Good to Great: Leadership

On the recommendation of my friend, Sarah, I've started reading a very interesting book called "Good to Great", by Jim Collins. In it he & his team analyzed the performance of 1,435 companies over 40 years - no small feat.

It's late but I was so inspired by what I read that I just had to put my thoughts down to paper ... albeit of the electronic kind!

Some intriguing results came out of their research. One is that there's a consistency in personalities of the CEOs that were at the helm when the [relatively small number of] companies made the leap from just good to truly great. What may be surprising to you is that all of the following would not end up on that list:

• Donald Trump
• Lee Iacocca (Chrysler)
• Jack Welch (GE)
• Carly Fiorina (HP)

This group of four would have the following in common:

• Bigger egos than perhaps anyone within a square mile of them
• Much larger paycheques than any of them deserve
  
• Sub-par performance records in the long term and after they left

Collins would most likely use the term "Level 4" to describe their leadership skills. But by their very nature (success of themselves over top of success of the company), they're incapable of achieving "Level 5" leadership status, which is necessary to make a company truly great.

In my own life, I've been sucked in by the allure of charming egotistical leaders. I've worked for some and done business with others. Much like top athletes or movie stars, they're very interesting people to be around. But, in reading Collins' book, it's clear why these supposed "superstars" are the ones to walk quickly away from if you ever encounter them in business.

It's telling and somewhat sad that everyone in the business world has top-of-mind knowledge of the 4 CEOs listed above. Yet the CEOs who are the true superstars - the ones with the most profitable winning teams - are rarely ever mentioned in the mainstream press. We shouldn't be surprised though because this same media does exactly the same thing with the glitterati of Hollywood. For example, why exactly is Paris Hilton famous?

I've thought for some time now that we, as a society, have gone down the wrong path, starting perhaps 25 years ago:

• With business leaders making scandalously large amounts of money, approved by incompetent or complicit boards of directors. I'm a capitalist but what is going on in some of these companies is just pure theft from the shareholders.
  
• Ditto re professional athletes, plus the issue of rampant steroid use in many sports.
• Sub-standard Hollywood "stars" churning out sub-standard TV shows & movies. What exactly is the minimum requirement for being a "star" these days, anyhow?
  
• Greedy politicians who are more interested in padding their own coffers than actually looking out for the longterm good of the citizens they represent. Might not a 3-term lifetime limit be a good thing for ALL politicians?
• The media. Not all, but most. It sickens me to see that so many of them don't focus on reporting the news but much prefer to manufacture the news instead. Artificially created controversy is a prime tool of these folks. With their mindless 10-second sound bites, agenda-driven slanted polls, and tremendous power to shape public opinion, I'm absolutely convinced that the mainstream media are more responsible than any other group for damaging society and the average person's faith in the goodness of their fellow man.