Taking time out to read anything these days has been a challenge. Attending two colleges for two different programs completing in the same semester while running a four divisioned production company doesn't allow a lot of time for anything outside of school and work. It took me a whole five weeks to get my schedule into a workable routine, but I got it done.
None books assigned as a required text was by Jim Collins but I think his book From Good to Great should be one. Although I didn't have time to read the actual book, I did, however make the time to read and summarize the monograph.
Here's what I gleamed from this gem:
Good To Great and Social Sectors.
A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great
Differentiating the business sector from the social sector, in most, can be as simple as defining a company’s economic measure. In this monograph, Jim Collins not only accomplishes this separation but also transcends the business thinking principles behind defining a business’ economic measure. He points out five issues or key concepts that a great organization has to build itself on consisting of; defining what exactly makes the organization great; who are the right people to lead it to greatness; how strongly the leaders must mind the organization’s core values while acquiring resources to sustain it; then building the brand of the organization to; therefore and lastly, provide continued greatness over time.
The first concept Collins directs our thinking on is a great organization recognizes superior performance and the impact it makes within its community. He starts by differentiating the business thinking of inputs and output as measurements of success. Money can make any organization good and is part of the business metric. Collins provides clarity in the division of the way inputs and outputs are addressed between business and social sectors. Within the social sector money is not useful as a measurement of greatness and serves only as an input, in fact what is more of a measurement, according to Collins, is the exceptional performance of the organization defined by its core mission being reached (4-5).
Even if the performance of the organization is difficult to measure there is still evidence of the organization’s progress within the confines of its values in doing what it was originally created to do. He takes the delusion of social sectors not being measured like business sectors and calls it “lack of discipline”. He states that this evidence can provide a measure of an organization’s progress towards obtaining its mission. An organization should have consistent accomplishments that show results of their pursuits to do what it was created to do and to be able to ask themselves if they have improved from the evidence of results obtained the last time with the current results (6-9).
Within the confines of the social sector there is little executive power. Unlike in the corporate world where you are hired and get paid to do your job or you get fired if you don’t, a lot of leaders in the social sector must possess leadership skills that attain as well as retain employees with shared interests in meeting the core goals of the organization. This type of leadership is referred to as legislative leadership; consistent with making right choices in accordance with the organization’s mission “for the long-term greatness,” as stated by Collins, which are sometimes made against the popular vote (11). This particular concept is about getting the organization’s goals accomplished with diffused power.
The next concept addressed was of getting the right people to follow the leader of the organization. As presented by Collins in this monograph, this key would be getting building a team of people who had a passion to see something “good” and desired to make it better. Even in the midst of the organization standing in a mediocre stance of accomplishments with good people on board, hiring great people with this desire would eventually weed out those who are not making the effort to push for better. Collins compared the organizations to a bus by saying you must focus on getting the right people to fill up whatever remaining seats are on the bus, get the wrong people; those already in positions of leadership within the organization in the seats of complacency, off the bus in order for the right people desiring to bring the “good” organization to “greatness” to get in those empty seats – preferably the driver seat (13-15).
According to Collins, these “drivers and riders” must have a genetic makeup consisting of self-motivation, self-determined and are, I quote, “productively neurotic”. Volunteer work requires these types of people to make good organizations reach greatness as well as for them to make a lasting impact in the community from which it begins. In comparison, to offering incentives to do the work required to make a great organization would risk having the organization stay in complacency, or even worse, fail (14-15).
Although, serving as a piece to a larger written whole, this monograph to the book Good to Great, has this very tightly entwined concept requiring a serious look at understanding social sectors cannot thrive without economic sustenance. The Hedgehog Concept, as it is affectionately named by Collins, pulls an organization’s passion into what provides the ongoing economic components to keep it above water.
The added implementation of bringing your organization’s, and I paraphrase, “best in the world at it” social service places this concept as a little complicated to grasp, in my opinion. All three of the pieces of this concept must be equally focused on the mission of the organization in their intersecting form of implementation in order to add to the pursuit from going good to great. Social sectors do not have the same economic structures as business sectors due to their various sources of funding and dependence upon business revenues. Thus, the three pieces add force to each other, as simply put by Collins, “no cash flow, no mission,” yet the organization must be able to decline funding that will not lean towards the organization’s purpose (17-23).
Collins refers to “greatness” as being built through branding of the organization in the final concept. He guides our understanding of compounding momentum without slowing down as the method to achieve branding. This method is demonstrated through the workings of the turns of a flywheel. The “drivers and riders” enlisted in the earlier concepts would also assign members to direct with intelligence repeatedly towards the organization’s mission, never going off the set path. A better result attracts better sources of funding as well as great volunteers resembling the “productive neurotics” before mentioned. The evidence of your organization’s purpose must be greater by measurable evidence with every year of service provided (24-26).
When people can see this evidence, it won’t be a question of how does the organization acquire inputs but of how to control the influx of inputs and filter anything that will not fit into the process outlined in these key concepts of the organizations pursuit from good to greatness. As stated by Collins, “Success breeds support…” This is not too different from the thinking contained within the executive leaders of business sectors. The exception here for the social sector, as Collins points out, is the commitment factor. A successful organization in the social sector will create the branding the organization will need to solidify its foundation in its process towards greatness.
In conclusion, the five concepts, as explained by Collins, each focus on the organization’s core mission and purpose of existence. Without this focus, greatness will not be achieved. Everything presented by the organization has to keep interested individuals asking themselves, “What can I do to help?” From the outside, onlookers must be able to see evidence of the organization’s purpose in action either by seeking the great leaders, inspiring the volunteers, the smiles of those in the community receiving the services as well as providing the services and the lasting effect of that organization’s existence. All the way to the point of the onlooker understanding and imagining what could be if the organization did not exist—what can be done make sure that never becomes a reality draws the heart of supporters and thus leads an organization to go from good to great and remain there.
Works Cited
Collins, Jim. Good to Great and the Social Sectors. A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great. New York: Collins, 2005.
