More Jim Collins
I’m not sure why another Jim Collins article came my way, but I’m not complaining.
Picking the Right People covers a bit about rock climbing, “Good to Great”, and business school. It’s not too different from some of other pieces linked in the previous post, but it help me think more about the subject.
I wasn’t sure that I agreed his “first who” principle applied to life and the social sector. His research on businesses showed pretty clearly that deep management teams are very important for transforming a good business into a great one. But his climbing example is too obvious. I care more about climbing with people I trust than which routes I climb. I don’t mind if people don’t want to climb with me because they think I’m fruit loops.
I wondered about how we reach a great society. To find the “what” we’re missing in a great society, do we focus on first who or first what?
It could be a people problem — we don’t have enough people who spend time actively building a great society — so we do need to focus on who first. It could be a what problem — we could solve the problems in society with the people we have, we just need to approach them in better ways.
I’ll need to read Collins’ monograph to see how he arrived at his thoughts and how he describes what a great society is.
Yeah, that who/what question is really throwing me for a loop, too. I’m also not completely sure if I agree with the failure/fallure concept. Perhaps it only applies in certain circumstances.
Finally, I thought the really interesting thing I heard from him in the Charlie Rose interview was his comment around how companies with good fundamentals face change. It would seem that pertinent question is: “how do you bring about change when faced with the potential of disaster?”
However, he also found that perhaps a more important question to explore was: “how do you have the wisdom to not panic, and to not deviate from the fundamentals?”
It was also fascinating that he found that what makes a great business doesn’t necessarily translate to what makes a great society.
Comment by Gary — January 21, 2006 @ 9:52 am