Good is the enemy of great.
It is true in life and in business, said Jim Collins, management educator and author of "Built to Last." Collins was the first keynote speaker at the Eighth Annual FranklinCovey International Symposium, which kicked off Wednesday at the Salt Palace Convention Center.
"If the truth be told, in this time of great abundance, most will look back at the end of their lives and realize they did not have a great life," Collins said. "Because it is so easy to settle for a good one."
While doing research for his soon-to-be-released book, "Good to Great," Collins said he discovered some core similarities among business leaders who facilitated the leap from "mind-numbing mediocrity" to greatness.
Great business leaders reject the notion that companies during times of struggle must return to basic business principles like cost-cutting and downsizing.
"Getting back to basics is something I find rather barbaric," Collins said. "We don't need back to basics, we need forward to understanding."
Rather, Collins said, great leaders understand what he calls the three-pronged "culture of discipline": disciplined people, disciplined thought and disciplined action.
"If you are doing something that feels like a revolution, it will almost certainly not produce revolutionary results," he said. "Instead, it should feel like a flywheel. You keep pushing in an intelligent, consistent direction. Greatness comes in the accumulation of pushes on the flywheel — turn upon turn upon turn."
It takes a team to get the wheel moving, Collins said. Great leaders strive to assemble the right people — those who share core values and vision — and rid the team of the wrong people.
"If you have the right people on the bus, you will never have to ask the question, 'How do we motivate people?' It's a demeaning question. It's insulting. The right people are motivated," he said.
The companies that made the leap from good to great, like Walgreens drugstores and Kimberly-Clark, also mastered three basic principles, Collins said. They found what best ignited their passion. They discovered what they could be the best at and what economic denominators best drove their economic engine.
And then they had the courage to trim their companies of the elements that did not fit within that framework. To that end, Collins encouraged people to include a "stop doing" list in their dayplanners, in addition to their to-do lists.
Though the principles spelled out in his book featured businesses, Collins said they are equally applicable to everyday life.
"If you have a purpose as opposed to a career, you can change your career and still have a purpose," he said.
In these times of crisis and conflict, FranklinCovey chief executive officer Robert Whitman said the company that values and recruits the right people will emerge triumphant.
"The new value creation frontier, with productivity gains from technology trailing off, is in human capital," Whitman said in his symposium-opening remarks.
Knowledge work and knowledge workers are the new imperative for 21st century companies, he said.
"Our human capital is tied to every other investment we make, even our physical capital," he said. "Talent and people make all the investments in an organization move forward. . . . And, as we look at these opportunities and these challenges, the human side of the equation will reach an importance never before seen."
The symposium will continue at the Salt Palace through Oct. 12.
E-mail: jnii@desnews.com