I spent Thursday and Friday of last week at the Willow Creek Leadership Summit (#wcagls if you’re interested). It was an amazing conference where I saw some truly world class speakers talk about being a leader and leading people. One of the speakers I was most looking forward to hearing was Jim Collins he’s an amazing guy, and a personal hero.

His talk was based on his book “How the Mighty Fall” which I read when it first came out. It contains many of the ideas that you heard in “Built to Last” and “Good to Great”. He seems to be getting sharper, with time. Boiling his ideas down more and more, I really enjoyed “How the Mighty Fall“ and this talk about it.

In “How the Mighty Fall” Collins talks a lot about Hubris; it’s one of the signs that your formerly great, growing company is starting to falter. One of the most earliest expressions of this (in terms of warning signs of the future fall) is when you pursue growth that requires more “A” players in your leadership team than you can build, or recruit. When you start accepting “B” players into your management team it’s an early sign that you are headed to failure. You see if you are planning rapid growth, how could you possibly accept “B” players?  It’s a clear violation of the idea of “first who, then what” from “Built to Last”.

Your company is built on your management team, they are the foundation, the base on which everything else is built; and when they are not 100% committed to the vision, and values and built out of the strong character and culture that your firm is built out of, your organization is in danger.

I was so struck by this; I know I have been guilty from time to time of being expedient, of picking people who aren’t the right people, but they were the people who were there, and it has burned me every time. FIRST find the people, the right people, then grow the business.

This is hard, finding the right people takes a lot of work. I’m recommitting myself to the talent pipeline, to constantly being on the lookout for the next great person to add to my firm, and my client’s firms. It’s critical to success.

Jim was also very passionate when he talked about discipline. “Greatness,” says Collins, “is a matter of conscious choice and discipline.” It’s a cumulative process, not one big decision. Instead it’s 100’s of right decisions that build upon themselves. This is why discipline is so important. Jim pounded hard on his idea that “Disciplined people engaged in disciplined thought taking disciplined actions are what create steady progress over time. Whether you prevail or fail, endure or die, depends more on what you do to yourself than what the world does to you.”

He finished up by giving us a to-do list to keep our organizations growing and sharp; here it is:

10 To-Do’s

1. Do Your Diagnostics: Check out the Good to Great Diagnostic Tool available free at www.jimcollins.com
2. Count Your Blessings, Literally: When you begin to account for all the good things that have happened to you that you did not cause, all the success you did not cause are humbling. Count it.
3. What is your Questions to Statements Ratio? Can you double it in the next year. Great leaders don’t know all of the answers, they ask great questions.
4. Answer the Question “How many key seats do you have on your bus?”
5. Do the How the Mighty Fall Teams on the Way Up/Teams on the Way Down Diagnostic
6. Create an Inventory of the Brutal Facts: Only by confronting the facts of your situation can you make a clear plan to success.
7. Stop Doing Something: Great teams/companies are defined by what they’ve said “no” to so they can pursue what they are called to truly be doing.Jim suggested a “don’t do list” to help keep us focused on the disciplines that will lead to success.
8. Define Results and Celebrate Progress: Since no one thing is going to lead to success, you need to celebrate all the little things that will.
9. Double Your Reach to Young People by Changing Your Practices without changing your Core Values.
10. Set a Big, Hairy Audacious Goal

Several other folks in the audience (7,000 people attended live and over 60,000 through satellite) have published more throurough notes from Jim’s talk. Tim Schraeder has a nice outline of the talk, and Kristen also kept pretty good notes. Check them out if you want a deeper dive.

Later in the week I’ll report on Daniel Pink‘s talk, and the amazing interview with Jack Welch.

---

Brad Farris is a small business advisor with Anchor Advisors, Ltd. in Chicago, Il. Since 2001 Anchor Advisors has been helping creative professional firms to grow, by helping them clarify their purpose, get the most from their people, keep their eye on key performance measures, and implement consistent processes. Brad is also the author of The Business Owner’s Champion: 6 Practices to Build your Nerve and your Business.