It has been a while since I have felt the urge to read a book. I mean an actual physical book. I am so immersed in online activities and reading summarized articles that it just seems to be a more efficient way to acquire knowledge and read topics, trends and pearls of wisdom. However, when “Good to Great”* was brought up in last class discussion, I couldn’t help but get curious about it and where its content and ideas might sit with respect to EA practices if any at all.
In this book, the writer, Jim Collins with the help of the research team, identifies companies that were able to progress from the good to the great state and sustaining that state for a considerable time. The process thoroughly combs the list, classifies companies, and finds out the foundations of what is needed or rather the characteristics of a company that went from a good to a great level. Its interesting approach on analyzing the data and within what context, the companies themselves across different industries, the long period of time chosen for the study of a company, and cross matching different qualification criteria is definitely a well researched project promising the results to be detailed and indicative. I do have some comments on how the last five to ten years and the change in the continuum of social, mobile and internet might have affected the results and if any change to the criteria but I will leave that to another day. Today, I’m going to focus on what is identified as Level 5 Leadership in the book and how that might relate to what EA is about and why EA is important within this topic.
Level 5 Leadership is defined around a set of characteristics including being a catalyst for transition, leading, setting standards, building for next success in the next generation and more. These basically define the executive who can take an enterprise to an enduring greatness level through a mix of professional will and personal humility. The idea that disciplined people, disciplined thought, and disciplined action within a flywheel from buildup to breakthrough to achieve greatness is a solid one. Extrapolating some of these finding to EA, one can find similar ideals and can draw a conclusion of why EA must be part of that flywheel process and a facilitator or a tool among many for the Level 5 Executive to use in making that transition from good to great. I will pick few examples. Consider setting up successors for even greater success. EA is all about building capabilities to facilitate the transition from current state to future state to achieve the goals and objectives of the leadership. This is neutral to who is managing the enterprise and it standardizes the assets and strategies for continuing to build on success. Another one is diligence. It is important in EA to have a diligence and thorough approach to understanding the intricacies of the organization or enterprise, documenting the different requirements, artifacts, assets, business processes, key components and much more. Anyone who has been involved in EA whether it be the discussion with business and IT or building a repository of components and artifacts knows how much important it is to be diligent and detailed for the EA intuitive and practice to be successful. Same thing can be said about having standards and abiding by them. Last but not least, I like the mentioning of the tendency of Board of Directors to usually select famous or celebrity leaders from the business fabric rather than focusing on the needed character for the leadership level. This is a reminder of the countless scenarios where different LOBs within the same organization tend to go out and try to buy solutions for there specific business problems based on the dazzling effect of the new product(s) rather than consulting and having EA to build a solid assessment of the needs of the LOB to compare to the repository of existing solutions and software within the organization or the corporate software choice for that particular need.
Back to my comment on how the last five to ten years might have effected any of the conclusions of the book, the one thing that is certain is that the dynamics of running a great company or getting a company from good to great are becoming more and more a challenging issue for executives and leadership. Reading the referenced book affirms my belief that EA is yet another important tool that is a must-have within a Level 5 type of leadership as well as a catalyst to getting to the future great state of the goals and objectives set by leadership.
References:
* Jim Collins (2001). Good to Great. HarperCollins Publishers Inc.
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