Good Is The Enemy of Great

Good to Great, Jim Collins (c) 2001
Jim Collins and his research team spent five years investigating publicly-traded companies that made the leap from good to great, as measured by financials, and sustained the leap for 15 years. I'll cover multiple points from this book in separate entries.

What He Says About Good Being the Enemy of Great: The vast majority of organizations are simply good. They all have the potential to be great, but good is simply easier to attain, and, once good-ness is achieved, few organizations leap to great.

What This Means for You: Do you have a good company? During the startup phase, you probably stayed up all night, energetically planning, dreaming, and occasionally vomiting in fear. All of that, even the vomiting part, was essential for getting you to the "good" place.

Chances are, you have achieved a "good enough" level of income in your business. Instead of being galvanized by nervous energy and a healthy dose of fear, you are now just showing up every day to a "good enough" company that pays you OK and gets by on many levels.

The trouble is that being good means you simply lose the fear and energy to push yourself to be great. You are not staying up all night, coming up with alternatives to running the business, thinking deeply about what your customers really want, and how you can convince them to leave your competitors and come over to you.

What to Do: Start by just noticing how different it is to feel "good enough" in your business vs. the energy and excitement that surrounded startup. If you truly want to transform your business and join the ranks of great companies, you need to tap back into that energy and reconnect with the excitement and fear that got you to good in the first place.

Virginia Ginsburg is founder and chief consultant at Swell Strategies. She is passionate about supporting small business owners and entrepreneurs in starting and running successful enterprises. An avid reader, in this blog she reviews books and articles and relates specific learning points back to entrepreneurial businesses.