Good to Great

Key Concepts

Level 5 Leaders...

• “…embody body a paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will.”

• “…set up their successors for even greater success in the next generation….

• “…display a compelling modesty, are self-effacing and understated.

• “…are fanatically driven, infected with an incurable need to produce sustained results. They are resolved to do whatever it takes to make the company great, no matter how big or hard the decisions.

• “…display a workmanlike diligence—more plow horse than show horse. 

• “…look out the window to attribute success to factors other than themselves. When things go poorly, however, they look in the mirror and blame themselves, taking full responsibility.” (p. 39)

Hedgehog Concept

“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.”  (p. 118)

“If you cannot be the best in the world at your core business, then your core business cannot form the basis of your Hedgehog Concept.” (p. 118)

“The ‘best in the world’ understanding is a much more severe standard that a core competence. You might have a competence but not necessarily have the capacity to truly be the best in the work at that competence. Conversely, there may be activities at which you could become the best in the work, but at which you have no current competence.” (p. 118)

Flywheel Effect

“Picture a huge, heavy flywheel—a massive metal disk mounted horizontally on an axle, about 30 feet in diameter, 2 feet thick, and weighing about 5,000 pounds. Now imagine that your task is to get the flywheel rotating on the axle as fast and long as possible. Pushing with great effort, you get the flywheel to inch forward, moving almost imperceptibly at first. …Then, at some point—breakthrough! The momentum of the thing kicks in in your favor, hurling the flywheel forward, turn after turn ... whoosh! ... its own heavy weight working for you. You’re pushing no harder than during the first rotation, but the flywheel goes faster and faster. Each turn of the flywheel builds upon work done earlier, compounding your investment of effort.” (p. 164)

Quotables

“That good is the enemy of great is not just a business problem. It is a human problem. If we have cracked the code on the question of good to great, we should have something of value to any type of organization.” (p. 16)

“Those who worked with or wrote about the good-to-great leaders continually used words like quiet, humble, modest, reserved, shy, gracious, mild-mannered, self-effacing, understated, did not believe his own clippings; and so forth.” (p. 27)

“...Second, if you have the right people on the bus, the problem of how to motivate and manage people largely goes away. The right people don’t need to be tightly managed or fired up; they will be self motivated by the inner drive to produce the best results and to be part of creating something great.” (p. 42)

“The moment a leader allows himself to become the primary reality people worry about, rather than reality being the primary reality, you have a recipe for mediocrity, or worse.” (p. 72)

“‘I...had no need for cheering dreams,’ [Winston Churchill] wrote. ‘Facts are better than dreams.’” (p. 73)

Admiral Jim Stockdale: “This is a very important lesson. You must never confuse faith that you will prevail in the end—which you can never afford to lose—with the discipline to confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” (p. 85)

“‘If Carl [Reichardt, CEO of Wells Fargo] were an Olympic diver,’ said one of his colleagues, ‘he would not do a five-flip twisting thing. He would do the best swan dive in the world, and do it perfectly over and over again.’” (p. 98)

“Indeed, a great company is much more likely to die of indigestion from too much opportunity than starvation from too little. The challenge becomes not opportunity creation, but opportunity selection.” (p. 136)