From Good To Great

As we move towards becoming a great company, it is necessary to make sure that our managers are promoted within the organization as much as possible. However, when promotion within the institution is insufficient, an outsourced assignment can be made.

Institutions on the path from good to great have not only focused on what they should do, but they have also focused on what they should not do, or what they should stop doing.

Using technology can seriously accelerate this transition, but it may not assure the actual transformation that is required.

Partnerships and mergers cannot play a major role in making the transition from good to great; when two ordinary ones merge, they do not make one great company.

When the right conditions are met for the employees, the problems of commitment, motivation and change largely disappear.

You can think of the process from good to great as a process of “formation” followed by “breakthrough”. This process consists of three main stages: disciplined people, disciplined thought, and disciplined action.

Disciplined people: The kind of leadership which turns a good company into a great one reveals a surprising, even shocking profile. This kind of leadership is represented by calm, even shy people who prefer to stay in the background. They are a paradoxical mix of professional will and sanctioning power with humility in the personal plan. They look more like Lincoln and Socrates than Patton and Caesar. The leaders of the institutions that lead from good to great first take the right people on the bus, take the wrong people off the bus and put the right people in the right places and then decide where to go. They suppose that the most valuable thing is not the people, but the right people.

Disciplined thinking: Every good to great company embraces a principle called ‘the Stockdale Paradox’. They have an unshakable belief that they will succeed in the end, but they also have the discipline to confront the most brutal facts about their current situation.

Disciplined action: All companies have a culture, some companies have discipline, but very few companies have a culture of discipline. If they can combine the culture of discipline with the spirit of entrepreneurship, they can capture the alchemy of great performance.

They don't think of technology as the main trigger of transformation. Yet, paradoxically, they appear to be the first users of the carefully chosen technology.

It will be necessary to maintain self-worth and core goals, and to change specific goals and strategies in compliance with the concept.

Wheel of change: Those who initiate dramatic change programs are almost certain to fail to achieve perfection. Transformation is not something that happens in one move. There is not a single action, a program, a lucky move, a miraculous moment that can do that. On the contrary, the process of transforming into perfection is to turn a large wheel nonstop in the same direction without resting, and is to make it reach a certain breakthrough point as it spins to give the momentum.

Source: Good to Great – Jim Collins

Compiled by specialist Melek Çil