Great read for those working in social services seeking to making lasting impact, while raising the bar on we do the work.

Just exactly what I was looking for, as the E.D. of a nonprofit. Thought-provoking, indeed!

Sin duda alguna varios conceptos son útiles para tomar en cuenta y desconectar el chip que, aquellos que venimos e interactuamos con instituciones con métricas guiadas por el mercado, tenemos embebidos.

El autor aclara en algunos de sus principios propuestas son, más bien, hipótesis y necesitan evidencia formal.

Recomiendo la lectura a líderes y creadores que desean impulsar un proyecto social y que no poseen los recursos monetarios para generar tracción.

Kind of confusing to read without the accompanying book.

My only complaint about this book is it refers to teachings in 'Good to Great' without explaining them. But it's still a very inspirational, concise read about greatness in social sectors.

35 very useful pages for anyone in the service / non-profit sector.

In Good to Great, Jim Collins lays out the principles and practices that make distinguish the merely good companies from the great ones. In this monograph, he applies the logic and principles in Good to Great to the social sector. Collins debunks that notion that the primary path to greatness in the social sectors it to become more like a business, by having greater discipline in planning, in governance, in allocation of resources. Collins argues that these are not concepts unique to businesses, that just like businesses, social sector agencies also need Level 5 leadership, need to pay attention to getting the right people on the bus, need to define what "great" looks like for themselves, to embrace the Hedgehog Concept and know that "one big thing" and stick to it, and turn the flywheel, slowly but surely taking steps in the right direction to gradually build momentum.

There are major differences between the business and social sectors obviously and Collins contextualises the ideas in Good to Great for the social sector in this monograph. Unlike the business sector, for a social sector organisation, "performance must be assessed relative to mission, not financial returns…the critical question is not 'How much money do we make per dollar of invested capital?' but "How effectively do we deliver on our mission and make a distinctive impact, relative to our resources?" Even if one's outputs are inherently not measurable, Collins argues that social sector organisations must separate inputs from outputs and "hold [themselves] accountable for progress in outputs, even if those outputs defy measurement…what matters is that [organisations] rigorously assemble evidence - quantitative or qualitative - to track…progress. If the evidence is primarily qualitative, think like a trial lawyer assembling the combined body of evidence. If the evidence is primarily quantitative, then think of yourself as a laboratory scientist assembling and assessing the data." To Collins, for social sector organisations to say that they cannot measure performance the same way businesses can is simply laziness and lack of discipline. "Test scores are flawed, mammograms are flawed, crime data are flawed…patient outcome data are flawed. What matters is not finding the perfect indicator, but settling upon a consistent and intelligent method of assessing your output results, and then tracking your trajectory with rigor. What do you mean by great performance? Have you established a baseline? Are you improving? If not, why not?"

On Level 5 leadership in the social sector, Collins observes that the social sector has more complex governance and diffuse power structures compared to businesses. This means that executive style leadership - while effective in the corporate world - often fails in the social sector. Social sector leaders instead need to exercise legislative leadership, where "no individual leader - not even the nominal chief executive - has enough structural power to make the most important decisions by himself or herself. Legislative leadership relies more upon persuasion, political currency, and shared interests to create the conditions for the right decisions to happen." Collins points out that it's not and either/or question but more like a spectrum where leaders have to learn to slide up and down the executive-legislative leadership scale, depending on what the situation calls for.

On getting the right people on the bus (and the wrong people off it), Collins acknowledged that getting the wrong people off the bus in the social sector can be more difficult than in a business. This is why early assessment mechanisms turn out to be more important than hiring mechanisms. While much is made about the inability of the social sector to pay for talent, Collins argues that lack of resources is no excuse for lack of rigor in selection; indeed, "it makes selectivity all the more vital".

On the hedgehog concept, while Good to Great spoke about the three intersecting circles of (a) what you are deeply passionate about; (b) what you can be the best in the world at; and (c) what best drives your economic engine, in the social sector, we can substitute the economic engine under (c) to a "resource engine". So how might we get resources of all types - not just money to pay the bills, but also time, emotional commitment, hands, hearts and minds - to deliver superior performance relative to our mission.

On turning the flywheel, Collins observes that this concept works very well in the business sector. As business start to deliver superior financial results, investors will start to flock to the business. However, there is no guaranteed relationship between exceptional results and sustained access to resources in the social sector, as non profit funding tends to favour programmatic funding, rather than building great organisations. He suggests that for the social sector, a key issue is brand reputation - built on tangible results and emotional share of heart - so that potential supporters believe not only in organisations' missions but also their capacity to deliver on that mission.

At the end of the monograph, Collins summarises the 4 basic stages of building a great organisation:
#1: Disciplined people - Level 5 Leadership and getting the right people on the bus and getting the wrong people of it (and the right people in the key seats)
#2: Disciplined thought - confronting the brutal facts and the hedgehog concept
#3: Disciplined action - having a culture of discipline and the flywheel
#4: Building greatness to last - clock building, not time telling, and preserving the core and stimulating progress.

This monograph comes in at just 35 pages but packs in a plenty of thought provoking material for those who work in the social sector.

This is a good book. Anybody that works in the public sector who wants to understand the different (from a management perspective) should read this book. This book gives insight on what makes a company good and what makes company's great.

The con's to this book is the public sector version is significantly shorter than the counter part of private business. The social sector book is roughly 35 pages making it a very short read. To be fair the 35 pages are well written and offer a different way of thinking about public sector however it is just 35 pages.

Overall this book is a good read.

Probably too many years between reading Good to Great and this one. I doubt I got as much out of it as I should have.

A simple addendum to Collins' famous Good to Great, summarizing the main points and commenting on how they are relevant to work in the social sectors. Give that my whole career has been in public education and Christian ministry, I both appreciate this book's existence and appreciate Collins' point about the complexity of much social sector leadership. He notes that in the social sectors, it is less common than in business that leaders can lead merely by power and more common that we need to accomplish goals even when we can't command them into being. As a result, we need to work and inspire and persuade them into being. As a result, Collins wonders if great leadership in the business world might more and more come from the social sectors, given the great leadership lessons learned when you have less commanding power.

Lastly, a review of the principles, particularly as relevant in the social sector:
-Clearly defining greatness (trickier and more important when profit isn't available as a measuring stick)
-Level 5 leaders - skilled, passionate people who give their all for the sake of the cause, not for the sake of themselves
-Getting the right people on the bus - right people and partners (including volunteers) before right action
-Confronting the Brutal Facts
-Hedgehog concept (passion, best at, resources - what you are deeply passionate about, what you can be the best at, what drives resources)
-Culture of discipline (relentless focus on hedgehog concept)
-Flywheel (build strength - demonstrate results - build brand - attract believers - build strength, etc.)

A monograph to accompany Collins’ Good To Great (which I haven’t read). The underlying principle of this “missing chapter” is that we don't need to impose the language of business on the social sector, but develop a language of greatness. He does this by focusing on five issues that he used in the book and tweaking them for a different mission and context.

The first is Defining Great (How do we calibrate success without business metrics?). Instead of money being an output, as it is in the business world, a quantifiable measure of success, in the social sectors money is only an input. Greatness here is measured by results (performance, impact, legacy) and is always an ongoing process. The next point is Level 5 Leadership (Getting things done within a diffuse power structure). Collins makes the point that without a clear hierarchy, or in the face of tenure in the case of colleges, true leadership is even more apparent in the social sectors. In business, CEOs can simply wield power. Here, leaders must inspire by their ambition for the cause. The third issue is “First Who” (Getting the right people on – and off – the bus within social sector constraints). Since the business model of firing and cross-promoting is not always as easy in the social sectors, especially those which rely heavily on volunteers, Collins suggest that leaders must simply create a pocket of greatness. Make this pocket selective, ambitious and meaningful, and the right people will come – and eventually, the mediocre ones will realize they’re in the wrong place. The fourth point is his Hedgehog Concept (Rethinking the economic engine without a profit motive). Here, Collins maintains the key concepts of “what you are passionate about” and “what you are best in the world at,” but replaces “what drives your economic engine” with “what drives your resource engine” – that is, how you best use the resources of time, money and brand. The last concept is Turning the Flywheel (Building momentum by building the brand, as each move you make builds on previous work and builds the foundation for future increases). As with Max DePree, I was impressed by Collins’ clarity of writing and the good solid sense he makes. Certainly, this is information that both educates and inspires.

A little too much analysis on the internal process it took to write this book, which is not interesting, but some interesting examples and elucidating thoughts on what it takes to be a "level 5 leader".