Jim Collins – Liveblogging the Global Leadership Summit 2010 (#wcagls)

I was looking forward to this one. I’ve read Collins’ book “Good to Great” (read the review here).

Collins’ talk is titled “Never, Ever, Give Up”. Hybels informs us that Collins is always one of the top requested speakers for Summit every year. Collins is engaging, honed in, and inspirational, using pauses to great effect. What an intense glare.

First money quote: “Greatness is a matter of conscious choice and discipline.”

Collins used a personal story to illustrate organizational decline. His wife was an ironman champ but had cancer. Still looked healthy on the outside.  Orgs can be the same.

5 Stages of Decline

Stage 1 – Hubris Born of Success
Outrageous ignorance to think that because our intentions are good and noble are automatically good. Bad decisions made with good intentions are still bad decisions.

(Quotes Hunter S. Thompson. Thank you very much. I wonder how many attendees have any idea who that is…)

All good leaders have this is common: It’s not about them and they never give up. Humility is the signature of a great leader.

So far, this is too much like a verbal presentation of “Good to Great”. If you’ve read that book, you’ve heard this talk.

Stage 2 – Undisciplined Pursuit of More
Leads to over-reaching, grasping for too much. This is what brings down the mighty.

Packard’s law: if you allow growth exceed your ability to have good people in the key seats to execute on the growth, you will fall.

Regulate growth and reach by asking: Do we have all of our key seats filled with fantastic people. If not, you must resist growth until we have them.

Stage 3 – Denial and Risk of Peril
When a culture of denial takes hold, trouble is on the horizon. Looking great on the outside makes it easy to deny.

Stage 4 – Grasping for Salvation
Reviews the flywheel principle. Momentum. There is no one big push, it is a succession of small pushes

Stage 5 – Capitulation to Irrelevance or Death
Here it’s over, everything is squandered. Out of choices and options. The game is over.

Why are some companies resilient?
Enduring great enterprises have a reason to endure, beyond success and money. If you measure you success by money, you always lose. They answer the question: What would be lost if we disappeared?

“The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency.”

Collins finishes by giving us a ToDo List

1. Do your diagnostics (at www.jimcollins.com – free tools)
2. Count your blessings (in a spreadsheet)
   1. List all the good things that have happened to us that we did not cause
3. What is your “questions to statements” ratio and can you double it in the next year?
   1. Good leaders to have all the answers, but they ask the right questions.
   2. Invest more in being interested than in being interesting
4. Answer the questions: How many key seats do you have and ow many are filled?
5. Teams up/ down diagnostic
6. In your next meeting, create an inventory f the brutal facts
7. Create a “stop doing” list. Productivity results not from the things we do, but by the things we are disciplined to stop doing
8. Define results and show milestones, clicks on the flywheel. Tangible expressions
9. Double your reach to young people by changing your practices with out changing your core values
10. Set a big hairy audacious goal

I’d listen to Collins again in a heartbeat.

More From The Ascent to Truth

• Christine Caine – Liveblogging the Global Leadership Summit 2010 (#wcagls) – Talking about music is like dancing about architecture…
• Good to Great (Author: Jim Collins) – Talking about music is like dancing about architecture…
• Tony Dungy – Liveblogging the Global Leadership Summit 2010 (#wcagls) – Talking about music is like dancing about architecture…

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