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A 'Good to Great' Second Act
Jim Collins's best seller is that rare business book that finds an audience beyond corporations. Now he's got a sequel for organizations not ruled by the bottom line.
He's getting his wish. "Good to Great" remains a fixture on best-seller lists more than four years after publication. But more important, it's found an audience among folks who rarely buy business books. Today Collins estimates that nearly half his speaking invitations are from the nonprofit sector. But many have had trouble applying his wisdom to their ventures, which can't measure success by stock price or offer big raises to motivate employees. So last month Collins self-published a 35-page booklet, available for under $10 through online booksellers like Amazon, called "Good to Great and the Social Sectors."
For a celebrity author to self-publish a low-priced tract is an unorthodox move—but then Collins's own path to the best-seller lists has been anything but ordinary. A former management consultant, Collins taught at Stanford before, according to lore, he was pushed out by rivals who were jealous of his popularity. Using profits from "Built to Last," he set up his own research center in Boulder, Colo., staffed with a team of grad students who tackle multiyear research projects aimed at answering big-business questions.
For "Good to Great," they identified and dissected companies that dawdled for years before experiencing a sustained upward burst in financial performance. The research showed most of the stellar firms were led by low-profile CEOs, and that the jump in performance usually wasn't triggered by a radical strategy shift. Devotees have turned his principles into a kind of shorthand language. They talk about "hedge-hogs" and "flywheels." Some-day, his fans hope to become "Level Five Leaders."
In the new booklet, Collins explains how nonprofits can adapt his principles. Drawing on examples such as the Girl Scouts and the Cleveland Orchestra, he explains tactics to cajole rather than boss around a low-paid volunteer work force. (Teach for America, for instance, uses a highly selective application process to give its program cachet despite the low pay.) He explains how clearly articulated goals and formal measurement can replace financial metrics. (Example: the NYPD's obsessive tracking of crime statistics to measure its performance.) There will be no glitzy media tour to sell it—if people want it, he figures, they'll know where to find it. "His job in life is not to promote himself—his job in life is to see people better themselves through his assistance," says Wharton professor Michael Useem. Last week the new title already ranked among the 200 fastest sellers on Amazon.
Indeed, while some gurus put out a book every year, Collins's research methods limit him to writing a book once every six or seven years, a time lapse that creates a sense of anticipation similar to that felt by devotees of "The Sopranos" or U2. He self-published the new booklet partly so no one would confuse it with his next real book, he says. But his decision to sidestep his regular publisher is part of a small trend; management gurus like Tom Peters and Seth Godin have also self-published titles. Thanks to the popularity of online bookstores and the way in which the Internet allows authors to communicate directly with their followers, "publishing is becoming increasingly irrelevant—you can get your book printed by yourself," says Godin, author of "Purple Cow." "The publisher doesn't have as much influence anymore." Collins says he'll still use HarperCollins to publish his next full-fledged book.
When? Good question. Last week Collins told NEWSWEEK that he's still "at least a year or two away" from finishing his next research project, which reportedly looks at how companies perform in turbulent industries. "It is premature to know the primary findings, and there is always the chance that the new research will produce nothing significant of interest," Collins says. He's got a lot of readers ready to prove him wrong.
With Jessica Silver-Greenberg
© 2005 MSNBC.com
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