The Hedge Hog Concept

The enemy of Good is Great. If you think about it, the reason why there are so few great companies or organizations is that there are a lot of Good organizations out there. If you, or your company, your church, or your team is not doing Great things, it is probably because they are doing Good enough. For more clarification, read the book Good to Great, by Jim Collins.

One of the key points from the book Good to Great, as a difference between good organizations and Great ones is the Hedge Hog concept. Basically there are are two types of people, and organizations in the world, foxes and hedge hogs. The fox is cunning, fast, light of foot, and has many complex strategies to deal with a complex world. The hedge hog, on other hand, has one strategy that takes a complicated world and simplifies it and consistently greats predictable results. Day after day the fox pursues the hedge hog, always with a new or different plan of attack. One day hiding in the tall grass, the next in a log, and the next day cornering the hedge hog at the river. The hedge hog does need sophisticated countermeasures though, it has only one, but it is a Great one. When ever it so much as senses the fox's presence, it simplifies curls up into a impenetrable ball, leaving only sharp spikes for the fox's complex strategy and cunning.

The point is that when Jim Collins and his team studied the difference between Good companies and Great companies, one of the keys, was that Great companies were very focused on one singular mission or goal. Good companies never get to be Great companies, partly because they are always looking for the newest, most innovative, or flashy strategy that will make them great. The Great companies took the time and energy to figure out what the one core matrix that they could be great at, and adopted only those strategies that supported that one goal. All other strategies, on matter how flashy or tempting, were not considered.

So, are you operating like a fox or a hedge hog. Sure the fox is in the news all the time, and everybody sees the fox running around doing a lot of different things, but in the long run, it is usually the hedge hog, that slowly lumbers its way to it's single point, a emerges with dominance. The hedge hog becomes and over "night success", with only five, ten, or twenty years of focused growth, that know one on the outside payed any attention to.

If you want your self, your organization, or team to be Great, first clearly define the one objective that you can be Great at, and throw out all strategies that do not keep you moving in that one direction. And read the book Good to Great.