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The great man on Good to Great

Relativity: if you are sat in my Nissan 350z with me, how fast are we travelling?  Imagine the windows are covered in adoring fans underwear, and the speedo is broken: how fast do we think we are traveling?

A truck driver passes in the opposite direction at 40mph: how fast does he think we are travelling?

All of this is, of course, relative.  As you are sat next to me, you are traveling at the same speed relative to me.  The truck driver, however, is traveling at 195mph relative to me (and you) because we are moving along the Belgian motorway at 155mph (hitting the limiter) and he’s heading towards us at 40mph.

Swap the Nissan 350z for a high performance IT organization.  For those inside that IT organization, they don’t think they are doing anything different, or better, than anyone else until their eyes meet and they realize that one of them is moving a lot faster than the other, relatively speaking.

Likewise, the slow moving, low performance IT organization has no idea that it is a slow moving, low performance IT organization.

But there is a difference between the two, and you might know it, or you might not.  There is a growing band of people who do know it, and they are starting to coalesce around good2great.

The detailed goals of the good2great group will develop over time as they are all doing something, on their own, to transform IT from good2great – the challenge is: how to focus as a group to create a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts?