Good To Great And The Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great

By Jim Collins

Building upon the concepts introduced in Good to Great, Jim Collins answers the most commonly asked questions raised by his readers in the social sectors. Using information gathered from interviews with over 100 social sector leaders, Jim Collins shows that his "Level 5 Leader" and other good-to-great principles can help social sector organizations make the leap to greatness.

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins
• Release date: Sep 27, 2011
• ISBN: 9780062119094

Jim Collins

Jim Collins has published multiple international bestsellers that have sold in total more than 11 million copies worldwide, including the perennial favorite Good to Great. His writings and teachings are based on extensive research projects designed to uncover timeless principles of human endeavor and have had a lasting impact across all sectors of society. All of Jim’s books share a common thread: the study of people and how they navigate the big questions of leadership and life.  

Book preview

WHY BUSINESS THINKING

IS NOT THE ANSWER

GOOD TO GREAT

AND THE

SOCIAL SECTORS

A Monograph to Accompany

Good to Great

Why Some Companies

Make the Leap …

and Others Don’t

JIM COLLINS

Contents

Cover

Title Page

GOOD TO GREAT AND THE SOCIAL SECTORS

NOTES

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Books by Jim Collins

Back Ad

AUTHOR’S NOTE

Copyright

About the Publisher

GOOD TO GREAT AND THE SOCIAL SECTORS

Why Business Thinking Is Not the Answer

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."

Later, at dinner, we continued our debate, and I asked Weekley: If you had taken a different path in life and become, say, a church leader, a university president, a nonprofit leader, a hospital CEO, or a school superintendent, would you have been any less disciplined in your approach? Would you have been less likely to practice enlightened leadership, or put less energy into getting the right people on the bus, or been less demanding of results? Weekley considered the question for a long moment. No, I suspect not.

That’s when it dawned on me: we need a new language. The critical distinction is not between business and social, but between great and good. We need to reject the naïve imposition of the language of business on the social sectors, and instead jointly embrace a language of greatness.

That’s what our work is about: building a framework of greatness, articulating timeless principles that explain why some become great and others do not. We derived these principles from a rigorous matched-pair research method, comparing companies that became great with companies that did not. Our work is not fundamentally about business; it is about what separates great from good.

THE GOOD-TO-GREAT MATCHED-PAIR RESEARCH METHOD

Reviews for Good To Great And The Social Sectors

[alnerdo · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Easy to understand and addresses an important niche (how to build great organizations in the non-profit or social sector).

[mimo-774848 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I should note that I haven't read Good to Great, so I was lost on some of the more concepts introduced in the original volume. I heard of a lot of "discipline" , "hedgehog model" , and "bus", but didn't understand it well. I have to go back and read Good to Great maybe. That said, the parts in normal English, the insights Collins had on the social sector, was worth noting and filing away. The real-life examples were inspiring as well.

[gtdbizmom · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

As a nonprofit professional who had recently read "Good to Great" I was excited to read this follow up monograph. I found the insights to be invaluable but wish it had been longer as I would love to learn more about how to apply the G2G principles in the nonprofit sector.

[buildingabookshelf · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This book is really a couple of chapters that should be read along with the original book. For someone like me who is running a not-for-profit, it gives a lot to think about. How do we measure not-for-profits differently than for-profit organizations. Why do we treat not-for-profits as if they shouldn't strive to make as much money as possible? The more money I make, the more change I can bring about in the community. This is a book that will simmer in the back of my brain and help me do a better job of managing our mission.

[mantooth_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Insightful addition to the original book which was excellent

[kpickett_11 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

A compliment to Good to Great for non-profits and social organizations. This is not a replacement but rather a supliment for Good to Great. Read that first to understand the concepts and then read how Collins applies them to social sectors.