Jim Collins’ To Do List

I had the pleasure of seeing Jim Collins speak at the World Business Forum a week ago. Collins is the author of Good to Great, the only business book I actually read from cover to cover and then re-read. His speech covered much of the same ground as Good to Great and included lots of helpful reminders:

1. Good is the enemy of great
   • It requires the hearts of lions and the courage of elephants
   • Decline is typically self-inflicted
2. Over night successes are typically 20 years in the making
   • Striving for great is a cumulative never ending process
   • “the moment we think we’re great, we’re dead”
   • If growth exceeds ability to hire great people, you’re in big trouble
3. Must have the right people on the bus even before you decide where you’re going
   • Hire self-motivated people who are committed to doing whatever it takes
   • The “plow horse” typically beats the “show horse” when it comes to great CEOs
   • Have the discipline to confront the brutal facts
4. Find your “hedgehog” concept
   • What are you truly passionate about?
   • What can you be the best in the world at?
   • What is the economic denominator that will make the business competitive?

He ended with a to do list for all the attendees, especially the CEO’s in the audience. Here’s his 10-point to do list that I somehow turned into 11 points:

1. Assess your company’s strengths and weakness (with the Good to Great diagnostic tool on jimcollins.com)
2. Figure out the key “seats” on your business “bus” and calculate the percentage of those seats that are filled with the right people and then make an action plan for improving that percentage
3. Establish your own personal “board of directors” that can advise like “tribal elders”
4. Get some young people “in your face” to challenge your perspective on things
5. Build an internal council for key decision making
6. Ask more questions; make fewer statements (he suggested doubling the quantity of questions & repeated some advice given to him years back–spend more time being interested and less time being interesting!)
7. Turn off your electronic devices and schedule time just to think
8. Create a stop doing list (eliminate the stuff you don’t need to do yourself so you can focus on contribution)
9. Forget titles and focus on responsibilities (titles are inherently limiting and responsibilities ensure jobs get done)
10. Make sure your core values are solid and that you and your team are following them
11. Set BHAG (big hairy audacious goals) for 10, 15, 25 year horizons (establish the risks and then remove them).

Collins also recommended tracking down John Gardner’s book from 1984 called Personal and Organizational Renewal (which could take some work since Amazon notes it is out of print.)  So, who’s ready to be great?