The Bus Methaphor: Further Thoughts
I was cruising through my Bloglines feeds and stopped at Golden Practices (nicely redesigned). Michelle Golden is one of my favorite bloggers. That's why I was so surprised by how much I disagreed with her post on The 'Good To Great' Bus Metaphor. For those of you who have been on vacation for the last five years, Good to Great, authored by Jim Collins, has overtaken In Search of Excellence as the all-time best-selling business book. In G2G, Jim Collins studies 11 companies that were transformed from ordinary performers (vs. the market) over a 15 year period to companies that outperformed the market by at least a factor of 3 over a later 15 year period. Collins and his team studied those turn-arounds, including comparing each company to a well-known and regarded direct comparison company. Collins identified a small number of factors that the data establish as instrumental in the change from good to great.
One of the factors is "First Who ... Then What." In Collins' words: "We expected that good-to-great leaders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy. We found instead that they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats--and then figured out where to drive it. The old adage "People are your most important asset" turns out to be wrong. People are not your most important asset. The right people are."
Michelle had run across a post by Phil Gott that appears to take issue with the merit of Collins' conclusions as applied to professional service firms. Following Gott's lead, Michelle concludes her post with this point:
'Tis true that, as Gott shows us, firms are built a bit backwards. Accountants would say we've "backed into" our passenger list and varied routes. My Grandpa used to say, "Do your feet smell and does your nose run? Then you're built backwards!"
Can we at least agree that we need our long term strategy first (destination and routes) before we determine if we have the infrastructure (fleet and drivers) to get there?
Maybe more people will come along for the ride (passengers) when we've established those first four things. Could this be a clue how to resolve the growing problems in recruiting and retention?
Unless I am misreading this, I see Michelle as asking if we can agree that Collins' finding isn't really applicable to professional service firms, that unlike his good-to-great firms, professional service firms can set vision and strategy before getting the right people on the bus. I feel compelled to respond.
First, Collins' discussion of "right people" is about the executive core, not production workers, middle management and maintenance crews. Its the leaders, not the followers. So I don't see this finding being at all relevant to recruiting and retention. Those people don't yet have seats on Collins' bus. Second, I would need to see data from professional service firms that have gone from good to great that shows Collins' findings don't apply for me to jump to that conclusion. The fact that there are so few and that it is so hard to do is perfectly consistent with the fact that out of a universe of more than 1000 companies (all companies that were ever part of the Fortune 500 during the period 1965 to 1995), only 11 made the move from good to great! The same difficulty will be experienced by professional service firms!
In a number of things I've read, I've seen people argue that because Collins' findings are counter-intuitive or because they are so hard to apply (where do we sign up for Level 5 leadership classes?), they just can't be true. Me? I look at the findings just the other way: Because moving from good to great is so hard (as evidenced by the discovery of just 11 businesses that did so), it is a certainty that most firms will fail to make the move. But its their failure not that Collins is wrong that explains why most firms don't make the move.
Pat, a thought provoking addition. I want to do justice to your reaction and that reply will require more time than I've got just now. In the meantime, I want to direct you (and readers) to a recent post by David Maister on Intensity (his reaction to Denise Howell's Have Aeron Will Travel post, here: http://davidmaister.com/blog/149/) and how important he believes it is for firm leadership to have similar intensity levels. Mostly, what I'm saying I agree with Gott on is that most firms don't have cohesion in regard to what it is they are trying to achieve (what will they be "great" at?) thus there are multiple directions the firm attempts to pursue simultaneously (say, oh, at least one per partner...). When that is the case, foundational work needs to be done on "routes." Maybe we're really saying the same thing if routes are determined by who wants to go where. More thinking to do but I WILL come back to this. :-)