Good to Great

In the last six months, I have come across Good to Great and a few other books, each of which is very interesting in its own right, but which together have given me some new insights into agility as a whole. I actively use the concepts in my management seminars.

I want to share them and this is the second blog in this series. The first one about humanocracy can be found here.

or: good is the enemy of great

Jim Collins and his team have worked for several years to find out what the difference is between companies that are merely good and those that become outstanding. To this end, he has systematically examined companies from a wide range of industries that have at some point started to stand out positively from their peer group and has come across some commonalities that have many similarities with agile ideas, but in some places have a much broader view. Here is an excerpt:

• Level 5 Leadership: Level 5 leaders have a unique blend of humility and willpower that is required for true greatness.
• Who is more important than what: Putting people first and strategy second. This means finding the right people for the organization before dealing with business tactics.
• The brutal truth: accepting difficult realities while believing that the organization will one day rise above them.
• Building Breakthrough Flywheel: Collins refers to building a great company as a metaphorical “flywheel,” which is a concrete form of iterative approach.
• The hedgehog concept or: the art of staying focused. In an ancient Greek parable, a comparison is drawn between the abilities of a hedgehog and a fox: Foxes are characterized as knowing little about many subjects, while hedgehogs know a lot about one thing.
  Hedgehog behavior means understanding three things:

1. What a business can be best at
2. How its economy can work most effectively
3. What can best inspire its employees

Why I learned to appreciate this book

1. First of all: it’s controversial, but that’s what activates brain cells in me that not everyone is used to. i.e., it addresses uncomfortable truths that are largely unquestioningly accepted in the agile scene.
   The book takes no account of my comfort zone and the ingrained habits of thought that have become entrenched in it. Some of the theses go down like oil, prompting me to applaud and shout “yes, exactly”. Others hold a mirror up to me, showing me that I don’t always critically scrutinize everything that is put in front of me.
2. This leads me to the second point: it is, after all, 20 years old and still so topical that I have to look at the imprint to make sure it is not completely up to date. It is therefore not suspected of copying from all the other agile management books – it’s more the other way around. What is remarkable, however, is that there are so many similarities with our thinking, even though this book has completely different roots.
3. One of the hard truths for agilists, for example, is that Collins makes an important point of choosing the right people and is also consistent enough to recommend getting rid of the wrong people. This can easily be misinterpreted as a variant of the hire and fire policy favoured by organizations without respect and managers without empathy.
   “Good to Great” goes to great lengths to avoid or correct this misunderstanding. In this way, it avoids spreading simple, pat truths without compromising on attitude. .
4. The scope is so much larger than what we traditionally and agilely understand that I personally will need some time to overlook all the consequences for me.
   It deals with attitudes and values that are reflected in crystal-clear expectations of leaders, makes an arc to strategy (the hedgehog principle) and ends up with concrete concepts for strategy implementation that I find very modern: there is continuous improvement and a group called “council”, which I would have christened “agile transition team” and has all its characteristics.

One more anecdote in passing: Howard Sublett, the Chief Product Owner of the Scrum Alliance, announced at the beginning of his work that his leadership team would be guided by “Good to Great”. I bought the book back then and put it in the big pile. Too bad. Silly. But now I’ve found it.