Good to Great:
Why some companies make the leap...
And others don’t?

Good to Great, published in March 2001 , is actually a narrative presentation of the quest of Jim Collins and his team as they conducted a research study regarding company performance which rooted from a single question: Can a good company become a great company and, if so, how? This seed of question was planted in the mind of Collins when confronted by Bill Meehan that his book “Built to Last”, which was about “how you take a company with great results and turn it into an enduring great company of iconic stature”, is considered useless in the world of business. As pointed out by Meehan, the companies written in Built to Last “never had to turn themselves from good companies into great companies” as they were always great. Challenged, Jim Collins started the five-year research of how a good company can become great. The study of Collins turned out into another breakthrough as it was systematically planned and well-structured; from six long months of search and analyzing financial reports of hundreds or even thousands of companies, identifying which companies made the leap from good results to great results and sustained those results for at least fifteen years and still taking into account their independence to the industry performance in which they belong, presenting and debating ,debating and debating until they’ve found eleven good-to-great companies to further study. The research, backed up by strong evidences, proved that companies with histories of being nothing special can indeed outperform the most popular and most powerful companies. GOOD companies can be GREAT.
They have come up with numerous insights that could certainly turn any organization to become great and one of them is the “Level 5 Leadership” that really struck my curiosity. I was astonished to know that there were certain leadership levels existing and to my great surprise it wasn’t the outspoken, aggressive and high-profile leaders that emerged to beat those at the zenith of a particular industry but it was the shy-type, mild mannered leaders who had outperformed large companies such as Procter &Gamble , Coca-cola, Scott Paper, etc.. As defined in the book, a level 5 leader is an individual who blends extreme personal humility with intense professional will. They are indeed ambitious yet their ambition is for the whole institution and not for themselves. Level 5 leaders made a complete detour in making a good company great. Instead of making a new vision and strategy, first, they have actually made it clear that people are not the most important asset but the right people are- which I cannot disagree anymore. Every organization should know very well who to keep and who to weed out. That is why I believed that the best method to use in motivating employees to work well and so to contribute to the entity’s effectiveness should be performance based methods such as Piece-rate Pay Plan and Commission Plan.
Remember, the good-to-great companies have chosen the “right” people before they acted on their strategies. Therefore, the right people need not be motivated extensively but instead, they will be self-motivated.
Another key concept that distinguishes the good-to-great companies is their culture of discipline. Yes, all organizations have different cultures, many of them have utmost discipline in the work field but what is common to the good-to-great companies is the “culture of discipline”. But same as I did, readers may ask how did the good-to-great companies achieve a culture of discipline? Well, we need to go back to the first step of the company, which was to choose the right people. The right people must be self-disciplined who didn’t need to be managed. People who are disciplined will have disciplined thoughts and disciplined actions. This is primarily coupled by transparency in their workplace where they are confronted by the brutal facts of reality and not the fantasies in the dreams of their leaders. As I have learned in my Organizational Behaviour class, a climate of openness in the workplace where truths are laid in front of the employees and unbiased decisions were made will surely lead to high satisfaction and low employee turnovers. As a follower, I too will surely discipline myself, take initiative and develop intrinsic motivation if I could see that my environment especially my leader acts in the same manner.
Good-to-great companies also adopted the Hedgehog concept. Not that they are simpletons but because they have a piercing insight that allows them to see through complexity and discern underlying patterns, Collins emphasized.
What more can we ask for from our leaders? Obviously, it would be the simple answers for complex questions and solutions to the conflicts that have arisen. Good-to-great companies work efficiently through simplicity and consistency. However, Collins and his team lacked to emphasize the importance of communication. I believe that no matter how simple things maybe, if there is inefficiency in communication the group shall still fail to realize the vision. I suppose the data they’ve gathered missed this other angle. But I agree that with simplicity of things, members of the company would have a clear picture of what is going on and what is needed to be done. Therefore, participation and collaboration among them are very high. The researchers have seen that they’ve done simple strategies discovering things but still would make them passionate. To be fully developed, this Hedgehog Concept needs three additional principal ideas: what drives your economic engine, what you are deeply passionate about, and what you can be the best in the world at. Or in simpler sense, when one can make money where he/she is best at and loves doing it, he/she could always feel great. These concepts don’t merely apply to companies or in the business world but I agree that it is also applicable any ordinary human being. Success or greatness is best felt when your passion turns into your profession.
With this being presented, I wanted to thank Jim Collins and his team for making such a wonderful book not only for the tycoons, managers or leaders but also for a student like me. Reading every page of the book is like being a part of their team where I could engage myself in their discussions and debates relating it to my personal life. I might not have followed every company mentioned in the book, but the ideas and insights were all presented in a simpler analogy that anyone would understand.
Lastly, I wanted to share one of the lessons that Collins and his team learned from the good-to-great companies and which I admired the most. That is, never lose faith. I honestly loved Collins’ work and his team’s research. They have given a spark of light not only for those companies who do not believe that much in their potential but to me, an ordinary student, as well. Every good-to-great companies has embraced the Stockdale Paradox: You must maintain unwavering faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, AND at the same time have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
Good to great ignited a spark of bravery in me, which inspired me to take risks and be confident to overcome those risks. I have always claimed that I am like “Jack of all trades master of none”, but upon finishing the whole book, I was more inspired, stirred to be my best and so I told myself, “Someday… I’ll stop being just good enough. I’ll be one of the great ones.”
There will always be a way for us to be great individuals and a way for a NOBODY to turn into SOMEBODY. TRUST, WILL and FAITH that one could be great is the key. #