Class Acts

I finally finished reading the Jim Collins bestseller Good to Great just before the holidays. I am sorry it took me so long, because this one is truly worthy of its best seller status. I was happy to finish reading in time to work some of the book’s concepts into a week of the “Globalizing” class during which we spent a great deal of time talking about how students could synthesize course concepts–what we’ve learned thus far about technology, NGOs, global governance, etc etc–with the actual construction of organizations that they are currently or may be members of in the future.

For my brief review of the book itself, I direct you here.  Here are my initial thoughts on use of the book in the class:

• Good to Great is about far more than business: The first problem I had using excerpts from the book in the class’s weekly reading was that none of the students were business majors.  Most were sociology and government majors, and few of them seemed to appreciate the idea of Good to Great being more than a business book.  I stressed to them what I stressed in my own review: that Collins is writing about great organizations, not necessarily only about great businesses.
• Technology will not save the world: Most of us agree that technology will make the world a better place, but Collins devotes all of Chapter 7 to demonstrating how technology is a tool to make your organizations better, not to give your organizations purpose.  Organizations–be they business, non-profits, or NGOs–must be very clear on their own core purpose before they can hope to make the best use of technology.  One ought not to invest in technology for its own sake, but rather to assist in the achievement of a group’s real mission.
• Economics are important: Coming from a business background, I have often found myself frustrated with the notion of technology as a means to utopia.  We diverged to this topic again in class, but the bottom line is (from my view) that the web is a great balance between the free and open source model of participation and the traditional business model that asks “where are the dollars that keep the wires hot and the servers turned on?”

Bottom line: Good to Great is a wonderful read for anyone who is involved with organization building.  If the non-business students can get past its decidedly business approach, many will find that Collins is particularly insightful, regardless of what kind of organization you are building.  The aspiring entrepreneurs–both financial and moral–are sure to find it useful.  It is, at any rate, a very well written counter-balance to the social-minded impulse of many sociology students.