Becoming Great

Jim Collins, author of a pivotal business text Good to Great (about what differentiates companies that just survive from those that thrive and become great), wrote a short monograph on the social sector a few years ago called Good to Great and the Social Sectors.  If you haven’t already read it, I highly recommend it.  He clearly and articulately lays out what, he suggests, makes a great social sector organization.  It is not, as many have argued in the last decade or so, that it becomes more like a business.  Rather, as Jim writes, “Greatness is not a function of circumstance.  Greatness, it turns out, is largely a matter of conscious choice, and discipline.”  To be a great social sector organization you must be disciplined about the talent you hire, the decisions you make, the actions you take, the strategies you create, the results you attempt to achieve, the mission you seek.  As Jim puts it, “To do the most good requires saying “no” to pressures to stray, and the discipline to stop doing what does not fit.”  To be a great social sector organization you must focus on what you can be great at and create a disciplined strategy to get there.  A really interesting read.  Some excerpts are here.