1. Good to Great
Book by Jim Collins

2. Good to Great
Good is the enemy of great.
Why is that true?

3. Companies Studied (15-year return compared to general stock market)
Abbott (3.98)
Circuit City (18.5)
Fannie Mae (7.56)
Gillette (7.39)
Kimberly-Clark (3.42)
Kroger (4.17)
Nucor (5.16)
Philip Morris (7.06)
Pitney Bowes (7.16)
Walgreens (7.34)
Wells Fargo (3.99)
Upjohn
Silo
Great Western
Warner-Lambert
Scott Paper
A&P
Bethlehem Steel
R.J. Reynolds
Addressograph
Eckerd
Bank of America
Unsustained: Burroughs, Chrysler, Harris, Hasbro, Rubbermaid, Teledyne
Kirk Wakefield

4. Lesson #1: Leadership Humility + Will = Level 5 leadership
Modest, willful, humble, fearless
Ego-driven, genius-types, may produce short-term positive results, but cannot sustain results
1=highly capable; 2= contributing team member, 3= competent manager, 4= effective leader, 5=executive that builds enduring greatness thru personal humility & professional
Kirk Wakefield

5. Leadership #1 Professional Will
Creates superb results, a clear catalyst in the transition from good to great
Demonstrates an unwavering resolve to do whatever must be done to produce the best long-term results, no matter how difficult
Sets the standard of building an enduring great company; will settle for nothing less
Looks in the mirror, not out the window, to apportion responsibility for poor results, never blaming other people, external factors, or bad luck
Personal Humility
Demonstrates a compelling modesty, shunning public adulation; never boastful
Acts with quiet, calm determination; relies principally on inspired standards, not inspiring charisma to motivate
Channels ambition into the company, not the self; sets up successors for even greater success in the next generation
Looks out the window, not in the mirror, to apportion credit for the success of the company—to other people, external factors, and good luck
Kirk Wakefield

6. Lesson 2: First who…then what.#2
Lesson 2: First who…then what.
There are going to be times when we can’t wait for somebody. Now, you’re either on the bus or off the bus. (Ken Kesey, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test)
What did the 11 successful companies find out?
You don’t first figure out where to drive the bus and then get people to take it there.
No, first get the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off) and then figure out where to take the bus.
Kirk Wakefield

7. Why you get the right people on the bus first…#2
Why you get the right people on the bus first…
If you begin with “who” rather than “what” you can more easily adapt to a changing world.
If you have the right folks on the bus, the problem on how to motivate & manage people largely goes away.
If you have the wrong people, it doesn’t matter whether you discover the right direction, you still won’t have a great organization. Great vision without great people is irrelevant.
Kirk Wakefield

8. Level 5 thinking…on getting folks on/off the bus…#2
Level 5 thinking…on getting folks on/off the bus…
“I don’t know where we should take this commission, but I do now that if I start with the right people, ask them the right questions, and engage them in vigorous debate, we’ll find a way to make this organization great.”
David Maxwell (CEO, Fannie Mae) made it absolutely clear that there would only be seats for A players who were willing to put forth an A+ effort, and if you weren’t up for it, you had better get off the bus, and get off now.
Kirk Wakefield

9. #2
Rigorous, not ruthless
To be rigorous means consistently applying exacting standards at all times and at all levels, especially in upper management. To be rigorous, not ruthless, means that the best people need not worry about their positions and can concentrate fully on their work.
To let people languish in uncertainty for months or years when in the end they aren’t going to make it anyway—that is ruthless. To deal with it right up front and let people get on with their lives—that is rigorous.
Kirk Wakefield

10. How to be rigorous When in doubt, don’t hire—keep looking.#2
How to be rigorous
When in doubt, don’t hire—keep looking.
When you know you need to make a people change—act.
The moment you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you’ve made a hiring mistake. The best people don’t need to be managed. Guided, taught, led—yes. But not tightly managed.
Waiting too long before acting is equally unfair to the people who need to get off the bus.
How to know: Would you hire the person again? Would you be relieved if they left the organization?
Put your best people on your biggest opportunities not your biggest problems.
Corollary: When you decide to sell off your problems, don’t sell of your best people. Make a place on the bus for the best people, and they’ll be more likely to support changes in direction.
Kirk Wakefield

11. Discuss: How do you need to be rigorous?#2
Discuss: How do you need to be rigorous?
When in doubt, don’t hire—keep looking.
When you know you need to make a people change—act.
The moment you feel the need to tightly manage someone, you’ve made a hiring mistake. The best people don’t need to be managed. Guided, taught, led—yes. But not tightly managed.
Waiting too long before acting is equally unfair to the people who need to get off the bus.
How to know: Would you hire the person again? Would you be relieved if they left the organization?
Put your best people on your biggest opportunities not your biggest problems.
Corollary: When you decide to sell off your problems, don’t sell of your best people. Make a place on the bus for the best people, and they’ll be more likely to support changes in direction.
Kirk Wakefield

12. Lesson 3: Confront the Brutal Facts Yet never lose faith#3
Lesson 3: Confront the Brutal Facts Yet never lose faith
Two choices: confront brutal facts and change or stick head in sand
Kroger and A&P…superstores vs. low prices
You have to be number one or two in each market or you have to exit.
You absolutely cannot make a series of good decisions without first confronting the brutal facts.
Kirk Wakefield

13. Confront the Brutal Facts Yet never lose faith#3
Confront the Brutal Facts Yet never lose faith
Your job is to turn over rocks and look at the squiggly things, even if what you see can scare you!
Some organizations (Bank of America) have climates where managers will not even make a comment until they know how the boss felt.
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.
Kirk Wakefield

14. How to confront the Brutal Facts Yet never lose faith#3
How to confront the Brutal Facts Yet never lose faith
Lead with questions, not answers
Put more questions to board members than they put to you
Raise questions for one reason only: to gain understanding (not manipulation)
Engage in dialogue and debate, not coercion.
Good-to-great companies have a penchant for intense dialogue
Conduct autopsies, without blame.
No finger-pointing.
Build red-flag mechanisms.
Good-to-great companies don’t have better information, necessarily. The key is turning information into info that can’t be ignored.
Red cards in meetings: folks hold it up to deal with real issues
Short-pay: allow customers to circle items on invoice they don’t want to pay due to bad service
Attitude: We will never give up. We will never capitulate. It might take a long time, but we will find a way to prevail.
Kirk Wakefield

15. How do you need to confront the Brutal Facts? Yet never lose faith#3
How do you need to confront the Brutal Facts? Yet never lose faith
Lead with questions, not answers
Put more questions to board members than they put to you
Raise questions for one reason only: to gain understanding (not manipulation)
Engage in dialogue and debate, not coercion.
Good-to-great companies have a penchant for intense dialogue
Conduct autopsies, without blame.
No finger-pointing.
Build red-flag mechanisms.
Good-to-great companies don’t have better information, necessarily. The key is turning information into info that can’t be ignored.
Red cards in meetings: folks hold it up to deal with real issues
Short-pay: allow customers to circle items on invoice they don’t want to pay due to bad service
Attitude: We will never give up. We will never capitulate. It might take a long time, but we will find a way to prevail.
Kirk Wakefield

16. #3
The Stockdale Paradox
Research by the Int’l Committee for the Study of Victimization found that those facing serious adversity generally fall into one of three categories:
Those who were permanently dispirited by the event
Those who got their life back to normal
Those who used the experience as a defining event that made them stronger.
Kirk Wakefield

17. The Stockdale Paradox #3
Jim Stockdale stoically accepted the brutal facts of reality while maintaining an unwavering faith in the endgame—that he would prevail despite the brutal facts.
Who didn’t make it out? The optimists.
Those who think it will all be a quick fix and everyone will be out by Christmas are the ones that lose heart and fail.
Kirk Wakefield

18. Lesson 4: The Hedgehog Concept#4
Lesson 4: The Hedgehog Concept
“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.”
Foxes pursue many ends at the same time and see the world in all its complexity. They are scattered or diffused, moving on many levels.
Hedgehogs simplify a complex world into a single organizing idea, a basic principle or concept that unifies and guides everything.
For a hedgehog, anything that does not somehow relate to the hedgehog idea holds no relevance.
Kirk Wakefield

19. The Hedgehog Concept #4 Examples
Walgreens: the best, most convenient drugstores, with high profit per customer visit (viz., also Starbucks)
Wells Fargo: running a bank like a business, with a focus on the Western U.S.
Strategy, per se did not distinguish the good-to-great companies from the comparison companies. Both sets had strategic plans, and there is no evidence that the good-to-great companies invested more time/energy in strategy development & long-range planning.
All the G2G companies attained a very simple concept that they used as a frame of reference for all their decisions.
A Hedgehog Concept is a simple, crystalline concept that flows from deep understanding about the intersection of the following three circles…
Kirk Wakefield

20. Developing The Hedgehog Concept#4
Developing The Hedgehog Concept
What can you be the best in the world at (and, equally important, what you cannot be the best in the world at)
What you can be the best at might not even be something in which you are currently engaged.
What drives your economic engine?
Must discover the single denominator (profit per X ) that has the greatest impact on your economics/budgeting.
What are you deeply passionate about?
What do you have a genetic or God-given talent to do?
What are you well-paid to do?
What do you enjoy doing that you absolutely love to do, enjoying the actual process for its own sake?
Kirk Wakefield

21. #4
The Hedgehog Concept
You can be passionate about all you want, but if you can’t be the best at it or if it doesn’t make economic sense, then you might have a lot of fun, but you won’t get great results.
If we can’t be the best at it, then why are we doing it at all?
A Hedgehog Concept is not a goal to be the best, a strategy to be the best, an intention to be the best, a plan to be the best. It is an understanding of what you can be the best at.
Kirk Wakefield

22. Develop your Hedgehog Concept!#4
Develop your Hedgehog Concept!
What can you be the best in the world at (and, equally important, what you cannot be the best in the world at)
What you can be the best at might not even be something in which you are currently engaged.
What drives your economic engine?
Must discover the single denominator (profit per X ) that has the greatest impact on your economics/budgeting.
What are you deeply passionate about?
What do you have a genetic or God-given talent to do?
What are you well-paid to do?
What do you enjoy doing that you absolutely love to do, enjoying the actual process for its own sake?
A Hedgehog Concept is not a goal to be the best, a strategy to be the best, an intention to be the best, a plan to be the best. It is an understanding of what you can be the best at.
Kirk Wakefield

23. A few hedgehog facts… Growth is not a Hedgehog Concept#4
A few hedgehog facts…
Growth is not a Hedgehog Concept
You can’t just go off-site for 2 days and come back with it
On average, it took 4 years for G2G companies to clarify theirs
It is an inherently iterative process
Useful mechanism is a Council that consistently meets to review the 3 aspects of the Hedgehog Concept (and they should get/read the book!)
Kirk Wakefield

24. An interesting note on bureaucracy…
Most companies build their bureaucratic rules to manage the small percentage of wrong people on the bus, which in turn drives away the right people on the bus, which increases the need for more bureaucracy to compensate for incompetence and lack of discipline, which then further drives the right people away and…
Kirk Wakefield

25. Lesson 5: The Flywheel and the Doom Loop#5
Lesson 5: The Flywheel and the Doom Loop
G2G comes about by a cumulative process—step by step, action by action, decision by decision, turn by turn of the flywheel—that adds up to sustained and spectacular results.
Media attention often comes to G2G organizations after years of slow build-up and then break-through.
Kirk Wakefield

26. #5
Flywheel & Doomloop
Flywheel transitions look like dramaticm revolutionary breakthroughs from the outside (when the wheel is fully turning).
From the inside they feel completely different, more like an organic development process.
Kirk Wakefield

27. Flywheel & Doomloop #5 Egg sitting there. No one pays attention.
Egg cracks open.
Out jumps chick.
Media:
“The transformation of Egg to Chicken!”
“The remarkable revolution of the Egg!”
“Stunning turnaround at Egg!”
Kirk Wakefield

28. There was no miracle moment.#5
Flywheel & Doomloop
The point?
G2G companies had no name for their transformations. There was no launch event, no tag line, no programmatic feel whatsoever.
There was no miracle moment.
Kirk Wakefield

29. Flywheel… UCLA won 10 NCAA championships and 61 games in a row.#5
Flywheel…
UCLA won 10 NCAA championships and 61 games in a row.
How many years did Wooden coach UCLA before the 1st championship? 15
Kirk Wakefield

30. #5
Flywheel…
Point to tangible accomplishments—however incremental at first—and show how these steps fit into the context of an overall working concept.
Step forward, consistent with hedgehog concept
Accumulate visible results
People line up, energized by results
Flywheel momentum builds
Kirk Wakefield

31. #5
Doomloop
Instead of a quiet, deliberate process of figuring out what needed to be done and then simply doing it, the comparison companies frequently launched new programs—often with great fanfare and hoopla aimed at “motivating the troops”—only to see the programs fail to produce sustained results.
They sought the single defining action, the grand program, the one killer innovation, the miracle moment that would allow them to skip the arduous buildup stage and jump right to breakthrough.
Guess what happened…
Kirk Wakefield

32. Two popular doomloops to avoid…#5
Two popular doomloops to avoid…
Misguided use of acquisitions—making deals for the sake of making deals.
“When the going gets tough, we go shopping!”
G2G companies did acquisitions after the Hedgehog Concept and after the flywheel had significant momentum.
Acquisitions are accelerators not creators of flywheel momentum.
Leaders who stop the flywheel—leaders who step in, stop an already spinning flywheel, and throw the organization in entirely different direction.
Kirk Wakefield

33. What’s the diff between flywheel & doom loop organizations?
(in)consistency
(non)confrontal
(un)disciplined
(un)motivated (self)
(talk)results
Kirk Wakefield