We Crashed. Now What? | Big Think

We Crashed. Now What?

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To best-selling “Good to Great” author Jim Collins, the most challenging times for businesses are the good ones.

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Jim Collins:

Jim's book, GOOD TO GREAT: Why Some Companies Make the Leap ... And Others Don't, attained long-running positions on the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Business Week best seller lists, has sold 3 million hardcover copies since publication and has been translated into 35 languages, including such languages as Latvian, Mongolian and Vietnamese.

His most recent book, HOW THE MIGHTY FALL: And Why Some Companies Never Give In, was published on May 19, 2009.

Jim began his research and teaching career on the faculty at Stanford Graduate School of Business. In 1995, he founded a management laboratory in Boulder, Colorado, where he now conducts research and teaches executives from the corporate and social sectors.

Jim has served as a teacher to senior executives and CEOs at over a hundred corporations. He has also worked with social sector organizations, such as: Johns Hopkins Medical School, the Girl Scouts of the USA, the Leadership Network of Churches, the American Association of K-12 School Superintendents, and the United States Marine Corps. In 2005 he published a monograph: Good to Great and the Social Sectors.

In addition, Jim is an avid rock climber and has made one-day ascents of the North Face of Half Dome and the Nose route on the South Face of El Capitan in Yosemite Valley. He continues to climb at the 5.13 grade.

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TRANSCRIPT:

Question - How do you bounce back after a downturn?

Jim Collins: My colleague Morton Hansen and I have been doing a research project for the last seven, eight, nine years. It’s not yet published. It will be our next book. But it really looks at the question of why do some become great when the world really spins out of control, when it’s an uncertain and unforgiving environment, characterized by immense amount of tumult. This is one of those times of tumult. And by the way tumult will remain. Prosperity will return. Uncertainty will remain. Prosperity will return. Unforgiving environments will remain. Prosperity will return.

One of the most unforgiving forms of an environment of business are good times because in difficult times it’s the economy that gets you. In good times it’s your competitors that get you. So either way, it’s a tough time. Now here’s what’s interesting, when we do that analysis what’s very clear is that those who win are as fanatically disciplined in prosperity as they are in times of set back. And the losers, the comparisons, the mediocres, the ones who never become great, they’re the ones who, “Oh, you know, times are good again and we’re going to be, we can afford to be less disciplined and we can begin to bleed around the edges.”

No, no, no. The ones who actually do great over time, they impose even more ferocious discipline during the good times because the bad times will always come again. And they’re going to come again, and again, and again, and again, and again. And if you’re the one that was disciplined when that time comes you can take advantage of it. You can then be the one that spurts ahead of others who were less disciplined in the good times.

Question - Why do companies over-hire during boom times?

Jim Collins: The critical question is not how many people you have or what your head count is. The critical question is do you have all of your key seats filled with the right people? And do you have the discipline to make sure that no key seat you have compromised and put somebody who is not a right person in that seat.

Now what happens in downturns like this is that they become a time when people begin to distinguish between the right people on their bus and maybe some of the people who weren’t the right people on the bus. And so it’s not a matter of the number of people on the bus, it’s do you have the right people? You have 10 of the right people, they can do what 50 of the not right people or more can do. And so the critical question is never what’s the head count, do we have enough people, do we have too few people. It’s do you have the right people and do you have the right people in key seats. And that’s a discipline in good times and bad times. Again, going back to the discipline in good times, it means that in good times when you’re growing really fast you do not break Packard’s law.

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