The Big 3: Passion, Being the Best, and Economics

I just finished another re-read of Jim Collins’ Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…and Others Don’t. With business books it’s kinda like movies for me, there aren’t too many I like so I re-watch and re-read the same 5-10 every couple years. But Good to Great is an excellent read because it’s not just some CEO spouting crap, it’s some 200 pages based on sound, academic research regarding Fortune 500 companies that either fit the criteria or they didn’t. Plus it makes 6 simple (not easy) points shared by the so-called “Great” companies:

1. Level 5 Leadership;
2. First Who…Then What;
3. Confront the Brutal Facts;
4. Hedgehog Concept;
5. Culture of Discipline;
6. Technology Accelerators.

Plus he makes several good triathlon references (looking forward to Lake Geneva on 9/12/09) including a story of multiple Hawaii Ironman Triathlon champion Dave Scott, who would literally rinse his cottage cheese to get the extra fat off to give him an edge. But I digress…

The absolute golden takeaway point of the book is contained within the chapter entitled The Hedgehog Concept where Collins makes the analogy between great companies and those small, porcupine-like hedgehogs. The point being the “great” companies simplify their complex business world into one overall concept or unifying vision. Hedgehogs aren’t pursuing several different ends and such, rather, they’re focused like a laser on their own, specific vision.

And how to discover your “Hedgehog Concept”? Three questions:

What are you deeply passionate about?
What can you be the best in the world at?
What drives your economic engine?

How ’bout applying those three questions or looking for the overlap in the “three circles” in your legal services business, as mentioned in the book.

When I apply the 3 circles to my practice I end up asking myself, why the heck am I representing anyone in residential real estate matters? I’m not particularly passionate about the subject matter and the economics of that practice area flat-out suck. Conversely when I think about elder/family/disability law I do consider those areas about which I am passionate, very accomplished in, and with pretty decent economics as the elderly and disabled populations sky rocket.

Maybe I need to pull a Cork Walgreen (he eliminated food service within Walgreens over a five year period) and just stop it with the residential real estate? I think so…but when?