September 2007 News

Wednesday, September 5, 2007

Channel 21 to Air Jim Collins’ Good To Great

How does an organization sustain long-term results and move from being good to being great? Lecturer and author Jim Collins explores that question in Good to Great, an insightful and engaging film to be aired locally on Channel 21 on the following dates and times:

Saturday, September 15, at 8:00 p.m.
Sunday, September 16, at 7:00 p.m.

Saturday, September 22, at 8:00 p.m.
Sunday, September 23, at 7:00 p.m.

Using his Hedgehog Concept, Collins explores companies that moved from good to great and identifies three universal concepts that are applicable to the business sector as well as the social sector, including education.

Collins writes, “We must reject the idea—well-intentioned, but dead wrong—that the primary path to greatness in the social sectors is to become “more like a business.” Most businesses—like most of anything else in life—fall somewhere between mediocre and good. Few are great. When you compare great companies with good ones, many widely practiced business norms turn out to correlate with mediocrity, not greatness. So, then, why would we want to import the practices of mediocrity into the social sectors?”

Collins continues, “The critical distinction is not between business and social, but between great and good. We need to reject the naïve imposition of the “language of business” on the social sectors, and instead jointly embrace a language of greatness.”

According to his biography, Jim Collins began his research and teaching career on the faculty at Stanford Graduate School of Business and received a Distinguished Teaching Award in 1992. In 1995 he founded a management laboratory in Colorado where he conducts research and teaches executives from the corporate and social sectors.