Jason Alexander

Continuing on with multi-post, detailed review of Good to Great, by Jim Collins -

Another core concept that Jim talks about is the overall formula to make your company great. It's hard to really boil down the specifics, and many of the Executives at Great companies couldn't really explain what they did or how it happened, "It JUST happened!" but Jim boiled it down to three things, which we'll get to. The main theme of these points, though, is discipline.

dis * ci * pline - Training expected to product a specific character or pattern or behavior, especially training that produces moral or mental improvement.

Interesting. I think it's good to keep the context of the word in mind when going through the following points. Again, these points are what Jim states you do in order to become Great:

1. Disciplined People - Those right people that you now hired, you have to make sure they're disciplined. Do they have what it takes to carry to work through the tough times to help push you to Great?
2. Disciplined Thought - Now that you've got the right, disciplined people you have to all come to an agreement and work together, with absolute diligence, towards a common thought or goal.
3. Disciplined Action - And, finally, you have the right, disciplined people with all the same, disciplined thoughts you have to have disciplined action to carry through and take action on your game plan and strategies. Even with this being the last step that doesn't make it any easier, that's why you have to have the discipline to carry through on your game plan.

I know you think, "Duh, that's just common sense!" - and it is! But, for some reason, bigger companies can't see the forest for the trees in this case.

In his book, Jim gives lots of good insight into specific business cases. One of the cases, and I'm sure I'll slaughter this one, has to do with Walgreen's Pharmacy. Walgreen's competitors were all making big bets on the internet, putting a lot of investment into building big, hulking website. Walgreen's took their time, made a slow turn towards the internet, put lots of thought up-front and eventually launched a website that flipped the industry's sites on their heads. But, it took Walgreen's having the right people and team in place, with a unified, disciplined thought and strategy and having the disciplined action to carry out their plans. And, ultimately, this was seen as a huge win for Walgreen's!