Jim Collins is an interesting and intense person. Lot's of energy, and a bit of a pedantic style that might turn some people off. He tends to sound like he's lecturing rather than having a conversation.
I caught a few ideas from his conversation that make me want to learn more about what he's selling.
One was the idea that successful business practices and successful personal practices may have common characteristics.
He mentioned studies showing successful companies that did not change even though significant changes were happening around them. He used Southwest Airlines as an example. This is an interesting contrast to the popular notion that successful companies need to be constantly changing to keep up with the change around them. A possible corollary to personal life would be if you don't stand for something you'll fall for anything. A business (or a person) who doesn't have a strong center, or sense of what they are about, is okay as long as the flow takes them in the right direction.
Having a strong sense of what a company is "about" brings to mind Enron's discussions about branching out from trading electricity futures to privatizing water supplies and then trading water contracts. From an outside observers view it's hard to see what that company was "about", but it appeared to be "nothing", "making deals", or maybe more accurately "making a profit". The idea that buying and selling is the same no matter what the product is shows a company that had lost it's way. Ford doesn't buy and sell computers and Dell doesn't make cars.
He did say that successful companies (like successful people) are constantly questioning their assumptions.
A second idea he mentioned was that people (and businesses) learn more from failure than they do from success. Lance Armstrong's battle with cancer and subesquent successes were the result of extremely focused determination and use of (of all things) "data". He also talked a bit about being a rock climber, making the point that there are some mistakes you can't learn from, because they are fatal.
On a side note he also talked about the relaxation he finds in rock climbing due to the intense concentration it requires. That's an interesting thought for the relaxation quotient found in various recreational activities, comparing rock climbing to say....watching a football game or playing an exciting and challenging game (video, computer or otherwise).
I'm pretty pumped up about learning more of what he has to say. I'm going to check out the Jim Collins.com Lecture Hall.
This is a good one -
Not - First What Am I Going to Be, But First Who Am I Going to Be?
What am I going to do? What is going to be my career? What am I going to be...?
Maybe what you are going to do is less significant than who you are going to be, who you are going to work with, who you spend your time with, who you choose to spend your life with...if you choose the right what and the wrong who's...life is going to suck.
Three rules for choosing work -----
1. Find work that you love doing, that you feel passionate about,
2. Find work you are genetically encoded for it. When you do it you feel like a fish in water, that you are wired to do this.
3. Find work you can make a living doing.
