4. 4 - Confront The Brutal Facts!
  • Confront Brutal Facts - Good to Great started with confronting the brutal facts of the current reality head on, and as a result, they emerged from adversity even stronger.
  • Right Decisions Become Self Evident - When you start with an honest and diligent effort to determine the trust of your situation, the right decisions often become self-evident.  It is impossible to make good decisions without infusing the entire process with an honest confrontation of the brutal facts.
  • Culture where the Truth is Heard -- A primary task in taking a company from good to great is to create a culture wherein people have a tremendous opportunity to be heard and, ultimately, for the truth to be heard.
    • Lead with questions, not answers.
  • Engage in dialogue and debate, not coercion.
  • Conduct autopsies, without blame.
  • Build red flag mechanisms that turn information into information that can not be ignored.
  • Head-On -- The good-to-great companies faced just as much adversity as the comparison companies, but responded to that adversity differently.  They hit the realities of their situation head- on. As a result, they emerged from adversity even stronger.
  • Stockdale Paradox -- A key psychology for leading from Good to Great is the Stockdale Paradox:
  • Retain absolute faith that you can and will prevail in the end, regardless of the difficulties, AND at the same time confront the most brutal facts of your current reality, whatever they might be.
  • Remain Charismatic - Charisma can be much a liability as an asset, as the strength of your leadership personality can deter people from bringing you the brutal facts.
  • Get Staff to Confront Brutal Facts - Leadership does not begin just with vision.  It begins with getting people to confront brutal facts and act on the implications.
  • Spending time and energy trying to "motivate" people is a waste of effort.  The real question is not, "How do we motivate our people?"  If you have the right people they will be self-motivated.  The key is to not de-motivate them.  One of the primary ways to de-motivate people is to ignore the brutal facts of reality.
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