The Paradox of Doing Great & Doing okay?

Jim Collins wrote the book, "Good To Great" to illustrate the management hype - the cult of the superhuman CEO.

His research explains how a good company, mediocre companies, and even bad companies are able to achieve enduring greatness.

Jim started his writing with the caption: 'Good is the Enemy of Great'.

This is some of what he wrote:

We expect that good-to-great leaders would begin by setting a new vision and strategy. We found instead that "they first got the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats - and then they figured out where to drive it."

The old adage "People are your most important asset" turns out to be wrong. People are not your most important asset 'if you got the wrong people' (emphasis added). The right people are.

Few people have the culture of discipline.. and... when you combine a culture of discipline with an ethic of entrepreneurship, you get the magical alchemy of great performance.

Good-to-great companies never use technology as the primary means of igniting transformation. Paradoxically, they pioneers the application of carefully selected technologies.

Good-to-great CEOs didn't talk about themselves. They'd talk about the company and the contributions of their executives and would deflect discussion about their own contribution.

""The comparison leaders did just the opposite. They'd look out of the window for something or someone outside themselves to blame for poor results, but would preen in front of the mirror and credit themselves when things went right.""

Does this statement sounds familiar to you? How often did you read this statement in our daily press and news? It is just unshockingly believable in our society and governmental system.

Jim continued: 'The great irony is that the animus and personal ambition that often drive people to positions of power stands at odds with the humility required for Level 5 Leadership. The term Level 5 refers to the highest level in a hierarchy of executive capabilities that was identified in the research. Level 5 Leaders are modest and willful, humble and fearless. They are ambitious to be sure, but ambitious first and foremost for the company, not themselves."

Jim conclusively summarized up his research of the Good-to-Great companies:

• To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence.
• Those who launch radical change programs and wrenching restructuring will almost certainly fail to make the leap.

"Some of the key concepts discerned in the study will fly in the face of our modern business culture and will upset some people," Jim commented.

The book is a good read. But I would suggest that, for those who had not read his earlier book, 'Built To Last', it would be better to read that first.

Built To Last is a fantastic research project for Stanford University Graduate School of Business by Jim Collins and Jerry I. Porras who took 18 exceptional top companies and studied each in direct comparison to one of its top competitors.

In the Author's note (2002 Edition), they wrote: "Creativity often sprouts from frustration. Built to Last is not fundamentally about building to last. It is about building something that is worthy of lasting - about building a company of such intrinsic excellence that the world would lose something important if that organization cease to exist. It's about a Global Visionary Company with timeless core values and purpose beyond just making money.

Those who built the visionary companies wisely understood that it is better to understand "who you are" then "where you are going" - for where you are going will almost certainly change. It is a lesson as relevant to our individual lives as to aspiring visionary companies and most of all, relevant to our governmental system of administration.

I would like to relate the learning points of these two books to a piece of article I read in today's newspaper.

In the NST page 4, Prime News, Anis Ibrahim wrote:

"Muszaphar doing great in space station".

This caption title caught my eyes and caused me to ponder...

• "What does she mean when she said 'Doing Great' in space?
• What was done that had been great?
• Is it the same Good-to-Great thing?
• Is there something great that had already being done in space, or,
• Is landing on the space station itself a great feat that is classified great?

But, that space-craft was a Russian and Nasa piloted creature. The traveler was a passengers.

Reading down the article, I realized she was emphasizing the fact that it is Malaysia's first man in space and that is already a great feeling. This, I agree - the feeling is great, not the doing...

But paradoxically, we spent $90 million to have such good feelings. Jeff Ooi calculated that the same amount of money would have been enough to sponsor some 180 students to Russian top medical university and help reduce the current shortages of medical doctors at our government hospitals.

However, we can't evaluate this way... otherwise, we individuals shouldn't be buying cosmetics, smoke cigarettes, drink todi or VSOP, or even consider buying and wearing the new Datuk K Tudong. We can't make such comparative analysis...

But then, what about the $4.5bil bailout of the PKFZ project? $4.5b is 50 times the space trip and would mathematically sent 9,000 students to medical universities and that would suffice to bridge the shortages at all our government hospitals! Oh, I forget, that space trip was a "free" gift complimentary for spending $3.5b on Sukhoi fighter jets. That's another 7,500 medical doctors.

What do you think if we had used that money to send 16,750 students to Russian top medical universities? Wouldn't the Russian government grant a distinguish Medal of the Highest order to our PM and DPM? Wouldn't we be proud to boasts of our PM and DPM to the western world?

Are we proud now with this space mission? Will there be tangible future benefits that can be derived from the mission?

Postscript:

The scheduled 10-minutes window for communciation between PM and Dr Muszaphar did not materialise due to technical glitch. Pak Lah and Jeanne were seated and prepared for the video conference but instead made an impromptu interview with RTM.

Pak Lah said he wanted to ask Muszaphar how the scientific experiments were going. "I wanted to ask him if he had started the experiments. he is not in space to enjoy the view of Earth below but has duties to fulfill while at the ISS."

On the space programme, Pak Lah explained: "...we will be a developed country in 2020 and we have to take this step now and not wait for 10 years or it will be too late."

I'm not sure what he means by too late. Singapore hasn't sent anyone to the ISS or the moon. Taiwan, Hong Kong, Korea and Japan did not. Britain, Germany, Italy and France, they too did not. So, what is too late?