GLS15: Session 2a Jim Collins

Global Leadership Summit 2015
Session 2a
Jim Collins, Seven Questions: Beyond Good to Great

• “we are all young leaders”
• “questions are better than answers”
• (1) What cause do you serve with level 5 ambition? - “if you have a charismatic cause you do not need to be a charismatic leader”
• Level 5 leaders have a unique combination of personal humility with an abominable will
• leading with service and ambition
• level 5 leaders inspire people to follow the cause
• “Commitment to service is not a sector choice. It is a life choice”
• (2) Will you settle for being a good leader or will you be a great leader? - “We are going to need great leadership through all sectors” since all sectors are networked
• 3 key areas: - Know what must be done (and be right most of the time).
• It’s about getting people to want to do what needs to be done.
• It is not a science. It is an art.
• Most great leaders started as good leaders and grew
• “Will you scale your leadership with the organization?”
• (3) How can you reframe failure as Growth in pursuit of a BHAG (Big Hairy Audacious Goal)? - a BHAG is something that you are not sure you can actually accomplish
• “I am not a failure. I am growing.”
• Growth is the other side of the coin from Success.
• (4) How can you succeed by helping others succeed? - “we succeed at our very best only when we help others succeed”
• “let me help you”
• This creates an incredible idea of “You are never alone”
• Triangle (service, success, growth) - build a culture that you are willing to sacrifice for with BHAGs and communal success in order to have the idea that we only succeed by helping each other
• (5) Have you found your hedgehog – your personal hedgehog? - living in the intersection of passion, what I am made for, and economic engine to make a living and work toward my BHAGS
• “True creators stay in the game”
• “If you see life as a series of hands, and play every hand to the best of your ability it leads to a powerful effect.”
• “You have to be in your hedgehog”
• “Real creative impact accelerates, if you choose, after 50”
• (6) Will you build your unit – your minibus – into a pocket of greatness? - “Focus on your unit. Not your career.”
• “Be a first who leader. Not a first what leader.”
• “Be rigorous, not ruthless, of your hiring decisions.”
• “Life is people.”
• The greatest leaders know how to make a distinctive impact on people
• (7) How will you change the lives of others? - “Life is people.”

Originally published on stephen.braunius.org