Building the Better Mousetrap

UPDATE 2/25/2008: Skeptics read this. Then read this.

Many of you may have heard of Jim Collins - author of "Good to Great" and "Built to Last," books he wrote on the structural underpinnings of successful companies. He has since released a monograph called "Good to Great and the Social Sectors" in order to relate some of the key ideas in "Good to Great" to the nonprofit universe.

"We must reject the idea—well-intentioned, but dead wrong—that the primary path to greatness in the social sectors is to become 'more like a business.' Most businesses—like most of anything else in life—fall somewhere between mediocre and good. Few are great. When you compare great companies with good ones, many widely practiced business norms turn out to correlate with mediocrity, not greatness. So, then, why would we want to import the practices of mediocrity into the social sectors?

I shared this perspective with a gathering of business CEOs, and offended nearly everyone in the room. A hand shot up from David Weekley, one of the more thoughtful CEOs—a man who built a very successful company and who now spends nearly half his time working with the social sectors. 'Do you have evidence to support your point?' he demanded. 'In my work with nonprofits, I find that they’re in desperate need of greater discipline—disciplined planning, disciplined people, disciplined governance, disciplined allocation of resources.'

'What makes you think that’s a business concept?' I replied. 'Most businesses also have a desperate need for greater discipline. Mediocre companies rarely display the relentless culture of discipline—disciplined people who engage in disciplined thought and who take disciplined action—that we find in truly great companies. A culture of discipline is not a principle of business; it is a principle of greatness.'” -Jim Collins

I'm enamored of the process Collins used to write "Good to Great" - he began by sorting mounds and mounds of data and then, through focused debate with his research team, developed theories which described the data. The results, to me, seemed much more solid and useful then much of the usual claptrap that you find in business self-help books. And, it's a surprisingly good read (if you're a management-type geek like me).

What I'd like to do is make a post a week or so talking about some of these concepts - that way, we'll spread out the fun, you won't get bored, and I don't have to let on that my copy of the "Social Sectors" monograph is lost in the holiday mail and I haven't read it yet. By the time it gets here, it should be pretty relevant. I'll also keep you updated on my attempt to put his theories to use within my own theatre.