Good to Great, Strategic Leadership, and Me

One of the chapters that stood out the most to me in Good to Great was Chapter 3, “First who…Then What”. Collins discusses how leaders need to make sure that they have the right people in the organization before they decide what direction to take the company. Collins uses the analogy of a bus, saying “You need to make sure you have the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off the bus) and then figure out where to drive it”. His idea is that if you don’t have the right people, they won’t stay with the company if it starts to head in a direction they don’t agree with, and if they do, they will just cause more conflict. The right people will stay with the company no matter what direction the company is headed. They will make the most of whatever situation they come across. Collins lists 3 principle disciplines companies should practice to make sure the right people are on the job. The disciplines are “when in doubt, don’t hire- keep looking; when you know you need to make a people change, act; and put your best people on your biggest opportunities, not your biggest problems”. Collins mentions that it is important for companies to be rigorous in choosing the right people, but not ruthless. Companies tend to use layoffs and restructuring as a means to cut company losses during a transition period. What stood out to me is that Good to Great companies do not often use layoffs or restructuring during times of transition. In comparison “some of the comparison companies had an almost chronic addiction to layoffs and restructurings”. The combination of constant restructuring and layoffs keeps the employees worried about their position and their own personal future instead of focusing on the future of the company. It also creates a kind of distrust between upper management and the rest of the employees. True leaders don’t need to make a bunch of cuts and layoffs. They can find the right people for the job with minimal amount of damage.

This reminds me of the (Contemporary) Strategic Leadership theory. Boal and Hooijberg wrote, “Strategic leadership focuses on the people who have overall responsibility for the organization and includes not only the titular head of the organization but also members of what is referred to as the top management team or dominant coalition”. This leadership style is based on having the right people in positions of leadership that will not only head the company in the right direction, but will communicate a new vision to the rest of the employees and get them to participate in making it a reality. Boal and Hooijberg also state some of the activities associated with strategic leadership. These include creating and communicating a vision of the future; selecting and developing the next generation of leaders; and sustaining an effective organizational culture. It is important in strategic leadership to make sure that not only the right people are leading the rest of the organization, but that once these leaders move on, there will be someone just as, if not more capable, ready to step into their place.

This chapter in Good to Great really stood out to me because as I was reading it, I could see that it was accurately escribing what is going on at one of the places I used to work. I just left the organization for a few reasons. I was on the management team with two other ladies, and things went the smoothest they ever had gone for our program until my supervisor got a new boss. She came in with zero experience in our field and wanted to change a bunch of things. At the time, we were able to keep the restructuring of the program to a minimum because we had a strong management team that fought to only change things that were absolutely necessary. Not long after, my supervisor’s position got restructured to include more responsibilities, making it a full time that they were going to hire someone from the outside to fill. The organization was in such a rush to fill the position that they didn’t take the time to make sure that they had the perfect candidate before hiring her, and now the new supervisors (both of whom have little experience and even less knowledge of our program) are making crazy and unnecessary changes to the program. When I would try to give input, I was basically ignored by my supervisors, but when it came to the other employees, they would come to me with grievances and I would be given responsibility for them even though I had no part in the decisions that were being made. They weren’t the right people for the job, and they are CONSTANTLY restructuring the program over and over again. To me, this situation sounds very much like what Collins was describing in Good to Great Chapter 3, and is a huge part of why I left the organization.