This week we will be covering Good to Great by Jim Collins. While, primarily corporate-oriented on the surface, Good to Great provides an extremely valuable look at what fundamental characteristics and practices constitute great leadership.

For Good to Great, Jim Collins and his team spent years developing as empirical a set of data-driven criteria as possible for determining what companies, over the span of twenty years, provided the highest value of return to their shareholders, and what ultimately contributed to these returns.

Their findings revealed that in almost every case, regardless of industry, circumstance, or economic climate, the companies that prevailed were those that were headed by great leaders. Collins goes on to determine the criteria possessed across the board by all of the leaders that steered their companies to greatness.

Collins does an excellent job of reducing what he determines to be the qualities of great leaders to models that can be applied to nearly any field and that certain bear relevance to the music industry.

Here are the main points made in the first 4 Chapters:

Level 5 Leadership

According to Collins, ‘great’ leaders are at the top of a 5-level hierarchy and demonstrate the following:

• A blend of personal humility and professional will
• Ambition for the company that exceeds their personal ambition (They will set up their successors for success rather than building firms that will crumble without their direction)
• Confronting the brutal facts while maintaining unwavering faith in the potential for success
• Looking ‘Out the Window’ for the reasons for their success
• Looking ‘In the Mirror’ for the reasons for their failures (these last two relate to the concept of an internal locus of control)

The Hedgehog Concept

One of my favorite parts of Good to Great is what Collins refers to as the Hedgehog Concept. This basic premise is echoed in Seth Godin’s The Dip and Linchpin and serves as a model for determining the future success of your efforts as well as selecting the roads down which you choose to venture. According to Collins, the Hedgehog Concept is what you should be using to determine both what you personally and, on a larger scale, your company should focus your time and effort upon.

A basic breakdown of the Hedgehog Concept for selecting a career in the music industry might proceed as follows:

Say you love music. It’s ‘what you are passionate about’. But…you don’t really have what it takes to be ‘the best in the world’ at writing songs, playing guitar, etc. But you DO know how to make and sell t-shirts…Start making merch for local bands, your friends bands, etc.

While this is an extremely oversimplified version of how to implement the Hedgehog Concept, it is a very useful little tool for determining the viability of future ventures and projects.

First Who…Then What

Another concept that Collins addresses relates to personnel and hiring choices. According to the author, companies should focus first on finding the right people and then determining how to operate from there. Collins refers to this as: ‘getting the right people on the bus and then figuring out where to go.’

Further into his exploration of this concept, Collins argues that before making a firing or hiring decision, companies need to make sure that the right people ‘on the bus’ are ‘in the right seats’. Make sure that your people are doing what best allows them to contribute to the company before you consider firing or hiring. Collins refers to this as ‘moving able people to suitable seats before throwing them off the bus’.

Confronting the brutal truth…

According to Collins, all ‘Good-to-Great’ companies begin the process of finding a path to greatness by confronting the brutal facts of their current reality, subsequently identifying the right ways to proceed, and never losing faith in the potential for their ultimate success. In order to confront the brutal facts of your current reality, it is necessary to create a climate in which people have ‘a tremendous opportunity to be heard and, ultimately, for the truth to be heard.’

Creating a climate where the truth is head involves four basic practices:

1. Lead with answers, not questions.
2. Engage in dialogue and debate. Not coercion.
3. Conduct autopsies, without blame.
4. Build red flag mechanisms that turn into information that cannot be ignored.

While some of Good to Great may at times delves a little deeper into the principles of corporate management than the casual reader may care for, the book’s fundamental principles make it an extremely important source of information for anyone from artists to teachers who are looking to get serious about leadership.

As always, we look forward to your comments, thoughts, and ideas.

-Patrick R

patrick@rabbitholeconsulting.com

Interested in how to implement Business Development Strategy and Intelligent Marketing Concepts for your Music Enterprise or small business? ContactRabbitHole Consulting to learn about how we can help you reach your target.