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infused the entire process with the brutal facts of reality.
You absolutely cannot make a series of good decisions without first confronting the brutal facts.
you can say, ‘My job is to turn over rocks and look at the squiggly things,’ even if what you see can scare the hell out of you.”
where people were much more worried about the scary squiggly things than about the feelings of top management.
How to create a culture of hard facts rather than politics?
early in the war, he created an entirely separate department outside the normal chain of command, called the Statistical Office, with the principal function of feeding him—continuously updated and completely unfiltered—the most brutal facts of reality.
expending energy trying to motivate people is largely a waste of time.
If you have the right people on the bus, they will be self-motivated.
How do you manage in such a way as not to de-motivate people?
Lead with questions, not answers.
Engage in dialogue and debate, not coercion.
Conduct autopsies, without blame.
Build “red flag” mechanisms.
integrating their thinking into one overall concept or unifying vision.
Hedgehogs, on the other hand, simplify a complex world into a single organizing idea, a basic principle or concept that unifies and guides everything.
“You want to know what separates those who make the biggest impact from all the others who are just as smart? They’re hedgehogs.”
They understand that the essence of profound insight is simplicity.
They used their hedgehog nature to drive toward what we came to call a Hedgehog Concept for their companies.
“Look, it just wasn’t that complicated! Once we understood the concept, we just moved straight ahead.”
What was the concept? Simply this: the best, most convenient drugstores, with high profit per customer visit.
The concept is distilled value creation (right side of the flywheel—what you put out intone world) with outcome (fuel generation or whatever you need to keep turning the flywheel)
simple economic idea, profit per customer visit.
A clear metric of progress and impact—not a goal, just a measuring stick
succeed so brilliantly by taking one simple concept and just doing it with excellence and imagination.
simple, simple, simple ideas.”
all the good-to-great companies attained a very simple concept that they used as a frame of reference for all their decisions, and this understanding coincided with breakthrough results.
More precisely, 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 cannot be the best in the world at).
Just because you possess a core competence doesn’t necessarily mean you can be the best in the world at it. Conversely, what you can be the best at might not even be something in which you are currently engaged.
Interesting, May be a component of the question “to change your art form or renew within an art.” If you find you can be better at being best in the world at something, then you may choose to switch. The wisdom is whether or not you are in a dip or plateau, to borrow the words of Seth Godin.
What drives your economic engine
the single denominator—profit per x—that had the greatest impact on their economics.
What you are deeply passionate about
The idea here is not to stimulate passion but to discover what makes you passionate.
If you could drive toward the intersection of these three circles and translate that intersection into a simple, crystalline concept that guided your life choices, then you’d have a Hedgehog Concept for yourself.
What can we potentially do better than any other company, and, equally important, what can we not do better than any other company? And if we can’t be the best at it, then why are we doing it at all?
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.
is an understanding
of what you can be th...
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Like talent, then discipline turns talent into excellence
guided by a Level 5 leader and tapping into the faith side of the Stockdale Paradox (There must be a way for us to prevail as a great company, and we will find it!),
difference between a “core business” and a Hedgehog Concept. Just because something is your core business—just because you’ve been doing it for years or perhaps even decades—does not necessarily mean that you can be the best in the world at it.
You can have competence at something but not necessarily have the potential to be the best in the world at it.
“It would take me three hours to finish the final. Then there were those who finished the same final in thirty minutes and earned an A+. Their brains are just wired differently.
Just like our young person, many people have been pulled or have fallen into careers where they can never attain complete mastery and fulfillment.
Suffering from the curse of competence but lacking a clear Hedgehog Concept, they rarely become great at what they do.
To go from good to great requires transcending the curse of competence.
“Just because we are good at it—just because we’re making money and generating growth—doesn’t necessarily mean we can become the best at it.”
focusing solely on what you can potentially do better than any other organization is t...
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allocating resources to those few arenas where they could potentially be the best.
Think about it in terms of the following question: If you could pick one and 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? We learned that this single question leads to profound insight into the inner workings of an organization’s economics.
Ask what is profit per x and then run the thought experiment of that too the extreme. Does it meet the objective? If not, or not well, then try another.
The key is to use the question of the denominator to gain understanding and insight into your economic model.
Like the flywheel, the profit per x model helps frame the strategy to become best in the world and exercise the thought experiment of how you might do that effectively
Nucor, for example, made its mark in the ferociously price competitive steel industry with the denominator profit per ton of finished steel. At first glance, you might think that per employee or per fixed cost might be the proper denominator. But the Nucor people understood that the driving force in its economic engine was a combination of a strong-work-ethic culture and the application of advanced manufacturing technology. Profit per employee or per fixed cost would not capture this duality as well as profit per ton of finished steel.
for the sake of gaining insight that ultimately leads to more robust and sustainable economics.
You can only discover what ignites your passion and the passions of those around you.
