Where are you on your journey from Good to Great ?

Abstract

A great organization is one that makes a distinctive impact and delivers superior performance over a long period of time. For a business, performance principally means financial results, specifically return on invested capital. For a social sector organization, on the other hand, performance must be assessed first and foremost relative to the organization’s mission, not its financial results. Notice that by this definition that you do not need to be big to be great. Your distinctive impact can be on a local or small community, and your performance can be superior and long-lasting without becoming large. You might choose to grow in order to have a wider impact and to better deliver on your mission, but it is important to understand that big does not equal great, and great does not equal big. We derived these principles from a matched-pair research method, wherein we systematically analyzed companies that at- tained greatness during a particular phase of their histories in contrast to carefully selected comparison companies—com- panies facing nearly identical circumstances—that failed to attain greatness during the exact same historical eras.