Business Counsel A Forum for Ideas and Exchange: Jim Collin's Good to Great-- The Hedgehop Concept

Business Council: A Forum for Ideas and Exchange
Intellect by Lori Williams
Chief Strategist for LW and Associates
and Founder of Business Simply Put

http://blog.lwandassociates.com

Business Simply Put

Business Simply Put provides entrepreneurs and small companies with the information they need to start, operate and grow their business.

Business Simply Put offers E-classes, E-books and E-Advice.

To Learn More Visit www.BusinessSimplyPut.com
About Lori Williams

Lori Williams has over 15 years of experience in strategic planning, marketing, operations and finance. She has functioned as a business owner, corporate officer and consultant in a variety of industries.

Through a combination of real life experiences and academia, she has developed a unique balance of intellect, experience and interpersonal skills.

Lori is the owner of a LW and Associates, a business consulting firm specializing in strategy and finance. As the Chief Strategist, Lori provides businesses with growth strategies designed to increase revenues, profitability and build long-term sustainable growth.

In 2007 Lori founded Business Simply Put, a division and registered trade mark of LW and Associates, to provide smaller companies with affordable high-level information and advice. Business Simply Put offers professionals access to business intelligence on key topics specific to small and medium-sized companies. This includes a wide variety of forums, including classes, seminars, webinar, teleseminars, and products such as E-Books and E-Resources. Lori recognized the need for sound, simplified business wisdom and by combining experience, expertise and technology; she designed products and services affordable to smaller companies.

Lori holds an MBA from Pepperdine University, BS Business and Management, an AA in Medical Science and a Practitioner’s license in NeuroLinguistic Programming. She is an adjunct professor at the Lloyd Grief Center for Entrepreneurial Studies at USC, teaching the Business Plan Class and Feasibility Studies. She has been a requested speaker at business organizations and has addressed esteemed audiences such as the IBM Big Blue Alumni, City Club, World Savings Bank, Citibank, and members of the Small Business Development Center located in California and Texas.

Lori is a published author. Her EBooks are distributed through Amazon, Barnes and Noble and Linkedin. She self-promotes her classes, seminars and workshops, in which she is solely responsible for content and delivery.

She has an abundance of energy and believes anything is possible if you work hard and are committed to your dream.

To contact Lori: Lori@BusinessSimplyPut.com
lori@lwandassociates.com

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Business Counsel A Forum for Ideas and Exchange: Jim Collin's Good to Great-- The Hedgehop Concept

Jim Collin's Good to Great-- The Hedgehop Concept

One of my favorite concepts from Jim Collin's book Good to Great is the Hedgehog. In the bulleted copy, I do my best to explain it by highlighting some of the key points. Business growth can be very difficult in these hard economic times. Just applying one of the concepts may make all the difference in your business.

Isaiah Berlin divided the world into hedgehogs and foxes. Foxes pursue many ends at the same time and see the world in all its complexity. Hedgehogs on the other hand, simplify a complex world into a single organizing idea, a basic principle or concept that unifies and guides everything.
In a world overrun by management faddists, brilliant visionaries, ranting futurists, fear mongers, motivational gurus and all the rest, it’s refreshing to see a company succeed so brilliantly by taking one simple concept and just doing it with excellence and imagination.
A Hedgehog Concept is a simple, crystalline concept that flows from deep understanding about the intersection of the following three circles:

What you can be the best in the world at, and equally important, what you can’t be best in the world at?
What drives your economic engine?
What are you deeply passionate about?

A Hedgehog Concept is not a goal to be the best, a strategy to be the best, an intention to be the best, a plan to be the best. It is an understanding of what you can be the best at. The distinction is crucial.
A Hedgehog Concept is not the same as a core competence. You can have competence at something but not necessarily have the potential to be the best in the world at it.
The Hedgehog Concept requires a severe standard of excellence. It’s not just about building on strength and competence, but about understanding what your organization truly has the potential to be the very best at and sticking to it.
Companies do not need to be in a great industry to become great companies. Each good-to-great company built a fabulous economic engine regardless of industry.
Every good-to-great company attained the notion of a single “economic denominator.” If you could pick only one ratio- profit per x (or in the social sector, cash flow per x)- to systematically increase over time, what x would have the greatest and most sustainable impact on your economic engine?
“Growth!” is not a Hedgehog Concept. Rather, if you have the right Hedgehog Concept and make decisions relentlessly consistent with it, you will create such momentum that your main problem will not be how to grow, but how not to grow too fast.