Leadership in Economic Development: Going from Good to Great

By Joy Wilkins, CEcD

For in the end, it is impossible to have a great life unless it is a meaningful life. And it is very difficult to have a meaningful life without meaningful work.
— Jim Collins

Not only do few organizations achieve greatness, few seek to achieve greatness, wrote Jim Collins in his 2001 masterpiece Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap...and Others Don't. Why? Because good is the enemy of great, he boldly challenges.

Greatness, Collins explains, is an ongoing and dynamic process, rather than a destination point. His research illustrates that when you become satisfied with a performance as the best we can do, you end up settling for something less than your full potential. In his follow-up monograph Good to Great and the Social Sectors, Collins writes: You will always be good relative to what you can become.

Applying the Concepts to Economic Development

Such a conversation is critical for the economic development profession from both the organizational and practitioner vantage points. In the face of ever-challenging economic conditions, settling for good is not good enough to make our communities thrive. As stewards not only of public resources and goodwill but also the public trust, the communities we serve are owed nothing less than our steadfast pursuit of greatness.

Collins identifies four key elements in the journey from good to great: disciplined people, disciplined thought, disciplined action, and building greatness to last. Sustained great results depend upon building a culture of self-disciplined people who take disciplined action.

Disciplined People

Collins makes the case that greatness happens through a leadership approach that involves ambition for the cause (not self) and a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will — what he calls Level 5 Leadership. Getting the right people on the bus and in the right seats — and getting the wrong people off the bus — is critical for all seats, not just the most powerful ones.

Great organizations focus on answering the question of who should be part of our team before the question of what should we do. This is perhaps the most fundamental responsibility of an EDO executive.

Disciplined Thought

Great organizations confront and learn from the brutal facts of reality, rather than avoid or shy away from them. The EDO executive must work to convene all affected stakeholders in conversations that generate ideas for addressing problems and pursuing opportunities, serve as a super-connector linking helpful people and resources, and foster collaboration among all parties.

Collins identifies three interlocking questions every EDO should consider: What can we be the best in the world at? What are we deeply passionate about? And what best drives our economic or resource engine?

Disciplined Action

People do not have jobs in great organizations, says Collins — they have responsibilities. In high-performing EDOs, team members do not operate under significant rule-based constraints; they work entrepreneurially and have a keen sense of the parameters associated with their flexibility to act.

Great organizations are not concerned with one miracle moment, but rather a series of successive accomplishments, often one building upon another. Staying committed to executing the mission and delivering results is standard operating procedure for high-performance EDOs.

Building Greatness to Last

Collins writes that great organizations can adapt and succeed through multiple generations of leaders; they are not built around a single great leader. The key question: Is our chief leader building a system that can prosper beyond his or her presence? This is a particular challenge among EDOs as succession planning is one of the least-executed management practices.

Continuing the Journey

To continually go from good to great, one must be a non-stop, life-long student of the good-to-great journeys of others. Ten years after the release of Good to Great, the sequel Great by Choice reflects on the journeys of leaders who have thrived in the chaos, uncertainty, and life-altering changes which have characterized our world.

About This Article

Economic development leaders are true change agents for the world around them. This article is part of IEDC's ongoing series on Leadership in Economic Development.

This article first appeared in Economic Development Now, a publication by the International Economic Development Council (IEDC), in November 2011 and appears here with permission. Special thanks to IEDC's former managing editor Louise Anderson for her partnership in producing this article.

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