it’s essential. It's literally the blueprint for building organizations that are focused, agile, and accountable. After all, you can build the most amazing strategy in the world, but without discipline, your strategy will stall.

Discipline ≠ Micromanagement

I think it's easy for leaders to misconstrue what discipline actually is or should be. Providing discipline to employees should mean you give them a clear strategic vision (i.e., the Hedgehog Principle) and then you trust them to bring their best work that aligns to that vision.

Your job as a leader is not to strike down ideas or instill fear in your team. If you do, they will shut down, get scared, get bored and eventually they will leave - taking their talent and ideas elsewhere! Sadly I've been in mostly organizations where micromanagement and fear is the culture and it really is the fastest way to destroy a company. To be honest, it's probably why many of those organizations are either long gone or circling the drain.

Instead, your role is to ensure that your team members are remaining disciplined by adhering to and laddering up to the set strategic vision. And if they lose sight of the overarching strategy (it happens, we can all get excited about an idea and go off on a tangent that doesn't connect), you nudge them back toward the strategy. But you never instill fear or discourage them.

So What Is a Culture of Discipline?

A Culture of Discipline exists when people are given the freedom to operate within a well-defined framework. These people don’t need to be micromanaged because they’re intrinsically driven and committed to the mission. They’re empowered—but they’re also accountable. They don't pass the buck or throw others under the bus. They raise their hand and bring their unique ideas and perspectives to the table as to how to make the strategy come to life through the right mix of activities and prioritization. And they take ownership of that work, gladly. Why would they do that? Because they feel safe and supported to do it— and above all, they know what the hell they are supposed to be working towards!

And in my experience, when you trust your people to bring expertise every day and you let them run with their ideas within that strategic framework, they almost always bring back next level, phenomenal ideas and programs. These usually approach challenges in a different way and then end up taking the organization to new heights as a result.

Building a Culture of Discipline in Your Team

Now some may say, that sounds great, but how do we actually do such a thing? Here are a few suggestions:

1. Create clarity around core objectives. Everyone should know the "why" behind the work. Tie efforts back to company priorities. The best way I've seen this happen is when the CEO sets strategic imperatives for the organization for what he/she thinks will drive the business forward, senior leaders build their strategic plans based off of those imperatives and then on down the line to the worker bees. When those core objectives ladder all the way up to the CEO's objectives from the jump, it's hard to miss.

2. Empower people with frameworks, not rules. Give your team structure and strategy, but allow flexibility within that framework to innovate and to pivot when the unforeseen happens. New competitors can roll in and outperform. The market can change on a dime. Crazy weather events or pandemics can happen. As a result, there has to be flexibility in how to achieve the strategic goals set forth that still make sense within the context of these events. When the flexibility is there, the creativity for how to adjust can flourish.

3. Eliminate bureaucracy. Disciplined cultures are not bogged down by red tape. There is no faster way to zap innovation and creativity and potentially harm the business than if you add so much red tape that your company can't compete. Yes there need to be guardrails to ensure regulatory compliance, legal compliance, etc., but red tape for the sake of red tape is counterproductive. Bureaucracy breeds inflexibility—see number 2 above as to why flexibility matters.

4. Measure what matters. Track performance in a disciplined way—align metrics to strategic goals, not surface-level engagement. In other words, find a way to tie metrics to the sales and revenue made or in a way that directly ties to the strategy set forth by senior leadership. As a marketer, this is incredibly important yet difficult to do. But every person in the organization should have metrics set that ladder up to the overarching strategy and potentially to the bottom line for the organization. That could mean work contributing directly to a sale or it could mean reducing costs for the company with a wide variety of options in between.

5. Reward consistency and focus. Celebrate efforts that reflect strategic restraint, not just flashy wins. Building on my last comment under number 4 above, one of my favorite things that we did at my last company (before it was acquired and I left) was take time to celebrate the efforts made by people that perhaps had nothing to do with making the sale. Sales folks always get kudos because getting that sale is what brings in revenue for the organization. But what about the admin who went through the CRM and identified 100 contacts that were duplicates, had incomplete information or weren't the right customers to target? Boring work? For most people yes, painfully boring. Necessary to help the sales team remain focused and consistent to hit targets? Absolutely crucial.

Final Thoughts on Discipline

Discipline may not sound glamorous, but it’s the silent force behind the strongest businesses, and therefore, brands. It’s what keeps strategy from becoming chaos. After all, the strategy is supposed to be the true north for the organization—that thing that remains constant so that folks can be focused and know what they are supposed to be striving for.

If the strategy changes or worse yet, doesn't exist, it's nearly impossible for the people you've identified to place on the bus (see Part 1 of this series) with you to succeed. But if the strategy is met with discipline, then your team members will flourish and drive the business to new heights. In other words, if you start by building a culture where focused execution is just as valued as bold ideas, the sky is the limit as to how incredible of an organization your people can build.

Conclusions

Obviously these past 3 posts on the book Good to Great are my interpretations of the principles it brings forth. Again, I know the book is over 20 years old, but to me, they are foundational to what makes companies successful or not. Having worked in so very many organizations that don't follow this philosophy and one that did, I've seen first hand why it works and why each component matters. I highly encourage people to read this book and if I ever go back to corporate life (highly unlikely, but ya know), I will continue to do what I did after I first read it and will send this book to every one of my new hires to read. At a minimum it will help them think differently and understand how I think. But I hope it will help us to drive an organization from good to total greatness—see what I did there? :-)

This is the final part of a 3 part blogpost series focused on Good to Great.