Good to Great is a phenomenal book by Jim Collins that is making its way to the top of the business bestsellers. Based on a study that begins with the entire Fortune 500 the book identifies eleven companies that made the transition from good to great. This is defined as having ten years of average to below average stock market returns followed by fifteen years of stock market returns of at least three times the average market, without just riding an industry wide wave. In order to understand what is truly different about these eleven companies each of them was paired with one carefully selected comparison company. The comparison companies were in the same industry, about the same age, of similar size, and had similar or even better financial results in the initial period without producing superior results in the second period. In other words they had the same opportunities and challenges but didn't deliver the results.
The research findings fly in the face of many currently accepted theories. The Successful companies:
What the research did show was that these companies:
Jim Collins the author of the book warns that companies can't just go off-site for two days and come up with a transition strategy. Of course he is absolutely right.
However in a well designed off-site an executive team can expect to make significant progress on many of the key conversations that will have to take place over an extended period of time for a good to great strategy to emerge and succeed.
Twice this year we have been brought in by clients to facilitate some of these discussions. What follows is a description of the process we used with one of them to help them talk about "getting the right people on the bus".
Before going off-site we had a discussion with the CEO to ensure that the executive team were all "the right people." We felt that the exercises we intended to use would be invalid if the executive team were not all the right people.
Once we were off-site we reviewed the disciplines that Jim Collins discusses in his section on "First Who Then What". We then focused on two of them:
We addressed the first discipline two ways. First we developed a list of five questions that would indicate the need to change someone. (One question was; "Do you take their performance problems home with you to your family?" Another was; "Would you secretly be relieved if this person told you they were leaving the company.") Each executive answered the five questions with a yes or a no for all of the people within their respective organizations for the next two levels down. Multiple yes answers triggered the need for an action plan for the situation to be rectified within six months. Other executives were allowed to comment only to the extent that they could provide concrete feedback on one or more of the questions. For example one question had to do with needing excessive management or compensating systems. Sometimes these systems would be in another executives area of responsibility. When we were done this activity it was clear to everyone where the problem performers were and what had to be done about them. (Results changed or people changed.)
Another activity we did was to hold a "team draft". We used a sports analogy to help make it clear what we wanted to do. In the sports analogy the coaches at the end of a season take a look at their entire roster of players. It may be fifty players in total. In the coming season they want to have a winning team. They cannot afford fifty superstars so they have to pick very carefully where they need their top performers, and who they will be. They also need to build the team as a team, not as a collection of individuals. The other positions around the the top performers will then be filled with the best available people. Some of the superstar positions will be filled from within the team, others will require that the team goes outside to the market. With these instructions the executives all did their first round draft. In the first round each executive could draft 20% of their total team. The ensuing discussion made it very clear who the top people in the company were. The results were surprising to some, and worrying to others in that the team needed to go outside for several key spots. (Ironically these spots that needed "superstars" were currently held by "non-performers" identified in the previous exercise. An action plan to rectify this was put in place.
The final activity on getting the right people on the bus had to do with making sure that the best people were on the biggest opportunities. Our approach here was straight forward. First we brainstormed lists of the biggest opportunities and of the biggest problems. (We had already done considerable work on their hedgehog strategy to help guide this.) Next we conducted a multivote whereby everybody voted for the top three of each. Starting at the top of the list we asked who was the person responsible for realizing this opportunity or addressing this problem. Once everyone had been identified we had an interesting discussion about the alignment (or lack of alignment) between the best people and the biggest opportunities. This discussion led to more action items.
Lots... More than we can reasonably describe here. For more information on our facilitation technique see below....
The client followed through on the work that they began at the workshop and now feel that they have a winning team that is focused on the biggest opportunities .
If you are looking for a good to great facilitator who can help your organization have the types of conversations that it needs to have to make the leap then please Contact Us
For more information on Jim Collins and his writings go to www.jimcollins.com
Please note that we are not associated with Jim Collins in any way.