Jim Collins - Great by Choice (2) - Two Big Problems

“Greatness”

The first potentially problematic area of Jim Collins' work is the idea of “greatness”. It is his major focus across his whole canon of work – Built to Last was about the features of a company which lead to enduring greatness, Good to Great about how a company can change from being good to being great, How the Mighty Fall about how a company can cease to be great and Great by Choice about the role of luck in greatness, and how to lead well in turbulent times.

Collins' research methodology is generally to find sets of two comparison companies, one of which did better than the other from similar starting points, and to study what makes the “great” company different from the other one, then identifying common themes between all of his examples. In Great by Choice, Collins chooses “great” companies to study based on the following criteria:

• They need to have out-performed their industry average on the stock market by a factor of 10x over a period of 15+ years.
• They achieved those results in a particularly turbulent environment, with lots of potential for disaster.
• They began their rise to greatness from a position of vulnerability, being young or small at the start of the study.

Probably the most famous corporate example he takes is Microsoft v Apple prior to 2000, and then examining Apple's resurgence under Steve Jobs. He also uses the recurring example of Scott v Amundsen in the race for the South Pole, observing that most of the same principles apply there as well.

This rather raises the question “Should we as Christian leaders seek greatness as understood by Collins for our churches?” In Good to Great and the Social Sectors, Collins discusses what greatness means for a non-profit organisation.

A great organisation is one that delivers superior performance and makes a distinctive impact over a long period of time. For a business, financial returns are a perfectly legitimate measure of performance. For a social sector organisation, however, performance must be assessed relative to mission, not financial returns. In the social sectors, the critical question is not “How much money do we make per dollar of invested capital?” but “How effectively do we deliver on our mission and make a distinctive impact, relative to our resources?”

He goes on to break down his definition into three factors – superior performance, distinctive impact, lasting endurance, and then to show that many of the principles he advocated in Good to Great still apply, albeit with slight modifications.

I think it is important to draw a distinction here between the calling of God's Church, the calling of the congregations we serve, and our calling as individuals. We are called neither to greatness nor to seek greatness – we are called to seek God and serve faithfully. The congregations we are called to serve may be called to greatness, but they may not. It is far too easy as pastors for our egos to become entangled with the health of the congregations we serve. But superior performance, distinctive impact and lasting endurance are most certainly features of the Kingdom of God, far beyond what any company or organisation could achieve. And that is because it is led by the perfect leader – Jesus Christ. True greatness is to be found in following him, and his kingdom is truly great, whether by Jim Collins' definition or any other.

“Great by Choice”

An even more troubling theme of Collins' work is the idea of choice. Collins' basic thesis in the book is that there is a set of 4 behaviours which, taken together, ensure that one thrives in difficult and unpredictable situations. He examines the role of luck, and finds that the successful companies did not have better luck than their unsuccessful counterparts, but their behaviour during the period ensured that they made the most of their good luck and did not suffer as much from the effects of bad luck – these behaviours ensure a better “return on luck”.

There are several major problems with this from a Christian (and a logical) point of view.

• Firstly, just because those behaviours might lead to a better “return on luck” does not mean that they can be chosen. We are not always free to act in the way that we might want to. Indeed, in Good to Great, he speculates as to how level 5 leaders come about and isn't sure beyond pointing to possible causative factors such as near-death experiences or conversion to Christianity.
• Secondly, he largely ignores the role of catastrophically bad, unavoidable events – events which would ensure that the company closes down no matter how they had behaved beforehand, or which could not have been forseen. He might respond to this by pointing out that such events are by definition unavoidable and hence do not change the fact that one set of behaviours has a better return on luck. However, that misses the point that such events show that it is not merely a “choice” to become great - there are still plenty of factors beyond our control.
• Third, luck does not really exist – it is a matter of the providence of God - The lot is cast into the lap, but its every decision is from the LORD. (Proverbs 16:33, NIV)
• Finally, as a result of these, Collins' suggestion that one could become “Great by Choice” is hubristic. It doesn't allow for the fact that it is God who gives the ability to become great. It doesn't allow for the fact that God could easily stop them from becoming great via either changing their character or bringing along an unavoidable catastrophic event, in the way that he did in Daniel 4.

By saying that greatness is a result of choice, Collins commits a logical fallacy. Many companies may have chosen the same course as the “great” companies, but failed. All winners of the men's Olympic 100m final for the past 20 years have been Afro-Caribbean, but that does not mean that ++Sentamu is a good sprinter.

He also undermines some of his own past work by creating the danger of letting the “will” aspect of the level 5 leader undermine the “humility” aspect. He notes that level 5 leaders tend to credit others for their success – how then would they respond to reading his work and learning that becoming great was their choice? How would someone who knew that they had chosen to become great attain the level of humility required for level 5 leadership? The counterpart of being able to choose greatness is that if an organisation lacks greatness, it is the fault of their leader for not choosing it. In some cases, doubtless, that is true. But in others it isn't. Was Jeremiah less than great? Situations and providence play a far greater role than Collins allows them.

Having criticised both the notion of greatness and the idea of choice, it might seem that there is little hope for Great by Choice. However, that isn't necessarily true. What Collins has done is present four behaviours which help people and organisations to thrive in uncertain conditions, even if he has framed it in ways which we might not find helpful. We can still potentially learn from treating those behaviours as examples of research-based wisdom...

Jim Collins - Great by Choice (1)

Who is Jim Collins?

In my experience, Jim Collins is the secular leadership thinker who is most often cited by Christians. Ideas such as the level 5 leader (from Good to Great) and the BHAG (from Built to Last) are common currency in open and charismatic evangelical leadership. He used to be a lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business, but is now an independent management consultant who runs his own “management laboratory” and spends most of his time speaking and doing research. He has spoken at the GLS four times, more than anyone else except Hybels.

In 2005, he professed to be surprised by how popular Good to Great had been among nonprofit organisations - between a third and a half of all readers32, and therefore decided to write a supplement to the book which discussed some of the differences between business and non-business and applied his work more broadly.

One of the most striking features of Collins' work, and one which explains why it is so popular amongst Christians, is the idea of the Level 5 Leader, introduced in Good to Great and recurring in all his subsequent books. He found that companies that become great and stay great have a particular type of leader to start with. In Collins' own words: Level 5 leaders embody a paradoxical mix of personal humility and professional will. They are ambitious, to be sure, but ambitious first and foremost for the company, not themselves.

Level 5 leaders, notes Collins, are so important because they enable others to become great too. As Lawrence and others have pointed out, this ties in strongly with the Bible's picture of leadership because it reflects the character of Christ who surely is the perfect embodiment of the combination of humility and will. It is also encouraging for Christians when we find ourselves under pressure not to be humble. Can we then learn more about what the combination of humility and will looks like from the examples Collins cites?

As part of my curacy, I wrote an essay evaluating the whole trend of secular leadership thinking in the church, with particular reference to Jim Collins' book Great by Choice.

Welcome to my blog!

Welcome to my blog, particularly for people who are new here! Or rather, welcome to my older blog. Most of the stuff on here goes back many years; there's a decent fraction of it I really don't agree with - notably I've changed my mind on issues of charismatic gifts and experience and women in ministry. The main emphasis here is on church politics and theology, and I don't update it very often - my newer, shinier, more relevant-to-me blog is here.

On Women in Ministry...

I've got lots of friends on all sides of the current debates in the Church of England about women in ministry. As usual, I'm not towing any party line in particular, but here are a few questions I don't think I've seen good answers to.

Questions for Supporters of Women Bishops

• Men and women are blatantly different, and the differences aren't just in terms of genitalia. No-one in this debate is arguing that women are inferior. The evangelical end of the debate is about whether biological, psychological, theological and ontological differences between men and women mean that they should have different ministries in the light of Scripture. And yet so often it seems like you rule out that possibility before even beginning to engage in debate. Why?
• As it currently stands, a significant minority of the C of E take the view that the majority of the church has for the majority of its history, that the Bible teaches that certain roles within the church should be restricted to men only. Many of them believe that not because they uncritically accept tradition, but because they have thought and prayed about the issue and in good conscience come to the conclusion that the restriction still stands. Given that, even if they are wrong, what is the most Christian way to treat them?
• If the objectors to the Consecration of Women are wrong, surely they classify as "weaker brethren" a la Romans 14. Why then aren't we acting towards them as such?

Questions for Opponents of Women Bishops

• There are many requirements in Scripture for overseers / bishops. Why is the requirement that bishops be male any more important than that the bishops be able to teach, or that they be of good repute in the community (for example)? Personally, I can think of women I'd much rather have as my bishop than several men I know of who are bishops!
• It might be wrong for the C of E to allow women to become bishops - I'm sure they way they are going about it is wrong - but if the C of E does allow it, don't those women then become an authority set over us a la Romans 13, and so isn't the right response to submit to them?
• Why is 1 Corinthians 11 sometimes used in the debate? If it teaches that men are ontologically the heads of women (which is the only way it is relevant to this debate), it means that I am head over the Queen. Isn't it much more likely about marriage?
• Are you all right with Deborah acting as she did in Judges? Why / why not?

And finally, a question for both sides

• Why do both sides in the debate seem so sure on what 1 Tim 2:11-12 means when one of the key words is a hapax legomenon and when no-one has an entirely coherent account of what Eve is doing being saved through childbearing just two verses later? That suggests to me that we don't properly understand the context, so there is therefore scope for our interpretation, whatever it is, to be wrong.

Unhypocritical Love

Unhypocritical Love - Hating the evil, clinging to the good.

To loving one another as family - devoted
For each other's honour - leading the way
In eagerness - not lazy
From the Spirit - bubbling over
To the Lord - serving as a slave
In hope - rejoicing
Through suffering - holding on
In prayer - pushing forwards
For the needs of the saints - sharing
To love strangers - seeking.

That's my attempt at a translation of Romans 12:9-13. Most English translations make it a string of imperatives, but there aren't any in the Greek. Of course the Greek doesn't use a different preposition every time...

God and Suffering talk by Glen Scrivener

Discarded Cloaks

This morning, I preached on Mark 10:46-11:11. There are two stories there, which most commentaries put on either side of a major division in the book, but I'm sure should go together - they probably happen on the same day, at either end of the same road, and Bartimaeus uses the kingly title "Son of David". Titles of Jesus matter in Mark, and all the other mentions of David are in Passion Week.

One of the common features between the stories which I picked up on is the discarded cloaks. When Jesus calls him, Bartimaeus throws his cloak away. And as Jesus enter Jerusalem, people throw their cloaks on the road in front of his donkey.

Now cloaks matter. In Jesus' day, a cloak was a valuable possession. It was probably your only piece of warm clothing - poor people certainly wouldn't have a spare. You wore it almost all the time, and used it as a blanket at night. People weren't allowed to take your cloak in security for a loan, because it was expensive and too important for your survival. "Sell your cloak and buy one" was used in the same way that "sell your granny and buy one" is today.

But following Jesus sometimes means giving up your cloak. In Bartimaeus's case, that was because going to speak to Jesus was so urgent, and with the disciples it was a matter of worshipping him, even if that meant their security being trampled and covered in donkey poo. Following Jesus isn't always safe. Sometimes he leads us into places we'd rather not go and where no-one has a right to ask us to go. Except him. But he's always trustworthy - always with us. He is our king (as both passages point out), and he cares about us.

Review - Gunning for God by John Lennox

I recently finished reading Gunning for God - why the new atheists are missing the target by John Lennox. Lennox has already written quite a bit on the scientific arguments against Christianity - notably in God's Undertaker. So in Gunning for God, Lennox tackles the non-scientific arguments - "Is Religion Poisonous?", "Can we be Good Without God?" and so on.

John Lennox spends a lot of time thinking about and working on these questions, and it really comes across. He understands the arguments in detail, how they fit into the wider context of Western history and philosophy and so on. He's got the depth of knowledge and reading that a non-expert just couldn't develop without a lot of work.

I don't necessarily agree with him on everything though. For example, when discussing morality, he points out that atheists do not have a consistent basis for absolute morality, and hence they cannot claim that Christianity is immoral. However, I don't think that's quite true. It is still possible to claim that Christianity is internally inconsistent by judging it by its own morality even if one struggles with the problem of morality oneself. The counter to that argument is partly to demonstrate the internal consistency of the Christian worldview and partly to point out that there isn't any consistent alternative morality proposed, but I don't think the argument is quite as strong as Lennox tries to make it. That aside, it's still a very good handling of a difficult question.

Lennox isn't just reactive though - he spends a while thinking about related questions such as "Is Atheism Poisonous?" and "Did Jesus Really Rise from the Dead?" I've read quite a few books dealing with the arguments for and against God, and this is one of the best. I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to understand the area in more detail, whether they are a committed Christian looking to explain their faith more clearly or a non-Christian wanting to find out the truth.

Review - OT Ethics for the People of God by Chris Wright

I used to dream of one day writing a book about how Christians should understand the Old Testament Law. It wouldn't make the mistake of saying the OT Law was a covenant of works rather than grace, nor would it make the mistake of assuming either that we should obey the OT Law or that we could ignore it. Instead, it would see what it meant for the OT Law to be Israel's response to God saving them by grace, and then apply it to us today. Only I'm not going to bother now, because I've discovered that Chris Wright did it years ago and did it much better than I could ever do.

Wright goes beyond the usual bounds of thinking about OT ethics. He stresses the importance of understanding the society and community as a whole (rather than just the rather Western individualism) and of understanding the ethics not just from the statute law but also from the more theological and narrative sections.

The distinctiveness of Old Testament ethics is ... the distinctiveness of a whole community's ethical response to unique historical events in which they saw the hand of their God.

Wright is superb on so many topics - the politics and economics of OT Israel, the role of family life, the implications for fellowship in the Church, attitudes to slavery, etc.

If I were to criticise the book, I would say that it is too short at (only!) 500-odd pages. He doesn't have space to think about how the New Testament handles the OT Law, or to go into much detail in areas like sexual ethics, feminist critiques of Israel, the implications of the OT village elders for church eldership, ... Having established his principles, he only has the space to pick a few examples and apply them. But given all that, this is a magnificent place to start to think on a deeper level about the ethical implications of the Old Testament for the church, and to engage with more academic scholarship on the issue.

The most fun (and encouragement, and challenge, and encounter with God) I've had reading an academic book for years!

Pablo Martinez - Praying with the Grain

I've read quite a few books on prayer, and this is one of the most unusual. It has five chapters and a Q&A section, and maybe it's best to comment on them individually.

Chapter 1 - Different Prayers for Different People. Martinez looks at basic Jungian typology - thinking, feeling, sensation, intuition, and then applies it to what styles and types of prayer suit each. He takes care to say that we should work on the areas we aren't so good on as well as enjoying the areas that we are more comfortable with. Pretty good.

Chapter 2 - Overcoming Difficulties. He goes through a list of common reasons people find it difficult to pray - "God feels so distant" and so on, and deals with them with a lot of pastoral wisdom coming from his decades as a counsellor and psychiatrist. Stunningly good.

Chapter 3 - The Therapeutic Value of Prayer. The focus here is on how prayer can be key for dealing with various psychiatric difficulties (guilt, depression, etc) and for good mental health. Very good.

Q&A on Prayer - Some questions he's obviously been asked - answers are good and psychologically insightful.

Chapter 4 - Prayer: Psychological Illusion? This is the best treatment I've read of the apologetics question as to whether prayer is a psychological illusion. The answer is no...

Chapter 5 - Are All Prayers Alike? Martinez discusses the question of the relationship between Christian prayer, Christian meditation, Eastern meditation, Platonic ecstasy and magic. Helpful.

I guess the unifying theme between all these chapters is something like "Things Dr Martinez has learnt about prayer in many years of being a Christian, a counsellor and a psychiatrist." An odd collection, but one well worth reading, if only for chapter 2. Definitely worth keeping on the shelf to refer to in the future.