How Change Doesn't Happen

Oct 30, 2004

Start with 1,435 good companies. Examine their performance over 40 years. Find the 11 companies that became great. And then write bestseller about it. That was his plan and Jim Collins did just that with 'Good to Great'.

He's spot on about how we change organizationally. But I would add that this is true even of our personal transformations!

Everyone looks for the "miracle moment" when "change happens." But ask the good-to-great executives when change happened. They cannot pinpoint a single key event that exemplified their successful transition.

From 1976 to 1999, one dollar invested in Walgreens beat one dollar invested in Intel, GE, Coke; it beat the general stock market by more than 15 times! I asked a key Walgreens executive to pinpoint when the good-to-great transformation happened. His answer: "Sometime between 1971 and 1980."

Walgreens's experience is the norm for good-to-great performers. Leaders at Abbott said, "It wasn't a blinding flash or sudden revelation from above." From Kimberly-Clark: "These things don't happen overnight. They grow." From Wells Fargo: "It wasn't a single switch that was thrown at one time."

We keep looking for change in the wrong places, asking the wrong questions, and making the wrong assumptions.