Good To Great

an attempt to apply the Jim Collins theories to the world of hardware, software and humanware ... Steve Bergen 8/20/2005

http://www.summercore.com/goodtogreat

p.s. this is a work in progress which I hope to finish by 2011 when I turn 60 and begin my next job teaching Kindergarten ;-)

In the preface to his book, Jim Collins writes "After many months of hiding away like a hermit in what I call monk mode, I would very much enjoy hearing from people about what works for them and what does not. I hope you will find much of value in these pages and will commit to applying what you learn to whatever you do, if not to your company, then to your social sector work, and if not there, then at least to your own life ... jimcollins@aol.com ... march 27, 2001

In asking people for a letter of recommendation for a job candidate, I have started (Feb 2006) using this template in green ... a friend and tech colleague (John Neiers at Dalton) had told me of the four quadrants used by Jack Welch from GE on decisions of hiring ... John had heard this from Patrick Bassett back in the mid-1990s

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morning .... ??? is a candidate for a job here at Chapin ...the job is described at http://gatornet.chapin.edu/job.html ... if you have already produced a letter of rec for ???, please send it to me via e-mail or fax please ... my contact info is below as well as my snail mail address, but I truly hate paper ;-) and would strongly prefer e-mail or fax ... thanks in advance, Steve

p.s. if you have not yet written anything, I am most interested in the 5 questions below which come from Jim Collins and the Good to Great philosophy ... you can actually listen to Jim Collins speak about these 5 areas at http://www.jimcollins.com/audio/firstWhoB2b.mp3 ... I have put together my own notes on this wonderful book at http://www.summercore.com/goodtogreat/

• Core values ... what do you know about this person in terms of core values ... as Collins says, "You canŐt get people to share your core values. You can't give people new core values halfway through life ... the whole task is to find people who already have disposition to your core values."
• Managing need? High maintenance or low maintenance? As Collins says, "the right person on the bus is not somebody that you need to manage ... yes, you need to guide and teach and lead and help the person be better in his/her roles but you don't have to spend a lot of time compensating for them and managing them on a daily basis ... the moment you feel the need to manage somebody, you have probably made a hiring mistake."
• In terms of the job (e.g. MS/US Computer teacher) could this person one day be amongst the best around?
• Does this person understand -- again, as Jim Collins explains -- the difference between having a job and holding a responsibility? In other words, many people are teachers and do the job fairly well. We are looking for people at Chapin who take on the responsibilities. In other words, if the person is a MS/US Computer teacher, that means that the person sees the responsibilities (effective and enthusiastic teaching, grading, reporting, curriculum development, working with students and colleagues) as her or his areas of responsibility which is very different than seeing it as a job. Collins actually uses the phrase "productively neurotic" to describe this person ... people "who see a hole and feel a need to fill it and make it better."
• NOT RELEVANT TO SOME OF YOU ... If this candidate has been employed for you, now that you know his/her work ethic and work, would you have hired him/her. As Collins says "If it were a hiring decision all over again, given everything that you know, having worked with this person, would you still hire? "

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Below are my own notes from the book ... Steve

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• page 10 ... "larger-than-life celebrity leaders who ride in from the outside are negatively correlated with taking a company from good to great" ...
• page 32 "10 of 11 good-to-great CEOs came from inside the company, 3 by family inheritance"
  *** perhaps the applicability here is that we cannot hire outsiders to help change our tech infrastructure but must do it from a bottom up approach with the faculty
• page 10 ... "we found no systematic pattern linking specific forms of executive compensation to the process of going from good to great" ...
• page 49 "it is who you pay, not how you pay them" ...
• page 51 "we have the hardest working workers in the world ... we hire 5, work them like 10 and pay them like 8" ...
• page 53 "to let people languish in uncertainty for months or years, stealing precious time in their lives that they could use to move on to something else, when in the end they aren't going to make it anyway -- THAT would be ruthless. To deal with it right up front and let people get on with their lives -- that is RIGOROUS" ...
• page 54 from tips on how to be rigorous "when in doubt, don't hire -- keep looking" ...
• page 58 "it might take time to know for certain if someone is simply in the wrong seat or whether he needs to get off the bus altogether. Nonetheless, when the good-to-great leaders knew they had to make a people change, they would act."
  *** all of these comments make me think a lot about HUMANWARE and how essential this is to the the tech growth of a school. I think about the Red Auerbach quote at times that "you cannot make chicken soup out of chicken feathers."
• page 11 ... "the good-to-great companies did not focus principally on what to do to become great; they focused equally on what NOT to do and what to STOP doing"
• page 11 ... "the good-to-great companies paid scant attention to managing change, motivating people or creating alignment. Under the right conditions, the problems of commitment, alignment, motivation and change largely melt away"
  *** fascinating, since in the world of schools, these seem like incredibly high priorities
• page 20 ... level 5 executive "builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will" ...
• page 35 "level 5 leaders look out the window to apportion credit to factors outside themselves when things go well (and if they cannot find a specific person or event 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"
• page 45 ... "Wells Fargo and Fannie Mae illustrate the idea that WHO questions come before WHAT questions -- before vision, before strategy, before tactics, before organizational structure, before technology ... I don't know where we should take this company, but I do know that if I start with the right people, ask them the right quesitons, and engage them in vigorouos debate, we will find a way to make this company great."
• page 60 ... "indeed, one of the crucial elements in taking a company from good to great is somewhat paradoxical. You need executives, on the one hand, who argue and debate -- sometimes violently -- in pursuit of the best answers, yet on the other hand, who unify behind a decision, regardless of parochial interests."
• page 63 ... "the good-to-great 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"
  ... too many schools have announced a big laptop program before having the infrastructure ready with the tech team and the faculty
• page 63 ... "the good-to-great leaders were rigorous, not ruthless, in people decisions" ... three principles (when in doubt, don't hire; when you know you need to make a people change, act; put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems)
• page 69 ... "the good-to-great companies infused the entire process with the brutal facts of reality"
• page 72 ... "the moment a leader himself to become the primary reality people worry about, rather than reality being the primary reality, you have a recipe for mediocrity"
• page 74 ... "one of the dominant themes of this book is that if you have the right people on the bus, they will be self-motivated"
• page 82 ... looking at people who had suffered serious adversity, there were 3 categories: "those who were permanently dispirited, those who get their life back to normal, those you use the experience ot make them stronger"
• page 89 ... "spending time and energy trying to "motivate" people is a waste of effort" ... if you have the right people, they wil be self-motivated"
• page 95 ... "all the good-to-great companies attained a very simply concept that they used as a frame of reference for all their decisions" ... hedgehog concept is a simple, crytalline concept that flows from deep understanding about the interesection of the following 3 circles.
  • Circle 1 = what you are deeply passionate about
  • Circle 2 = what you can be the best in the world at
  • Circle 3 = what drives your economic engine
  
  ...technology can be the hedgehog concept for a school these days because so few schools are doing it right
• page 98 ... " a Hedgehog concept is not a goal, strategy, intention, plan to be the best ... it is an understanding of what you can be the best at"
• page 112 ... "the Hedgehog concept is a turning point in the journey from good to great ... in most cases, the transition date follows within a few years of the Hedgehog Concept"
• page 114 ... "it took about FOUR years on average for the good-to-great companies to clarify their Hedgehog Concepts" "
• page 115 ... the Council is a standing body used by the leading executive ... it is an informal body"
  ... there are schools for which there is NO TECH COUNCIL equivalent and all decisions are made by the Tech Coordinator in a vacuum ... in some schools there is a KEY relationship between the Tech Coordinator and a key administrator ... but technology planning and decision making MUST NOT BE from the tech coordinator alone.