The Midweek
 Motivator

Audience Development Group

 Built for Excellence?                                                                   August 14,2013   

 
Tim Moore
Tim Moore, Managing Partner Audience Development Group

Managing Partner

Audience Development Group

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Greetings!

In Markham's West With The Night he writes, "that's what makes death so hard-unsatisfied curiosity." Tangentially connectable, Jim Collins succinctly proclaimed through one of our firm's favorite incantations, "Good is the enemy of great."

 

Sometimes it's worth the reappraisal: just how much of what we see, do, and experience is truly "great?" Once upon a time CEO's of companies, coaches, and military leaders could be downright sanguinary in their quest for excellence. Today, where all the kids get a trophy and a cookie-win or lose-protocol mandates Camp Self-Esteemalot exists to bring everyone to the middle. List me in the skeptic category; we've lost that lovin' feeling for bringing "average" to "best" and we're paying a terrible tariff.

 

We don't have great schools because we're okay with average schools. We don't have great government or even functioning government...we're satisfied with acceptance of 535 legislative underachievers in their chosen field. A vast majority of media people and their companies never become great because they're reasonably good. The mystifying, haunting refrain whispers to us, "What do we do to transcend 'good' or is this all there is?"

 

If you uncase your copy of Collins' Good to Great you'll find a coruscating perspective on leadership, contradicting the long-tailed image of a leader. You may be surprised to find that through Collins' voluminous research, his team was shocked to discover the type of standard-bearer required for turning a good organization into a great one. Compared to high profile people like Jack Welch or Hillary Clinton-the ones with big personalities with great press agents who make the headlines celeb, many of the good-to-great leaders seem to have come from Mars. So many were self-effacing, quiet, reserved even shy; these leaders are a paradoxical blend of humility and pathological determination. They are, wrote Collins, more like Lincoln and Socrates than Patton or Caesar.

 

Among the attributes uncovered by the Good to Great all-star research team: (1) people who ask, "first who...then what?" In other words they're constantly asking, "Do we have the right people in the right places?" (2) Confront the brutal facts but keep the faith. This is the Stockdale Principle at work; the heralded Navy officer entombed in the Hanoi Hilton for 7 years with the sole mission of keeping his colleagues alive focused purely on survival. (3) Transcend the Curse of Competence. Simply because someone is competent does not assure he or she can be the best in the field. If they can't then the company can't. (4) The culture of discipline: all companies have a culture, some companies have discipline. But few companies have a culture of discipline. (5) Technology accelerators: no, it's not putting technology before people. Instead it's merging the right technology with the right people on the right footing.

 

There is abundant evidence thanks to Jim Collins and the fluid gathering of facts to disprove most of the current management hype; from the cult of the superhuman CEO to the cult of IT. Even radio's acquisitions and merger mania can't elevate under-performance to competency. But we can elevate competency to greatness.

Sincerely,

Tim Moore

Tim Moore

Managing Partner 

Audience Development Group

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