Monday, December 14, 2009

The God vs CEO analogy of Jim Collins

Analogy is an important tool when it comes to problem-solving issues, it is a fact. However, can some of our greatest thinkers fail to derive accurate conclusions from their own analogies?

I am reading Jim Collins' Good to Great book, an interesting research on what differentiates good companies from great ones. One of the key findings reverted the researchers to the leader. In Jim Collins' own words, he kept insisting " ignore the executives" until the data won over.

He reasoned: ' "Leadership is the answer to everything" perspective is the modern equivalent of "God is the answer to everything" '. To him, this perspective held back scientists from making great findings in the dark ages, he did not want to fall into the same trap. Thus, he kept holding back, until the facts were overwhelming.

That said, the research's most important finding was a certain common point in the leaders of the great companies (read more about this topic here: level 5 leaders). Consequently his initial stance against "Leadership is the answer to everything" was abandoned.

and since he wrote: "Leadership is the answer to everything" perspective is the modern equivalent of "God is the answer to everything" - I wonder whether this made of him a believer in the latter statement; as his initial approach of discrediting the CEOs correlates with the atheists who keep ignoring the option of God, despite the evidence, and keep looking elsewhere... Just a thought.



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