Good to Great
BOOK 1
The first chapter of Good to Great is entitled “Good Is The Enemy of Great.”
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Good to Great companies all came to a point where a transition was necessary to promote growth.
Good to Great companies acknowledged the need for change and the transitions showed extreme positive
growth.
One question asked (paraphrased) is: What motivates you to undertake a huge challenge?” and the answer
is: “Curiosity.” (p.8).
What makes us good and what keeps us from being great? Who do compare ourselves to in order to see
where we are? What data do we need to examine to see where we can soar? What breakthough do we
need to go from chaos to concept?
Face the facts.
Chapter 2 of Good to Great is entitled “Level 5 Leadership”.
The mistake made by some who read this book is the perception that everyone is a level 5, top-notch, motivational
leader (or can become one). Not everyone who is in a leadership position is, or can be, a true Level 5 leader. Leaders
are:
“Level 1: Highly Capable Individual…makes productive contributions…
Level 2: Contributing Team Member…contributes individual capabilities to group objectives…
Level 3: Competent Manager…organizes people and resources toward effective…pursuit of objectives…
Level 4: Effective Leader…catalyzes commitment to…higher performance standards…
Level 5: Level 5 Executive…builds enduring greatness…”
Much of my leadership career has been centered, at least in my perception, in striving for Level 5, often times missing
the “enduring” part. If we want to change Santa Teresa to a school that is truly great, first believing that it can be truly
great, we must strive for enduring change, living change, that takes institutionalization of beliefs and cultural change.
One of the quotes from this chapter:
“Level 5 leaders channel their ego away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company.
It’s not that Level 5 leaders have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious – but their ambition is
first and foremost for the institution, not themselves.”
As you think about your leadership capabilities, think first about your motivations…the “why” you are here.
Chapter 3 of Good to Great is from Ken Kesey in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, by Tom
The quote at the beginning of chapter 3 of Good to Great is from Ken Kesey in The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test, by Tom
Wolfe:
“There are going to be times when we can’t wait for somebody. Now, you’re either on the bus or off the bus.”
(p.41)
This is where the concept of ‘the bus’ comes up. The first determination that needs to be made is whether or not you
have the right people on the bus. In our case, Santa Teresa needs a dedicated staff that wants to be here for the
students and has the capacity to teach this population without excuse. The other bus concept is, if you have the right
people, are they in the right seats? If the right people are on the bus, the wrong people are off the bus, then you have
to determine whether or not everyone who is on the bus is in the right place. Again, in our case, Santa Teresa needs
strengths where there are weaknesses.
Collins states, “To be clear, the main point of this chapter is not just about assembling the right team – that’s nothing
new. The main point is to first get the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) before you figure our
where to drive it. The second key point is the degree of sheer rigor needed in people decisions in order to take a
company from good to great.” (p.44) The old philosophy: “I was here before you came and I’ll be here after you’re
gone” just doesn’t work in an R1 situation. As adults, we must examine in our own private methods, why we are here
and if the answer is anything other than to teach students to the best of our abilities, then you are simply on the wrong
bus. How do you get people ‘off the bus’ in education? I won’t lie, it isn’t easy. It is much easier to have someone come
to that conclusion themselves and chose to get off the bus than it is to tell someone they are on the wrong bus in the
first place.
The Level 5 Leader, states Collins, first gets the right people on the bus by building a superior executive team. Then
the leaders figure out the best path to greatness. The Level 4 Leader, on the other hand, sets a vision for driving the
bus and then enlists “helpers” to make sure it happens. The second, while successful as long as the leader is there, is
unsustainable. The kids at our school deserve sustainable change for excellence in teaching and learning. On page 51,
Collins writes, “Nucor rejected the old adage that people are your most important asset. In a good-to-great
transformation, people are not your most important asset. The right people are.”
Chapter 4 of Good to Great is entitled “Confront the Brutal Facts (Yet Never Lose Faith)”.
First you have the buildup for change by examining your leadership style, then look at the players – who’s where on
the bus and are you even on the bus – then you confront the ugly facts. It is easy at Santa Teresa to look at the facts –
each department chair has the statistics and data doesn’t lie. As departments and goal teams, you have been given
the necessary information to start confronting our ‘facts’. Collins begins the chapter with a quote from Winston
Churchill, “There is no worse mistake in public leadership than to hold out false hopes soon to be swept away.” Is it a
false hope to assume our children can and will learn? Is it a false hope to assume we can get out of R1 and be a model
for the state?
The breakthrough for change to greatness begins at this point. On page 71, Collins writes, “There is nothing wrong with
the pursuing a vision for greatness. After all, the good-to-great companies also set out to create greatness. But, unlike
the comparison companies, the good-to-great companies continually refined the path to greatness with the brutal facts
of reality.” Charisma, he states, can be as much of a liability as an asset in creating change. Change for charismatic
people isn’t real change. One of the subtitles (p. 73) is “A Climate Where the Truth Is Heard”. This is what should be
happening in the department meetings. Data driven discussions take the personality out of the equation and truthful
discussions take the vision into the reality. On page 76, Collins states, “Leading from good to great does not mean
coming up with the answers and then motivating everyone to follow your messianic vision. It means having the humility
to grasp the fact that you do not yet understand enough to have the answers and then to ask the questions that will
lead to the best possible insights.” Lead with questions, not answers; dialogue, as opposed to coercion; conduct
autopsies without blame; building ‘red flag’ mechanisms; are all suggested to fulfill the path to the vision.
The chapter concludes with a discussion about the Stockdale Paradox. Why do some people survive POW camps and
others not? Those who do, “Retain faith that you will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties AND at the same
time confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.” (p.86). At Santa Teresa, it is time to
confront the brutal facts and make data-driven decisions by department to secure the path to the vision. We simply
must teach our way out of this.
Missing chapter 5.
Good To Great
Chapter 6
Chapter six is entitled “A Culture of Discipline.” Collins begins the chapter with a quote from Viktor E. Frankel’s Man’s
Search for Meaning: “Freedom is only part of the story and half the truth…That is why I recommend that the Statue of
Liberty on the East Coast be supplanted by a Statue of Responsibility on the West Coast.”
As a review, on the Breakthrough Slope, we have discussed Level 5 leadership; the ‘first who, then what’ philosophy;
confront the brutal facts; the hedgehog concept; and are now into the culture of discipline. On page 121, Collins
quotes a team member, ‘”This isn’t fun anymore. I used to be able to just get things done…Worst of all, I have to spend
a horrendous amount of time in useless meetings,” The creative magic begins to wane as some of the most innovative
people leave, disgusted by the burgeoning bureaucracy and hierarchy. The exciting start-up transforms into just
another company, with nothing special to recommend it. The cancer of mediocrity begins to grow in earnest.’
When an organization becomes overburdened with the above, Collins notes this as entrepreneurial death. The
disciplined organization, working within the three circles, according to Collins, “1. Build a culture around the idea of
freedom and responsibility…; 2. Fill that culture with self-disciplined people who are willing to go to extreme lengths to
fulfill their responsibilities…; 3. Don’t confuse a culture of discipline with a tyrannical disciplinarian…; and 4. Adhere
with great consistency to the Hedgehog Concept, exercising an almost religious focus on the intersection of the three
circles…”. He also states the creation of a ‘stop doing list’ Disciplined people lead to disciplined thought, which leads to
disciplined action.
“Whereas the good-to-great companies had Level 5 leaders who built an enduring culture of discipline, the unsustained
comparisons had Level 4 leaders who personally disciplined the organization through sheer force” (p. 130).
Unsustained disciplined growth stops with the disciplinarian’s end of rule. “The good-to-great companies at their best
followed a simple mantra: ‘Anything that does not fit with our Hedgehog Concept, we will not do. We will not launch
unrelated businesses. We will not make unrelated acquisitions. We will not do unrelated joint ventures. If it doesn’t fit,
we don’t do it. Period (p. 134).”
How do we relate that to our mission? If it doesn’t fit what we are about, our teaching, the students learning and
understanding of the concept, within the standards and benchmarks – we won’t do it.
Nucor’s Three Circles, again intertwining in the center (p. 137): “Circle 1: Passion for eliminating class distinctions and
creating an egalitarian meritocracy that aligns management, labor, and financial interests; Circle 2: Economic
denominator of profit per ton of finished steel; Circle 3: Could become the best in the world at harnessing culture
and technology to produce low-cost steel.” Nucor took a simple concept that if they removed the top-brass perks and
treated everyone as equals deserving the same respect, the workers would develop a passion for the company. If
profits went down a certain percentage, the wages of the CEO went down equally. If they centered on what they could
be the best in the world at, they would be successful and eventually were successful in the steel business.
The ‘stop doing list’ mentioned previously is discussed on page 140, “In a good-to-great transformation, budgeting is a
discipline to decide which arenas should be fully funded and which should not be funded at all. In other words, the
budget process is not about figuring out how much each activity gets, but about determining which activities best
support the Hedgehog Concept and should be fully strengthened and which should be eliminated entirely.” The ‘stop
doing’ list becomes the more important of the two lists. As we develop our budgeting system, everyone fully aware of
our limitations, we have to stop funding anything that doesn’t meet the three circles for our school and community. We
must be passionately focused and disciplined to reach our goal.
Do you have the passion?
Are you disciplined?
Why are you here?
We simply must teach our way out of this.
Good to Great
Chapter 7
In chapter 7, entitled “Technology Accelerators,” Collins quotes Bertrand Russell, “Most men would rather die, than
think.” How profound is that? So far, we have discussed Level 5 leadership; the ‘first who, then what’; confronted the
brutal facts; the hedgehog concept; the culture of discipline; and now the technology accelerators. Remember, the
‘breakthrough’ to greatness comes after confronting the brutal facts and deciding to do something about them.
Walgreens, one of the ‘great’ companies was threatened, in the early days of web technology, by an upstart
drugstore.com web-based pharmacy. They directly challenged Walgreens thinking them far too ‘stodgy’ to meet the
demands of a new society. Walgreens stock plummeted 40 points at the beginning of their highly financed attack.
Walgreens, sticking to the hedgehog concept, studied the web concept and, “…began to find ways to tie the internet
directly to its sophisticated inventory-and-distribution model and – ultimately – its convenience concept. Fill your
prescription on-line, pop into your car and go to your local Walgreens drive-through…Walgreens stock price nearly
doubled within a year. And what about drugstore.com? Continuing to accumulate massive losses, it announced a layoff
to conserve cash…went from run to walk to crawl” (p. 146). Walgreens, by going from crawl to walk to run was the
winner in this challenge.
Collins notes, “Technology-induced change is nothing new. The real question is not, What is the role of technology?
Rather, the real question is, How do good-to-great organizations think differently about technology?” Walgreens,
sticking to the Hedgehog Concept within the three circles understood something that other companies did not. It wasn’t
the technology driving the organization, it was the organization driving the technology. In education, how often do we
see technology-based programs that were touted as panaceas, yet fail due to lack of ownership or proficiency? “In
every good-to-great case, we found technological sophistication. However, it was never technology per se, but the
pioneering application of carefully selected technologies” (p. 148).
In the subtitled section, “Technology as an Accelerator, Not a Creator, of Momentum,” Collins writes, “This brings us to
the central point of the chapter, not a creator of it. The good-to-great companies never began their transitions with
pioneering technology, for the simple reason that you cannot make good use of technology until you know which
technologies are relevant. And which are those? Those – and only those – that link directly to the three intersecting
circles of the Hedgehog Concept,” (Pp. 152, 153.) He suggests the following questions:
1. “Does the technology fit directly with your Hedgehog Concept;
2. If yes, then you need to become a pioneer in the application of that technology;
3. If no, then ask, do you need this technology at all?
4. If yes, then all you need is parity (you don’t need the best equipment in the world);
5. If no, then the technology is irrelevant, and you can ignore it.”
Driving this home in an academic sense, I see two points:
1. If technology advances the academic success, it’s relevant;
2. If technology or programs are used as babysitters while we ignore our real job of teaching, it’s irrelevant.
On page 157, Collins says, “The evidence from our study does not support the idea that technological change plays
the principal role in the decline of once-great companies (or the perpetual mediocrity of others). Certainly, technology is
important – you can’t remain a laggard and hope to be great. But technology by itself is never a primary cause of either
greatness or decline.” So, in education, all the white boards, smart boards, computers, programs, or whatever, will not
lead to greatness sans the hedgehog concept of what we are here for – teaching and learning (Kelch, not Collins).
Why are you here?
Do you have the passion?
What can you teach in five weeks?
How much can your students learn in five weeks?