If our educational renewal movement consistently graduated students well on their way to practical wisdom, that fact alone would entail a remarkable positive inheritance. I might go so far as to say that, even if our educational methods bore no better fruit in standardized test scores or excellent artistry in language, mathematics, or the fine and performing arts, still it all would have been worth it if our graduates were more prudent. Part of the reason for this is that no man is an island, and so, regardless of other attainments, the influence of these prudent citizens on the world at large is nothing short of incalculable. Prudence is the quintessential virtue of true leadership.

Much ink has been spilled on the liberal arts as the proper training for a free human being. A free society relies on men and women leaders who are able to reason persuasively with both verbal and mathematical precision, in order to lead us to human flourishing. As Aristotle asserts,

That is why we think Pericles and people of that sort to be practically wise–because they have theoretical knowledge of what is good for themselves and for human beings, and we think household-managers and politicians are like that. (Reeve, Aristotle on Practical Wisdom, 56; VI.5 translation)

In actual fact, it is not the liberal arts simply, but the liberal arts facing prudential matters that prepare a person for leadership. Study of the liberal arts can tend toward the arcane, mystic and purely academic. The best students of abstract intellectual matters are not always the best leaders. 

Aristotle’s inclusion of both household-managers and politicians justifies our exploration of prudence as a leadership trait generally. When he says that “political wisdom and practical wisdom are the same state of mind, but to be them is not the same,” (VI.8, Revised Oxford Trans.) he further clarifies that political wisdom is that type of practical wisdom concerned with the city, just as economic or household management is that practical wisdom concerned with the household. This doesn’t negate the fact that a person could have individual practical wisdom but not the leadership varieties, because of lacking particular knowledge of that sphere. But it does mean that practical wisdom expands up into all types of leadership spheres, making the essence of practical wisdom itself highly desirable. 

After all, our graduates will lead in various ways after their Christian classical education, whether it be as parents themselves, church and small group leaders, coaches, business managers and executives, and perhaps even politicians. Our world needs more prudent leaders, just as it does more prudent individuals. 

In this article we will explore practical wisdom in dialogue with Jim Collin’s idea of Level 5 leadership from his book Good to Great. Then we will note some practical implications for training prudent leaders through the school experience today.

Level 5 Leadership and Prudence

In his masterfully researched Good to Great, Jim Collins and his team of researchers set out to discover what separated enduringly great businesses (measured “objectively” by publicly available stock valuation) from comparison companies. According to his own admission Collins “gave the research team explicit instructions to downplay the role of top executives so that [they] could avoid the simplistic ‘credit the leader’ or ‘blame the leader’ thinking common today.” In spite of this, the presence of what they came to call “Level 5 Leadership” in all the Good to Great companies at the time of transition kept staring them in the face, the more so since the traits they saw were so paradoxical and unexpected. 

Collins describes the Level 5 executive as a person who “builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will” (20). He goes on to describe it this way:

Level 5 leaders are a study in duality: modest and willful, humble and fearless. To quickly grasp this concept, think of United States President Abraham Lincoln (one of the few Level 5 presidents in United States history), who never let his ego get in the way of his primary ambition for the larger cause of an enduring great nation. Yet those who mistook Mr. Lincoln’s personal modesty, shy nature, and awkward manner as signs of weakness found themselves terribly mistaken, to the scale of 250,000 and 360,000 Union lives, including Lincoln’s own. (22)

Lincoln provides an inspiring example of this “professional will” combined with “personal humility.” These leaders are not the superstar executives that led the company to a brief period of high profitability during their tenure as CEO, but then left it in the lurch at their departure. 

Collins lists a hierarchy of five levels of leadership that we can profitably set in dialogue with Aristotle’s intellectual virtue of prudence:

• Level 1 – Highly Capable Individual: Makes productive contributions through talent, knowledge, skills, and good work habits.

• Level 2 – Contributing Team Member: Contributes individual capabilities to the achievement of group objectives and works effectively with others in a group setting.

• Level 3 – Competent Manager: Organizes people and resources toward the effective and efficient pursuit of predetermined objectives.

• Level 4 – Effective Leader: Catalyzes commitment to and vigorous pursuit of a clear and compelling vision, stimulating higher performance standards.

• Level 5 – Level 5 Executive: Builds enduring greatness through a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will. (Jim Collins, Good to Great, 20) 

First, the highly capable individual has established good habits or virtues that productively make use of the talent, skills and knowledge that he has. This individual level of prudence calculates correctly that it will be beneficial to himself to work well and be known as a good worker, as that will provide him with the good things of life.

Second, the contributing team member has what Aristotle calls “consideration” or “judgment” (gnome; see Nicomachean Ethics VI.11), discerning correctly what is fair in working together with a team. This fair-mindedness relies on a perception or comprehension of each person’s rights and responsibilities. 

Third, the competent manager receives objectives or goals from and is able to use his cleverness (a morally neutral category related to practical wisdom in Aristotle; see VI.13) to organize people and resources toward meeting those goals. Moreover, this manager does so in a way that coordinates those combined efforts well and is in this sense political. We now see the forerunners of prudence approaching something like it in applied political leadership. 

Fourth, the effective leader adds still another element of practical wisdom, in that the leader first perceives and then articulates “a clear and compelling vision”–something that Aristotle would have called understanding the proper ends or goals of human flourishing and then having the art of persuasion to communicate it to others. The effective leader not only has the cleverness to chart out a path to these goals, but discerns the end from the beginning because he has high standards of excellence (virtue) within himself that enable this perception. 

Fifth, the level 5 leader adds on to these the crowning achievement of practical and political wisdom, because he has subsumed his own personal benefit within the good of the community or organization as a whole. Collins hesitates to use the term servant leadership because of how it might degenerate into mere niceness in our imaginations, but the conclusion is unavoidable:

Level 5 leaders channel their ego needs away from themselves and into the larger goal of building a great company. It’s not that Level 5 leaders have no ego or self-interest. Indeed, they are incredibly ambitious–but their ambition is first and foremost for the institution, not themselves. (21)

Christians should not be surprised by this finding, resonating as it does with the model of self-sacrificial leadership attested in scripture.

The sacrificial leadership described in Collins’s Good to Great also has a firmness of will, reminiscent of Charlotte Mason’s Way of the Will, which we have already had occasion to mention. The prudent leader may take time to deliberate well and correctly, but once his mind is made up about the best course of action, his will is iron. This iron will can coexist with a heart of humility partly because his knowledge is so firm and clear. He sincerely knows why, how and what is best for himself and others precisely because of his practical wisdom. 

A Pathway for Prudent Leaders

There are several practical take-aways for Christian classical schools that accept prudence as one of their aims. The first comes from the possibility of taking these 5 levels as a scope & sequence of sorts for leadership development in our schools. It might be fair to criticize the value of group work and teamwork in class projects from the vantage point of simple academic attainments. But if, as we are contending, school should act as a training ground for prudent decision-making in life, then the back-and-forth negotiations and power dynamics of persons are possible life lessons in and of themselves. Mentoring students up the levels of leadership could function as one strand in the curriculum governing this type of learning activity. 

It is worth pausing to note that it is important to differentiate this from simple rhetorical skill. Often in rhetorical training, it is the speech or paper that is graded or ranked, regardless of the rightness or wrongness of the viewpoint taken. This isolation of the simple product of persuasion makes sense when we are focusing on developing the art of rhetoric only, but if we expand the vision to prudent leadership, then we can see that the speech functions holistically within a vision & strategy, a web of relationships, a set of challenges, and a perception of the resources, needs, and trade-offs of various pathways. While real-life experience leading is the most accurate training ground for this, proxies involving actual leadership of other students can help. 

It is for this reason that student leadership within a house system or student council can be a proper classical educational feature. Not because schools should function like democracies, but because of our educational goals. These leadership opportunities mimic real-world complexity than games or assignments since they involve real human beings and definite choices for their good or ill within a timeframe and constraints. Of course, if we were merely talking about strategy, it might be that our modern strategy games (whether board games, video games, or computer games) might afford the best training. Chess is a good example of this, originating as it did almost 1500 years ago in India, and its venerable history of mimicking military tactics. A little bit of such things throughout youth might be of value to future prudent leader, but because all the particulars of an actual leadership situation matter, becoming a grandmaster will be unlikely to transfer to level 5 leadership.

In fact, this case helps to illustrate one of the key differences between artistic training and an education for prudence. While artistry of any sort benefits from an abundance of focused practice within the discipline, game, or subject matter, too much specialization might actually be a hindrance to prudent leadership. As David Epstein illustrates in his book Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, a wide array of experiences often equips us with a better intuition, vision, and creativity for making decisions in the complex situations we face. 

In this sense too, the liberal arts were made for prudence, not only because they prepare a person with practical skills to lead (writing, discussing, speaking, calculation, charting, etc.), but also because they help us encounter the world in all its variety and prevent us from focusing too narrowly on one subject or aspect of things. Prudent leaders are generalists, who have encountered the world in all its complexity: people, products, research, and relationships, to name just a few aspects. They draw from all this varied data to make complex calculations about the best course of action and they regularly lead others to human goods. 

Let’s smooth this liberal arts pathway with lessons for level 5 leadership at our schools.

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In Good to Great, author Jim Collins argues from longitudinal research that one reason organizations fail to make the jump from good to great is that they never land on their “one big thing.” He calls this “thing” the Hedgehog Concept. Collins defines it as a simple crystalline concept that flows from deep understanding about the intersection of the organization’s superior distinctive, economic engine, and abiding passion (97). Collins writes, “The essence of a Hedgehog Concept is to attain piercing clarity about how to produce the best long-term results, and then exercising relentless discipline to say, ‘No thank you,’ to opportunities that fail the hedgehog test” (Good to Great and the Social Sectors, 17).

In this blog, my final installment in a three-part series on Good to Great (you can read Part 1 here and Part 2 here), I will explore how Christian, classical schools can identify their Hedgehog Concept. Like my other two articles, it is important to remember that much of Collin’s advice is designed for businesses, not schools. Collins himself acknowledged this limitation, which led him to publish an accompanying monograph for social sectors. Nevertheless, in my own thinking, I have discovered that there are quite a few helpful instances of overlap between the business and social sector, including the need for a Hedgehog Concept. In what follows, I will unpack further the notion of a Hedgehog Concept and then offer specific guidance regarding how Christian, classical schools can find theirs. 

Understanding the Hedgehog

There are three key parts to the Hedgehog Concept, all of which work together in a synergistic way. The result is a crystalline center, which becomes the core business. Once the core business is identified, the company must exercise rigorous discipline to resist opportunities that would lead it away from its center.

So what are the three parts? I will take them one at a time.

#1: What can you be the best in the world at?

This may sound like a humorous, if not arrogant, question. But it forces an organization to think deeply about what truly sets it apart in the marketplace. It is not enough to simply identify a list of core competencies. This list may get you a sly, maneuverable fox, but not a hedgehog.

Moreover, this circle is not asking what the organization wants to be the best at. Collins writes, “Every company would like to be the best at something, but few actually understand–with piercing insight and egoless clarity–what they actually have the potential to be the best at and, just as important, what they cannot be the best at” (98). In order to gain this kind of understanding, organizations need to be honest with themselves, confronting the brutal facts about what assets set them apart and what constraints might provide clarity on the direction they should focus.

It is tempting for companies who are doing well–meeting their quarterly goals and so on–to feel that they are on the path the greatness. But Collins warns that this could actually be the curse of competence. To transcend this curse, companies must resist the temptation to become complacent with brief instances of success. To achieve exceptional results over the long-term, companies should take encouragement from short-term results while continuing to strive to find their hedgehog concept, a process that took the good-to-great companies fours years on average to find.

#2: What drives your economic engine?

To identify the second circle within the hedgehog, Collins asks, “If you could pick one and only one ratio–profit per x–to systematically increase over time, what x would have the greatest and most sustainable impact on your economic engine?” (104). 

For example, Walgreens made the jump from good to great when it identified its primary economic denominator as profit per customer visit. This decision led them to redesign their building design, product line, and pricing around maximizing the productivity of each customer visit. For Gillette, another good-to-great company, it would not make sense for its engine to be driven by customer visits because it does not own brick-and-mortar stores. Instead, Gillette concentrated its engine power on product per customer. Gillette focused on gaining customer loyalty through both repeated purchases (e.g. razor cartridges) and high profit purchases (e.g. non-disposable razors) (107). 

For nonprofit organizations, like schools, they cannot locate their economic engine in a profit metric for obvious reasons. But nor is it sufficient to simply focus on other sources of cash flow, which Collins initially thought. What Collins learned in his research is that in the social sector, the economic engine needs to be retooled into a resource engine with three key components: time, money, and brand. The question then becomes: “How can we develop a sustainable resource engine to deliver superior performance results relative to our mission?” (Social Sector, 18).

#3: What are you deeply passionate about?

The final concentric circle in Collins’ hedgehog concept is all about passion. This is the most straightforward and intuitive of the three circles. As organizations find their hedgehog concept, their one big “thing,” it must be something that the people are excited about. Whether it is the product itself or what the company stands for, there must be an inner motivation that drives them. It is this passion that will help companies push through glass ceilings and sustain results over the long-term.

Identifying a Christian, Classical Hedgehog Concept

As we begin to explore what a Christian, classical hedgehog concept might look like, it can be helpful to shift around the order in which we tackle the circles. As a nonprofit, schools should begin with their cause–what they are passionate about and, ultimately, why they exist. When we can get clear on the mission, we can then proceed through the conceptual process.

#1: What is your school deeply passionate about?

For most Christian, classical educators, our passion falls into a few buckets. As educators, we delight in children. We love their joy, curiosity, and enthusiasm. We regularly catch glimmers of who they can become as their personal strengths and interests emerge. We are passionate about coming alongside our students to help them steward the gifts God has given them and to help them flourish as human beings. 

We are also passionate about God’s redemptive work in human history. It is a stunning reality of the gospel that God has enacted a plan to reconcile fallen creation to Himself. Through the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, the kingdom of God is breaking into our world, bringing hope and redemption for all peoples of the earth who put their trust in Christ. Christian, classical education is one way we as Christians can participate in impactful work for the kingdom.

Finally, we are passionate about real and deep learning that is rooted in something bigger than, for example, workplace preparation. When we reimagine learning as the pursuit of goodness, truth, and beauty, and the formation of virtue in students, we grow excited about going on this journey ourselves and inviting students with us in this transformative process.

#2: What can your school do better than anyone else?

This is a tricky one. There are lots of ways to answer this question and different classical schools will have slightly different answers depending on their size, history, and context (see the introduction to this article for all the different potential areas of focus). However, from a philosophical and curricular standpoint, there is a unifying thread that necessarily connects truly classical schools no matter what size and location. 

Here are a few examples:

• Learn in a genuine community of inquiry through discussion-based learning
• Facilitate organic student growth, free of checking the boxes of bureaucratic state standards
• Read the classics of western civilization, contemplating and digesting the riches of the tradition
• Prepare future leaders with strong character and rhetorical skills 
• Equip young Christian men and women to lead lives of meaning and purpose

What about sports programs, school musicals, financial accessibility, and academic accolades? These components may be part of a particular strategic plan or initiative, but they are likely not central to the school’s hedgehog concept. For classical schools, leaders need to keep the main thing the main thing: equipping students with the knowledge, virtues, and skills they need to flourish Through a time-tested curriculum, and commitment to preserving the best of the past while gleaning insights of the present, classical schools can set apart themselves from other schools.

#3: What drives the resource engine for your school?

As you may recall, Collins believes there are three components to a nonprofit’s resource engine: time, money, and brand. The goal is to connect this resource engine to the organization’s passion and what it does best. While there is much to be said on this topic, I will comment briefly on money and brand, saving time for another day (ironically).

From a financial perspective, schools receive revenue from, generally speaking, tuition and fundraising. Therefore, schools need to exercise both business acumen and fundraising skill. They need to think carefully about how much it will cost to run the school and create a sustainable financial plan to cover these expenses. Ideally, the school will cover most, if not all, of its operational expenses with hard income (e.g. tuition and fees), freeing up fundraising efforts to fund infrastructure projects and longterm strategic goals.

On the brand component, schools can help power their resource engine by earning a reputation of achieving its mission with excellence. This reputation, which takes time to develop through consistent practices and results, will reinforce what a school can charge for tuition and how much it can raise. In this way, the resource engine works synergistically along with the other circles of the hedgehog concept. The cause of the school’s passion will mobilize donors to give. As the brand improves, emotional goodwill and mindshare will increase, growing the school’s reputation in the community. This in turn will lead to increased enrollment, more alumni, and a wider donor base. This phenomenon of momentum, which takes time over a period of sustained effort, Collins calls the Flywheel Effect.

Conclusion

In order for Christian, classical schools to faithfully serve students over the long-term, they need to identify and commit to their Hedgehog Concept. The concept begins with the emergence of a passion to equip future generations of Christians with the knowledge, skills, and virtues they need to flourish both individually and as members of society. It is then augmented with an understanding of what the school contributes to families in the communities it touches: Christ-centered, liberal arts education. Finally, the school’s Hedgehog Concept is complete when it hones in on a resource engine that connects all three circles so that they reinforce each other for longterm institutional sustainability.

1. “Price, Product, Process: A Conceptual Update” in I&P, Vol. 40, No. 10. Independent School Management.

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A few years later, Collins wrote Good to Great and the Social Sectors (2005). In this companion monograph, Collins draws out five key issues leaders face when applying the seven characteristics of great companies to nonprofit organizations like churches, hospitals, and schools. One issue, which I addressed in my first article, is that businesses and nonprofits evaluate success differently. Whereas businesses almost exclusively evaluate success by financial output, nonprofits measure success by how effectively they are achieving their mission. This sort of evaluation is admittedly more complex, Collins writes, but it is possible when leaders gain clarity on desired outcomes and establish metrics they can rigorously track. 

In this article, I will examine an additional issue nonprofit leaders face when applying Good to Great principles: getting the right people on the bus amidst social sector constraints. I can imagine school leaders nodding already. They know how difficult it is to recruit, hire, and retain faculty and staff, especially in light of tight budgets. Despite this challenge, I contend that it is possible to attract and retain great teachers through cultivating the right culture and selectively choosing the right people. For Christian educators, these people will be self-motivated, humble men and women who are devoted to Christ and love both children and learning.

First Who, Then What

Before I consider the unique constraints educational leaders are under when staffing their schools, I will first summarize what Collins means by “First Who…Then What.” Essentially, what he is getting at here is that before leaders settle on their final business model, or organizational strategy, they need to first get the right people on the bus. This may strike you as counterintuitive. While it is reasonable to expect that establishing the new vision would logically precede hiring the right people–indeed, attracting the right people through the vision–this is not what Collins and his team found. They discovered that with the right people onboard, the organization as a whole becomes stronger–more versatile and more driven to succeed–even before the new direction is set (41).

In fact, for Collins, it is precisely this ordering of “First Who, Then What,” that differentiates a “Level 5” from a “Level 4” leader. Whereas a Level 4 leader sets the vision and hires a crew to help make the vision happen, the Level 5 leader builds a superior executive team and together they figure out the best path to institutional excellence. The vision and people could be the same, but the emphasis is different. The Level 4 approach is leader-dependent, while the Level 5 approach is team-centered. For this reason, it is even more important to get the right people on board.

On the sensitive topic of people decisions, Collins is careful to point out that the “great” companies made efforts to be rigorous in cultivating a culture of discipline, but they were not ruthless in how they treated people (52). They consistently applied exacting standards at all times and at all levels, to be sure, but not in a capricious sort of way. These companies were clear and predictable in their expectations as well as thoughtful in performance evaluations. Employees, therefore, could trust their supervisors and need not worry about their positions when the going got tough. In fact, six of the eleven good-to-great companies recorded zero layoffs, and four recorded one or two layoffs, for years on end. Conversely, the comparison companies suffered innumerable layoffs and incessant restructuring over time (54). The path to greatness, it turns out, is not by the swing of the ax, but the careful use of the pruner.

The Question of Compensation

So how can school leaders get the right people on the bus? It is time to address the question of compensation. Certainly, compensation plays a role in attracting talent. Teachers, like all humans, need to provide for their families and livelihood. They ought to be compensated reasonably for their work. All too often, unfortunately, private Christian schools are known for low compensation and meager benefits. While it is outside the purview of this article to address a solution in depth, I do want to assure readers that it is possible to compensate teachers well and enable the institution to be profitable when the right financial structure is put in place.

However, even if schools can offer reasonable compensation packages, it is simply the case that compensation is not going to be the primary driver for attracting great teachers. The best teachers are not in it to make a competitive salary, but to make a difference. Thus, the key advantage schools have in attracting talent, over and against the business world, is the invitation to join a mission infused with meaning. The mission for Christian, classical educators is to impact the lives of young people, helping them thrive as image-bearers and equipping them with the knowledge, virtues, and skills to serve society and Christ’s kingdom. It is ultimately the distinctiveness of this kind of mission that is going to attract great teachers.

Compensation is not only used to attract talent, of course. It is also used in many industries to incentivize good performance. This is growing more and more common, not only in the business world, but in schools. However, Collins and his team discovered some good news for organizations with tight budgets: compensation is not an effective motivator for producing long-term excellent results. Collins writes,

The comparison companies in our research–those that failed to become great–placed greater emphasis on using incentives to “motivate” otherwise unmotivated or undisciplined people. The great companies, in contrast, focused on getting and hanging on to the right people in the first place–those who are productively neurotic, those who are self-motivated and self-disciplined, those who wake up every day, compulsively driven to do the best they can because it is simply part of their DNA. (Social Sectors, 15 ).

As school leaders consider how compensation impacts attracting, retaining, and motivating great teachers, Collins’ research offers both encouragement and a subtle challenge. The encouragement is that schools can attract great teachers apart from extravagant compensation packages. They offer a truly unique benefit: the opportunity to invest in a life of meaning and purpose by helping young people and serving Christ’s kingdom. The subtle challenge, nonetheless, is to practice rigorous financial prudence, taking advantage of the best budgetary practices in independent school management, in order to compensate teachers fairly so they serve at their schools with a general sense of financial peace.

Attracting and Retaining the Best 

If compensation is not going to be the primary attraction for great teachers, how can schools attract the sort of self-disciplined and self-motivated people that Collins describes? How can school leaders effectively draw the right men and women to join the mission?

First, Collins advises a rigorous and selective hiring process. If school leaders are going to find the very best, they need to develop a way to evaluate what they mean by “best.” Once this process is created, they need not fear deterring top candidates from too rigorous of a process. In actuality, the sort of candidates schools should be after will be drawn to the challenge. These exceptional men and women will be interested in working somewhere that shares their values for excellence and hard work. A rigorous selection process sets the tone for what sort of culture the school maintains. Top candidates will pick up on this immediately.

Second, Collins recommends early assessment mechanisms. These mechanisms will enable school leaders early on to determine whether the faculty member is a long-term fit. In this approach, the first six-twelve months function like an extended interview. As Collins writes, “You don’t know a person until you work with them” (15). In this way, early assessment mechanisms will avoid delaying the determination of a bad fit. Unlike companies, which typically follow strict evaluative processes for determining the retention of an employee, schools can struggle to let people go. After all, schools, unlike businesses, are communities united around a greater purpose. Members of these educational communities share core values that bond them together in a unique and transformative way. Consequently, it can be very difficult to part ways with teachers after years of serving in the trenches together. By implementing clear and objective assessment mechanisms early in the teacher’s employment, there will be immediate clarity on how things are going. Moreover, these assessments will communicate the culture of support and discipline the school seeks to maintain. As teachers who are not good fits experience this culture, they will often self-select out (14). 

With all this talk of rigorous selectivity, assessment mechanisms, and the desire for institutional excellence, it is important as Christian educators to remember an important truth. While school leaders are ultimately responsible for creating a strong faculty plan and culture, in no way is this license to discourage or objectify members of faculty and staff. Regardless of abilities and outcomes, practices pertaining to attracting, assessing, and retaining teachers must align with the broader educational philosophy of our Christian commitments. This includes treating teachers as persons and mentoring them to pursue wholeheartedly God’s will for their lives.

Sample Interview Questions

If recruiting the right people is a top priority for schools, then it becomes crucial to discern who these people are during the hiring process. In The Ideal Team Player, author Patrick Lencioni identifies three core traits that ideal team members possess: humility, hunger to do one’s very best, and smartness as it pertains to connecting with people (think EQ). To this end, here are some sample interview questions Christian school leaders might ask to discern whether the candidates possess these traits.

1. What motivates you as a person? Would you consider yourself self-motivated? Why or why not?
2. Describe how your faith in Christ impacts your daily life. What role does the local church play?
3. Share an example in which you actively sought to help or serve someone. What motivated you to step in and help?
4. Share an example in which a student encountered struggle in your classroom. How did you respond? What was the result? How did you include the student’s parents in the process?
5. Have you ever worked with a difficult colleague or boss? How did you handle that situation? 
6. What is the hardest you have ever worked on something in your life?
7. Provide two examples of colleagues you enjoyed working with. What did you appreciate about them? What did they contribute to the team? 

Of course, a rigorous and selective hiring process for schools is going to include more than an interview or two. It could also include lesson demonstrations, meetings with potential colleagues, essay responses, and the like. Whatever a school decides, the point is to not shy away from taking the time to find the right people. For, according to Collins, getting the right people on the bus makes all the difference.

Conclusion

There is much more that could be said in this article on the topic of attracting, hiring, and retaining the right teachers. We must remember in this discussion that people who go through the life cycle of being an employee at a school are not objects, but men and women made in God’s image. They are not mere human resources to be manipulated or discarded at the school’s will. Whether a teacher becomes a long-term member of the school community or not, school leaders would do well to treat each teacher with dignity and respect. The lure of institutional excellence is enticing. Noble is the aspiration to advance the kingdom of God through classical, Christian education. But only when core values are upheld, especially a firm commitment to treat all members of the school community as persons, will an institution thrive for the good of society and the glory of God.

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A few years later, Collins wrote a short sequel, this time targeting a nonprofit audience, entitled Good to Great and the Social Sectors (2005). In this monograph, Collins thinks through how the seven characteristics apply to nonprofits like churches, hospitals, charities, and schools. He is careful to note that the goal for nonprofits is not to pretend they are businesses, but rather, to become “great.” He writes, “We must reject the idea–well-intentioned, but dead wrong–that the primary path to greatness in the social sector is to become ‘more like a business” (1). The solution, he believes, is to leave modes of mediocrity behind and replace them with habits of greatness. 

In this article, I will explore what Collins has to say about making the jump from good to great in schools. In particular, I will explore the first of five issues Collins suggests educational leaders might encounter as they seek to apply the seven characteristics of great companies in their schools. This is the issue of defining “great” and calibrating success without traditional business metrics.

Seven Characteristics of “Great” Companies

To begin, let me briefly define the seven characteristics of companies that made the jump to greatness in Collins’ research. Collins and his team studied twenty-eight companies, eleven of them qualifying as “great” companies in contrast to the other seventeen. To distill the characteristics, his team of researchers carefully studied what the eleven great companies all had in common that distinguished them from the comparison companies (7). 

The results of the research are the following characteristics:

1. Level Five Leadership: Leaders with a paradoxical blend of personal humility and professional will
2. First Who, Then What: Getting the right people on the bus before finalizing the business model
3. Confront the Brutal Facts: Unwavering faith in the future of the business coupled with the relentless pursuit of current reality
4. Hedgehog Concept: Getting clear on the core business through reaching the center of three concentric circles (see below)
5. Culture of Discipline: A work culture blend of integrity, humility, ambition, and entrepreneurship
6. Technology Accelerators: The careful selection of technology to advance the company
7. The Flywheel: Trusting the slow process of doing the right things to build momentum over time

It is interesting to think that the secret to greatness could be boiled down to seven relatively simple characteristics. And yet, this is exactly what Collins and his team discovered. Of course, applying these principles is easier said than done. There is a reason why the companies he studied were true outliers. But the silver lining is that any organization, including schools, can increase effectiveness and get on the path to greatness through the careful study and implementation of these organizational characteristics.

Five Issues for Social Sectors 

With the business framework of Good to Great in view, let us begin to think through how the seven characteristics might apply in social sectors, like schools. When engaged in this task, Collins observes five issues that tended to come up in light of the difference between for-profits and not-for-profits (3). Here they are:

1. Defining “Great”: Calibrating success without business metrics
2. Level 5 Leadership: Getting things done within a diffuse power structure
3. First Who: Getting the right people on the bus within social sector constraints
4. The Hedgehog Concept: Rethinking the economic engine without a profit motive
5. Turning the Flywheel: Building momentum by building the brand

In the remainder of this blog, I will focus on the first issue: defining “great” and calibrating success without traditional business metrics.

Defining “Great”: Inputs and Outputs

In business, the outputs for evaluating effectiveness are fairly straightforward: financial returns and achievement of corporate purpose. A business at the end of the day is evaluated by its financial margins. In the social sector, however, it is significantly more complex. You cannot measure the success of a nonprofit by the size of the budget, efficiency of expense ratios, or breadth of donor circles. To be sure, these can serve as helpful metrics for governance purposes, but they do not get at the heart at gauging whether the mission is being achieved successfully.

To evaluate “greatness” in nonprofits, Collins advises to make this crucial distinction between inputs and outputs. In the corporate world, money serves as both an input and output of greatness. Companies are evaluated both by how much money enters the company (the input variable), and, more importantly, how much money is produced (the output variable).

For example, if I were to start a snow cone company, I would certainly need an input of cash. The more capital I possessed up front, the more ice, syrup, and freezer storage I could acquire for production. The goal, of course, is the output of cash–how much revenue I can generate from sales. Therefore both monetary input and output play a key role in measuring the greatness of my snow cone aspirations, but especially monetary output.

Like my hypothetical snow cone company, an independent school requires an input of cash to cover expenses–items like payroll, facilities, and curricular materials. There will also be an an output of cash–the revenue generated from tuition primarily. But the difference between selling snow cones and educating students is that, for the latter, the tuition dollars themselves do not serve as the measuring stick for how well the school is achieving its mission.

Delivering on the Mission

So if money is not an appropriate output for measuring the greatness of a school, then what is? Surely there are ways to measure greatness. As Collins writes, “To throw our hands up and say, ‘But we cannot measure performance in the social sectors the way you can in business’ is simply a lack of discipline (7). So how do we do it?

For Collins, it is the effectiveness by which the nonprofit delivers on the mission and makes a distinctive impact. For schools, therefore, it is how effective the school achieves its mission of preparing its students for whatever kind of impact they hope to have in the world.

Still, measuring mission delivery can be difficult. To repeat, we cannot simply reduce mission effectiveness to a dollar amount. Collins advises nonprofits to use both quantitative and qualitative means, acknowledging that all measurement indicators are flawed to some degree. So quantitative metrics like test scores, faculty evaluations, parent surveys, annual giving, financial margins, and re-enrollment metrics can and should be used, but we must acknowledge their limitations in telling the full story. The key, writes Collins, is not to find the single perfect indicator, but to land on a consistent and intelligent method of assessing your output results and then tracking your trajectory with rigor (8).

Boards and leadership teams, therefore, need to get clear on what is meant by great performance for their particular school. What is the baseline for delivering on the mission? What are the big-picture goals and how do you know if you are making progress? These are the questions school leaders need to be asking.

Three Outputs of Greatness

Collins suggests three ways for nonprofits to measure outputs of greatness relative to their mission. “Superior Performance” measures the results and efficiency of the organization. “Distinctive Impact” gauges the unique contribution the organization is making to the communities it touches. And “Lasting Endurance” tracks exceptional results over a long period of time.

Applying this framework to schools, here is one way to put meat on the skeleton:

Superior Performance: Results and efficiency on the school’s mission

• Enrollment Over Time
• Student Retention
• Faculty Retention
• Annual Fund YTD Progress 
• Stories of Student Growth
• Stories of Alumni Impact
• Alumni Survey 
• Parent Promoter Score
• Inquiries Per Week
• Observations Per Week

Distinctive Impact: Unique contribution to the communities the school touches

• Like-minded schools visiting for inspiration and guidance
• Contagious families spreading the word about the school
• Alumni increasingly sought for leadership roles and perspectives at work, church, and in the public square
• Partnership with the local community

Lasting Endurance: Exceptional results over a long period of time

• Multigenerational families: Alumni enrolling their children
• Excellence sustained across generations of teachers
• Supporters donate time and money, investing in long-term success of the school
• Strong organization before, during, and after the Head’s tenure 

In sum, to recalibrate the measurement of school success, educational leaders must think through the key ways they can measure mission effectiveness, distinct impact, and lasting endurance. How do these relate to the seven characteristics of “greatness”? Collins writes, “You can think of the entire good-to-great framework as a generic set of variables that correlate strongly with creating the outputs of greatness…Any journey from good to great requires relentlessly adhering to these input variables, rigorously tracking your trajectory on the output variables, and then driving yourself to even higher levels of performance and impact” (8-9).

Conclusion 

Educational leaders must understand that endowment, revenues, cost structure, and income statements are input variables, not output variables, of school greatness. For schools to make the leap, boards and executive teams should think seriously about what variables they want to use to measure the degree of effectiveness in fulfilling the mission of their institution. It is difficult work to be sure, but the effort is worth it. There are generations of children awaiting to be equipped, and it is exciting to think that our schools can play a significant role in this transformative process for the glory of God.

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