Good to Great

A company that wants to make the transition from good to great has to have a strategy to do so, and that process starts with the people and then with what they can do. Before a company can really do anything that have to have the correct people “on the bus,” a task that can take a long time. In doing so the author of good to great says that a company should not hire someone unless they are 100% sure that they are the right person for the job. While I understand that the concept that people are not the most important to a company, the right people are, I find it a lot harder to implement than the book suggests it to be. You are not always able to pick your people. For example, a lot of job tasks are assigned groups-like this class for instance. While our groups by no means were “companies” we operated as a group and had very little input as to who their group members were. Maybe some groups had the “wrong” people and could have been “greater” with a different class member. In my own life I have had to select leaders for my fraternity and needless to say my options were limited. Often times I was unable to find the “right” person for the job, and had to settle for “someone who could do the job.” Another concept I somewhat disagree with from the book is that great companies need to give the good people good opportunities, not the problems. While I agree with doing this in theory, I disagree how it is implemented. I feel that often your best people are really the only people who can truly fix the problems and be dedicated to it. While you want to reward them with giving opportunities, I do not feel that you can trust a lesser employee with fixing a big opportunity. So once again, I feel that companies often have their hands tied in jobs they have and jobs their employees can handle.