A lunch with Jim Collins

One of my favorite business writers and thinkers is Jim Collins who is responsible for books such as: Built to Last, Good to Great, Good to Great in the Social Sector, How the Mighty Fall, and Great by Choice. A few months ago I had an opportunity to sit with a small group of leaders and ask Jim Collins questions about life and leadership; he asked us as many questions as we did of him.

Here are some of my random takeaways—representing a few leadership insights from Jim Collins:

1. In the meetings we lead, we should be doing more “question asking” than “statement making”. In fact, in order to have effective teams, we must surround ourselves with high capacity people of whom we want to ask questions.

2. Great.

3. Question: What defines a great 30-year-old leader today, verses what defines a merely good one?

4. Help young leaders find their hedgehog: What are they created to do, and what is their unique contribution? Encourage them to set on an arduous process to do those things with excellence! To help them discover what their hedgehog is, first start with their passion, then move to how they are wired, and finally deal with the economic realities.

5. Question: If you inherited $20 million dollars this morning, and in the afternoon found out you had an incurable disease that would certainly kill you in 10 years (but no sooner)…what would you stop doing and what would you start doing?

6. The great leadership task is not how to motivate people but how not to kill their motivation. Work with good people and then ask, “What am I doing to demotivate them?”

And for that (and for all your books I’ve enjoyed), thanks, Mr. Collins!