pat loughery

Part of my doctoral program’s learning model includes reading and summarizing a large number of books. I’ll blog the appropriate ones here.

Good to Great
by Jim Collins
HarperBusiness (2001)
200 pages

Description of the Book
Some organizations are good. Others are great. This book examines organizations that make the leap from being good (steady, stable, good performers, but which fall short of being a phenomenon), and those that are great. The result of careful research finds that organizations that make the leap from good to great have disciplined people thinking disciplined thoughts that turn into disciplined actions.

Disciplined people as a category includes two concepts. The first is” Level 5 Leadership”, embodied by people who are focused, quiet, self-effacing and who give credit to others. The second is “First who, then what”, which emphasizes getting the right people in place before focusing on what those people should do.

Disciplined Thoughts includes two concepts. The first is “Confront the Brutal Facts” blends an ardent faith that the organization will thrive in the end no matter how difficult the current reality is, combined with a passionate drive to face the facts of that reality. The second is “The Hedgehog Concept”, wherein the organization has to find the one thing that it can be best in the world at

Finally, Disciplined Actions come from a systematic Culture of Discipline within the organization, which relies on people and thoughts that are focused on the end goal with the permission to say “no” to things outside that goal. And great companies use Technology Accelerators to make their work easier and more efficient.

Interpretation of the Book
Research for this book compared two well-known companies who are competitors in a market sector, looking for differences in the company. This research was repeated for a large number of market sectors, in order to see why companies that were great at their market were different from those that were merely good. The results were summarized and principles gathered from these findings.

Application
To be honest, I read this book preparing to dislike it. Models for church and leadership that use successful businesses as their guides fall flat to me, or perhaps try too hard to be good, vibrant, positive and praiseworthy. There is, to me, a sharp dividing line between success in a corporate environment, where value is measured by benefit to shareholders and customers, and success in the church, where value is measured by faithfulness to the call of Christ, who himself was killed for his work, and his best followers didn’t fare much better. However, as I read Collins, I was impressed by not only Collins’ research, but by the helpfulness of his work in Christian organizations as well. Level 5 leadership look suspiciously like servant leadership with an emphasis on “it’s not all about me”, which results in survivability of the organization beyond the visionary leader.