Good Enough Jazz: A response to Collins’ Good to Great
Ubiquitous on office shelves across the business, social and religious sectors, Jim Collins’ book Good to Great and its companion, Good to Great and the Social Sectors are undoubtedly required reading for leaders and potential leaders, especially those who want their companies or organizations to be “great.” I believe Collins’ simple, straightforward explanation of what makes companies great, coupled with extensive data, has given rise to its popular reception and reputation. While Collins would suggest it is not a “how to” but a “why” book, it is obviously meant to be just that: traits to foster a thriving company.
That said, I’ve wrestled this week with how beneficial Collins’ characteristics are to my context, serving in an urban church in the Midwest. Recognizing I am still learning the language and culture of this new place, I am uncomfortable with some—though not all—of Collins’ great traits.
Why be Great?
It’s tempting to be skeptical of the drive towards “greatness.” Emma Percy suggests sometimes it’s best to be ‘good enough.’[1] Collins sees it otherwise, to the point of critiquing “the disease of ‘just being good’.”[2] And yet, why is a stronger bottom line the judge for greatness? Collins himself answers that criticism in the accompanying text for the social sectors: “A great organization 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 organization, however, performance must be assessed relative to mission, not financial returns.”[3]
A different way to press against the “great” mentality suggests that many companies can potentially be “great” according to Collins’ standards, but few are actually good, from an ethical standard: “Today’s great challenge isn’t making the same old toxic junk, whether CDOs, Hummers, or soda, more efficiently — it’s making stuff that’s not toxic junk in the first place. That’s the challenge of going from great to good — and becoming what I’ve been calling a ‘Constructive Capitalist.’”[4]
Level 5 Leader
I appreciate Collins’ characterization of a “Level 5 Leader” as someone who is “modest and willful, humble and fearless.”[5] He clarifies what that looks like in the social sector, recognizing the reality that “most nonbusiness leaders simply do not have the concentrated decision power of a business CEO” and that the goal of these leaders is to move the organization in the right direction, “independent of consensus or popularity.” [6] I can affirm all this, especially the deep commitment these leaders have to the organization and its mission. What troubles me are the repeated images of hierarchical leadership throughout both texts.[7] While I do have leadership responsibilities within our church, there are about 150 other people who share in leadership in one form or another (in a church of 150). We truly are a mushy, ambiguous consensus-based community of people. I’m still not sure how I would diagram it—though we’ve tossed around a jazz-playing orchestra with Jesus as the conductor—but it certainly wouldn’t be a pyramid of hierarchy.
Bus Riders
Collins describes the need for the right people in the right seats on the bus, clarifying that with the reality that in the social sector, with volunteers, it’s often challenging to get the wrong people off the bus.[8] This is where I would push back on these texts. Like Max DePree’s recognition that “every person brings an offering to the group”[9] our community recognizes that every person that comes into the community is a gift from God. There’s no removing someone from the bus. We believe that everyone has a place in our community, to serve and be served. I would concur with Collins that one of our roles as a community is to discern with one another our giftedness and find the best places for our gifts to be used, but that’s simply moving seats on the bus, not discarding people.
Hedgehogs
Finally, I want to push back against the concept of being the best at something. While our 
congregation wants to see our neighborhood flourish, more importantly and interconnected with that, we seek to be broken, faithful witnesses to the Kingdom of God in this neighborhood. Our hedgehog as a church might look more like the Jesuits’ ‘holy ordinariness’: “It is the ordinary life of ordinary people doing extraordinarily ordinary things for an extraordinary purpose.”[10]
Collins’ popular texts are attractive because of their data, straightforward steps, and effective examples—the science of success. However, true leadership—especially within a church community—is more of an art than a science. Both DePree[11] and Percy would agree. Percy contends that ministry “cannot be carried out successfully by following rules or generic patters. In place of rules it needs the development of virtues.” Indeed, ministry is “a reflective way of reasoning that takes seriously how people are feeling and uses feelings as a way of assessing appropriate responses.”[12] Kind of like jazz improvisation.
[1] Emma Percy, What Clergy Do: Especially When It Looks Like Nothing (London: SPCK, 2014), 30-34.
[2] Jim Collins, Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap and Others Don’t (New York: Harper Collins, 2001), 3.
[3] Jim Collins, Good to Great and the Social Sectors: Why Business Thinking is Not the Answer (Jim Collins, 2005), 5.
[4] Umair Haque, The Great to Good Manifesto Harvard Business Review Feb 2, 2010. https://hbr.org/2010/02/great-to-good
[5] Collins, Good to Great, 22.
[6] Collins, Social Sectors, 10, 11.
[7] Ibid., 12.
[8] Ibid., 15.
[9] Max DePree, Leadership is an Art, (New York: Doubleday, 2004), 65.
[10] Katy Drage Lines, Extraordinarily Ordinary: Heroic Leadership (Oct 27, 2016), http://blogs.georgefox.edu/dminlgp/extraordinarily-ordinary-heroic-leadership/. cf. Chris Lowney, Heroic Leadership (Chicago: Loyola Press, 2003), 15, 20.
[11] “Leadership is an art, something to be learned over time, not simply by reading books. Leadership is more tribal than scientific, more weaving of relationships that amassing of information.” DePree, 3.
[12] Percy, 34.
About the Author
Katy Drage Lines
In God’s good Kingdom, some minister like trees, long-standing, rooted in a community. They embody words of Wendell Berry, “stay years if you would know the genius of the place.” Others, however, are called to go. Katy is one of those pilgrims. A global nomad, Katy grew up as a fifth generation Colorado native, attended college & seminary and was ordained in Tennessee, married a guy from Pennsylvania, ministered for ten years in Kenya, worked as a children’s pastor in a small church in Kentucky, and served college students in a university library in Orange County, California. She recently moved to the heart of America, Indianapolis, and has joined the Englewood Christian Church community, serving with them as Pastor of Spiritual Formation. She & her husband Kip, have two delightful boys, a college junior and high school junior.8 responses to “Good Enough Jazz: A response to Collins’ Good to Great”
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Katy, enjoyed your post and your pushback on Collins. You made some excellent points.
I especially appreciate the connect with DuPree, “our community recognizes that every person that comes into the community is a gift from God. There’s no removing someone from the bus. We believe that everyone has a place in our community, to serve and be served.”
I agree and have faced pressure on this from some of my colleagues —not in our cohort 🙂 —who see it in a more Collinesque way. They say, we serve everyone, but everyone is not a leader—so get’m off the bus! I disagree with the statement that not everyone is a leader and so would Noel Tichy (Building Leaders at Every Level) and others.
This is part of the challenge of bringing business practices into the church and one that has impacted a lot of people. Collins addresses this in “Social Sector,” but it still falls short of leading a church to greatness. Thanks Katy.
Katy, I agree with Collins that Level 5 leaders should have humility and drive. However when I read the part about the bus, the picture that came to my mind was broken human beings being tossed out because they didn’t measure up. I was really uncomfortable with that. Thank you for your honest and forthright appraisal!
I guess I’ve seen some churches helped by bringing in business principles, especially in the area of accounting, so I don’t want to throw the baby out with the bath water, but you are right – we are dealing with human beings here. Ministry may be more art than science but most of all it is about loving people which is what you are doing in your new job in Indiana!!
God bless you, great post.
“There’s no removing someone from the bus. We believe that everyone has a place in our community, to serve and be served.”
I agree with this statement in regards to volunteer laity, but what about employees at multi-staff churches?
What if everyone in the ________ ministry (music, youth, children, etc.) can tell that the minister is NOT doing a great job?
The challenge for pastors/church boards is this… in the secular world, firing a non-performing employee is understood as normal. In some churches, ministers are not asked to leave unless there is some public moral scandal.
“There’s no removing someone from the bus. We believe that everyone has a place in our community, to serve and be served.”
I agree with this statement in regards to volunteer laity, but what about employees at multi-staff churches?
What if everyone in the ________ ministry (music, youth, children, etc.) can tell that the minister is NOT doing a great job?
The challenge for pastors/church boards is this… in the secular world, firing a non-performing employee is understood as normal. In some churches, ministers are not asked to leave unless there is some public moral scandal. Speaking as a member of a ministry team, lazy or burnt out team members who are ignored by church leadership become a discouragement to the entire team.
I would agree with everything you’ve said here, Stu. But I would also add that perhaps the minister who isn’t working right in their particular role needs to move to a “different seat” on the bus. That may be a paid or unpaid position, but if they are truly part of the community, then they should be working for the common good, bearing witness to God’s Kingdom; sometimes their gifts and the roles they’re called to fill don’t match up. At that point, a reshuffling of seats should occur. If it’s not a moral failing, then they don’t need to be asked to leave, just find a different place within the church to use their gifts. But this starts from the assumption that the minister is first and foremost a part of the community and not someone coming (and going) from the outside.
“There’s no removing someone from the bus. We believe that everyone has a place in our community, to serve and be served.”
This is one of the things that bothered me about the “bus” analogy, Katy. As social sector leaders, are we ever in a position to throw people off the bus? When considering a whole church, I’m torn. I know there are times when we may need to help people find another bus (isn’t that a nice way to say that?) and I’m pretty sure that there will be times people will leave if we are truly mission focused in the manner Collins suggests. On the other hand, should the idea of getting the right people on board even apply to an entire congregation, or should that metaphor be limited to the way we bring staff on board and assess their work?
Interesting perspective on the book Katy with your current job position. It is clear there are some books that are ineffective for the leadership needs of each organization. Good reminder to find the right philosophy and leadership techniques or leadership book that applies best to your situation or church.
Katy,
I really loved this post….. I have enjoyed reading Collins book and really like it…. but there have always been a few places that troubled me in application to a church setting.
Particularly:
‘While I do have leadership responsibilities within our church, there are about 150 other people who share in leadership in one form or another (in a church of 150)’ – I think this might be the best definition of vocational church leadership – and both it’s joys and challenges.
Also – ‘bus riders’ – this is so critical… I think we can all cede that Collins is talking about getting people on the ‘leadership’ bus, etc…. and not getting them ‘off the bus’ of the church…. but as your above quote illustrates, it’s not really that simple
Again – so good. Thanks Katy.