How to be great? Just be good, repeatably, Jim Collins SMAC Recipe: your recipe for success & Do good entrepreneurs make good CEOs?
24 July 2022 Newsletter
“Until you work as hard as those you admire, don’t explain away their success as luck.” – James Clear, Atomic Habits
Hope you’re Thriving!
Is it wrong to start by swearing and complaining? Probably. I try to avoid that here. But this week, I’ve had the dreaded ‘C’ for the second time in six weeks – meaning in the past seven weeks, I’ve spent two weeks in isolation. I’m feeling OK and haven’t really been sick, so I’m grateful for that, but you know, ‘iso’.
How to Be Great? Just Be Good, Repeatably
If you only read one article this week, this is it.
All of the work that we do at Evolution Partners with business leaders is to help build enduring great companies. We overlay principles and disciplines to create high-performing, scaling businesses. But it’s an evolution, not a revolution.
Our firm’s purpose is to build great companies because greatness is earned and is not instantaneous since greatness in a single instance can be reduced to luck.
This article outlines how great is, in fact, mostly about consistently good, compounding positive impact over a long period of time. In being consistent over time, you become the outlier.
Remember: great is just good, but repeatable.
From the article:
“Being “great” is not about being better than someone else. It is about being dependable and disciplined, and ultimately it is earned. Many people, in theory, want to be “great”. In fact, each month 1,000 people search “how to be great”, 260 people search “how to become perfect”, and 2,400 people search “how to be the best”, looking for discrete answers on how to get from 0 to 1.
Yet, many people in life realistically do not want to put in the effort over a sustained period of time to actually get to 1. They are looking for the “secrets to success” that, in many ways, do not exist.
You know what brings success? Hard work brings success.”
Read the article here: How to Be Great? Just Be Good, Repeatably
Do Good Entrepreneurs Make Good CEOs?
For more than 20 years, I’ve surrounded myself with entrepreneurs. And through that time, I learned the dirty little secret of many CEOs – that many don’t know the difference between a good and great CEO. Many don’t know what their role is in the business.
That’s why I wrote Made to Thrive – to outline a clear set of operating principles that leaders must perform if they wish to build a thriving business. The kicker is that great leaders aren’t born. There isn’t a superior class of leaders. Instead, we can learn how to be high-performing leaders who consistently create great results.
So it was interesting to read this article asking the question ‘do entrepreneurs make good CEOs?’ It made some interesting points, culminating in the following:
“Ultimately, entrepreneurs don’t necessarily make good CEOs. Just because they’ve had an innovative idea and executed on it doesn’t mean they’re equipped with the training, skills, experience or even the mindset necessary to run a business.”
Well, I call BS.
We’re all people, and you do what you want. We’re not cast into some mould.
And if what you want is to succeed, to be great, then referring to the article above which asks ‘how to be great’, then just be good consistently.
From the article:
“Millions of entrepreneurs start their businesses with a picture-perfect dream and a checklist: Launch the business, direct the business, hire the team, reap the profits and retire as a multi-millionaire. And, because most founders are passionate and enthusiastic about their idea, they plan on being the one to oversee its execution. But the day-to-day management of a company is a CEO’s job, not an entrepreneur’s (necessarily), right?
So, will an entrepreneur automatically make a good CEO?”
Read the article here: Do Good Entrepreneurs Make Good CEOs?
How Fair is Your Workplace?
“A point of view is worth 80 IQ points, but a change of perspective is worth another 80 IQ points.” Alan Kay.
Here’s a change of perspective for you. How fair is your workplace? Leaders might say, “of course our workplace is fair”, but others perhaps not so much.
The reality is that most employees don’t feel like their work environment is fair. Of 3,500 employees surveyed worldwide in 2021, only 18% indicated they work in a high-fairness environment. These results can have significant implications for employers — perceptions of a more fair employee experience improve employee performance by up to 26% and employee retention by up to 27%.
This week I read an HBR article that poses the question about workplace fairness and its impacts.
From the article:
Our research has identified four key questions that distinguish a high-fairness work environment from a low-fairness one:
- Are your employees informed? – only 33% of organisations practice information transparency
- Are your employees supported? – only 32% of employees reported they feel supported at work.
- Do all employees get a fair chance at internal opportunities? – When employees feel considered for opportunities they’re qualified to pursue, more than one in two report a high-fairness experience. However, only 18% of employees feel they are considered for these opportunities.
- Do leaders and managers recognise employees’ contributions? – Only 24% of employees currently feel acknowledged for the contributions they make, and this number has gotten worse over the past two years.
Read the HBR article here: How Fair is Your Workplace?
This week on The Growth Whisperers podcast
Jim Collins SMAC Recipe: your recipe for success
SMaC Recipe is a concept developed in the book Great by Choice. A SMaC recipe is a set of durable operating practices that creates a replicable, consistent success formula. The word “SMaC” stands for Specific, Methodical, and Consistent. A solid SMaC recipe is the operating code for turning strategic concepts into reality, a set of practices more enduring than mere tactics.
It is like the U.S. Constitution, both durable and practical, yet also amendable. Great companies and social enterprises change their SMaC recipe no more than about 20 percent per decade, so a key SMaC question is, What is the right 20 percent to change?
In this episode, we discuss why SMaC recipes are important, and why they help companies maintain discipline. Also we provide several SMaC examples and outline how to build a SMaC recipe.
Episode 119 – The Growth Whisperers
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Keep Thriving!
Brad Giles
