In Search of Excellence and Good to Great (part 2)
Peters and Waterman submitted their own interpretation of excellent leadership as embodying the same brand of selflessness that Collins had outlined. “It [leadership] is listening carefully much of the time, frequently speaking with encouragement, and reinforcing words with believable action” (Peters 82). On this topic of leadership, it’s interesting to note the nearly two decades that separate the publishing of In Search of Excellence and that of Good to Great. Both books discourage the routine application of sheer authority onto the workforce, but instead advocate the more charismatic approach of allowing your employees to identify with your goals.
Both In Search of Excellence and Good to Great seem to compliment each other in their views on leadership in business, but how exactly might that apply to me? Well, my present field of interest as it relates to Information and Communication is teaching. Teaching, much like managing, requires patience and determination. Also, the teachers primary ambitions should be for his or her students, just like a Level 5 leader’s ambition should be “first and foremost for the institution, not themselves” (Collins 22). If a teacher is too preoccupied with reaching his or her own goals and is monetarily driven, the chances of cultivating half-baked students are pretty good.
In Search of Excellence provides another applicable principle for teachers. When leaders overuse their raw authority, the employees, in addition to resenting the leader, will often not feel compelled to go beyond the minimum of what’s required. It is the same way with teachers. When teachers simply exude their authority over students to accomplish their goals, the students have little to no concept of why the goal is important in the first place.
To summarize, the elements and technology behind good business managing changes, and certainly has done so over the last twenty years. The principles behind good managing remain the same, however, and that is why the two books In Search of Excellence and Good to Great compliment each other so well.