Preface: Good to Great – Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t —  is a book of intellectual adventure to discover what it takes to turn a good business into a great business. It is said the best students are those are never quite sure if they should believe their professors. The book provides an explicit narrative on data of great companies. You’re the judge and the jury. Let the data speak for itself.

Good to Great – Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t. A Book Report Written to At-Work Entrepreneurs [Segment II]

“You can accomplish anything in life, provided you don’t mind who gets the credit”  Harry Truman.

Darwin E. Smith chief executive officer of the paper company Kimberly-Clark in the 1970’s was a mild mannered lawyer. Smith’s favorite company was electricians and plumbers and vacation’s were a time to dig holes with his backhoe and move rocks on his Wisconsin farm. When an WSJ journalist ask him about his management style his answer was simple – “Eccentric.” Smith met obstacles with the same resolute will as Sophia Marie Campa-Peters.

An aside: Nine year old Sophia Marie Campa-Peters is eating pizza again, after a successful highly risky brain surgery in January. While doctors were pessimistic about Sophia’s ability to walk, her response was “If you’re only going to talk about what I can’t do, then in don’t want to hear it. Just let me try to walk.” Her doctors are now dumbfounded. Campa-Peters hoped to get 10,000 people praying for her on the day of her surgery January 26th. Interestingly, among the those who cared about Sophia, President Trump was one of those praying that day, and his words to Sophia are something every entrepreneur should keep in mind “Never give up, keep inspiring us all, and never, ever lose faith in God. With him, all things are possible”.

Back to Smith….in his tenure as CEO at Kimberly-Clark the company soared to success. In retirement, Smith reflected on his exceptional performance as CEO and summed it up “I never stopped trying to become qualified” [to be the CEO].

To lead a company to greatness, the ambition of the leader must be first and foremost the institution, not themselves. There is no place for egos or self-interest in great company leadership; and if you do not credit the leader, you do not blame them either. Great leaders of great companies, according to the data, have a blend of personality humility and professional purpose.

Now an interesting data point is that 75% of the time, execuives set-up there successors for failure or weak leadership performance. That requires the question why does that data say that? But the purpose of this report is talk about great companies, so let’s bring attention to the data point that great company leadership talked about the company and the contributions of team. Good-to-Great leaders when pressed to talk about themselves would respond with quiet, humble, modest, reserved, gracious understatements of their contributions to the success of the business during their tenure as CEO.

Great CEO’s are seemingly ordinary people, quietly doing extraordinary work. Why is that the data substantiates that 90% of the great CEO’s came from inside the company, and the good companies turned to outsider’s with 6x the frequency and didn’t get extraordinary results? The great leader when lauded for extraordinary performance point right back the company and say “Look at all the great people and good fortune that made this possible, I’m a lucky guy.”

So you’re a good CEO and want to make your business great? You should start first with working towards the characteristics of great CEO’s, i.e. compelling modesty, calm determination, next generation’s greater success mindset, and looking towards the future with principled action. This is good advice towards being a great follower too.

I would add, the difference between the good and the great CEO’s, is that great CEO’s with extraordinary performance, may have learned well the art of extraordinary following first.