Advice From The Paradigm Shifters Part 2

Jim Collin’s wisdom

Find your hedgehog

Jim Collins tells the parable of the fox and the hedgehog and how, every day, the hedgehog is saved by simply rolling up into an impenetrable ball of spines. He points out that organizations need to find their hedgehog, a place where the three circles collide.

Staying focused on the flywheel.

Collins points out the importance of staying focused on your core activities. With constant attention and effort, the large flywheel will gather momentum and start spinning freely without much effort, see Exhibit 3. Read Chapter 8 of his book “Good to Great”.

Big hairy audacious goals (BHAGs)

Jim Collins and Jack Welch are at one here. They say incremental improvement will never stretch your thinking. With BHAGs, we are asking what we would need to do to achieve this BHAG. It is not saying that if we do not, we will be unsuccessful or that your bonus will not be paid.

The silent creep of impending doom

Collins warns us about the first stage of decline, “Hubris born of success.” Excessive pride leading the management team down the slippery slope.

An organization always needs to focus on its economic engine, make sure its flywheel is turning, and maintain a profound understanding of the fundamental reasons for success.

Undisciplined pursuit of more

Collins also warns us about the undisciplined pursuit of more. While this is primarily a private sector issue, the public sector and not-for-profit agencies can easily succumb to catastrophic management practices. Probably the worst is an addiction to reorganizations. A process that gets nowhere quickly while ensuring the talent is frustrated, disenfranchised, and, therefore, moves on.

Denial of risk and peril

Collins specifies that when making decisions, you need to know if they will affect you above or below the waterline if they go wrong. The ‘below the waterline’ will obviously sink the organization. Government and not-for-profit agencies are protected by their surety of annual income from the public purse and hence are so easily blind to these risks.

Grasping for salvation

Collins points out the propensity to bring in an outside CEO to be the savior. These initiatives fail more than they succeed. As Welch observes, bringing in a CEO from outside is a sure sign that your organization failed to nurture protégés. In the public sector, it is even worse where excellent protégés are deliberately overlooked to bring in a person from outside.

It is thus important for the public sector to revisit its values and to include a statement that indicates they should develop their leaders.

In the private sector, this stage of decline is categorized, as Collins points out, as the silver bullet. A massive merger that will turn the organization around. Naturally enough, less than one in six of these mergers ever break even.

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