Appendix A — ‘Good to Great’ & Other Frameworks
A.1 Background Links That Inform How To Craft and Communicate Strategy
Two frameworks for crafting and communicating strategy are leaned upon to structure Lerner’s Strategy Statement:
Collins, J. (2001). Good To Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap…And Others Don’t. New York,NY. HarperCollins Inc.(link)
Collis, D. J., & Rukstad, M. G. (2008). “Can you say what your strategy is?”. Harvard Business RevieW, 86(4), 82-90. (link)
A.1.1 Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t1
“Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t” is an influential book written by Jim Collins and originally published in 2001. Two concepts from the book are heavily drawn upon:
- The Hedgehog Concept: The idea to focus on one or a few really big things where sustained and disciplined effort leads to accumulating ever-improving results. The few efforts worthy of focus should meet at the intersection of three criteria:
- A Well-Understood Economic Engine - understanding of the fundamental factors and mechanisms that drive a company’s profitability and sustained financial success.,
- The Potential to Be The Best in the World - if you can’t be the best in the world at it, leave it to others; this does not necessarily mean big, it just means best within a specific community, and
- Palpable Passion - without passion you cannot persevere to be exceptional;
- The Flywheel Effect: - a flywheel represents a cyclical progression of actions where each action naturally propels the next, creating a self-reinforcing loop to sustain and amplify organizational success. The Flywheel Effect is the observation that great organizations use disciplined long-term effort to slowly increase organizational momentum which eventually catalyzes into prolonged breakthrough results; accumulating small wins that compound over time as opposed to relying on one breakthrough to yield success. Continued pushing in the direction of economic sense, potential for excellence, and palpable passion is the only way to sustain organizational momentum and growth.
A.1.2 Can you say what your strategy is?2
It’s a dirty little secret: Most executives cannot articulate the objective, scope, and advantage of their business in a simple statement. If they can’t, neither can anyone else.
“Can you say what your strategy is?” presents a concise and compelling structure for communicating strategy. Specifically, an excellent strategy statement consists of three critical components:
Objective: Specific, measurable, and time-bound, a good objective provides the metric(s) required for directing effort.
Scope: A definition of boundaries for informing which activities are worthy of time and attention and, more importantly, which dimensions of a strategic offering will NOT be focused on.
Advantage: Clarity about what makes an organization distinctive; considered the most critical aspect of the strategy statement.
A key takeaway for those crafting Lerner’s strategy statement is that strategy is NOT composed of generic, easily-agreed-to objectives like empowering student success. Rather, strategy informs how to make trade-offs. Is enrollment quality or quantity more important? Should we invest money in starting a new Ph.D. program, institute, or technology infrastructure? Etc.