Reflections from Good to Great and Beyond Great, part 2 
Definitions for Success
When the Good to Great team had identified their set of “great” companies via a rigid set of diagnostics, they dug in to find key differentiators that propelled companies ahead of their competition—similar organizations in the same industries. Several key areas emerged as truly important. Collins and his team homed in on those that seemed to be common threads among the great performers. Their book illuminates the findings in areas such as:
- Leadership
- Team composition
- Capacity to confront facts, even “brutal” facts
- Adhering to a central focus—a Hedgehog Concept
- Wisely using technology accelerators
The companies featured as “great” in Collins’ book could be the envy of many business leaders. They set the stage for us to ask key questions:
- What is a “good” company?
- What is great in the context of a company?
- Why desire to strive “Beyond Great”?
- What exactly do we mean by “Beyond Great”?
We will keep the definitions of these concepts straightforward.
Good—this is okay performance.
Truthfully, for some companies in recent years, goodness has simply been the capacity to survive in very difficult times. In the most simple of definitions, we would say that a “good” company is profitable, and, if not growing, certainly stable.
Great—this involves significantly better financial performance than a good company.
For companies to make the cut in Collins’ book, financial performance had to be head and shoulders above their competitors. Collins laid out the performance of the “comparison” companies side-by-side with the performance of the great corporations.
Beyond Great—this would have to take a company to some still higher reach.
To do that, we have to consider more than money. It cannot be as simple as financial success. What we want to do is add an eternal implication—economic success coupled to enduring impact.
Beyond Great organizations achieve impact that exceeds the “bottom line” – i.e. the companies succeed, but also the people of the enterprise, their families, the community and God’s world benefit from their work and success.
Thank you for your interest. We will continue the discussion next time.
Larry Meeker
President, Advanced Team Concepts
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