The Hindu Business Line : Being a hedgehog

PROF Jim Collins' book Good to Great has been making waves on the management circuit for some time now. And for good reason. In his book, the former professor of the Stanford Business School evokes the imagery of foxes and hedgehogs for distinguishing leaders who are tactically nimble from those who are strategically invulnerable.

A fox is nothing if not a master schemer, but a hedgehog beats it every time by turning into an impenetrable ball with its spikes pointing in every direction to ward off threats.

Prof Collins develops the significance of the hedgehog concept in great detail, and attributes to it much of what goes into making a merely good company into a great one.

Prof Collins realises, however, that the style of a hedgehog alone — or in a facetious sense, making menageries out of managers — is not enough for achieving the above objective.

He ropes in for his aid the idea of Level 5 leadership to explain the impact of certain qualities which enable a leader to put the stamp of his personality on the organisation and take it to previously unimagined heights.

The precise purport of Level 5 is unclear. It may be taken to connote the gradations in the organisational pyramid, or to signify the peak of an ascending order of leadership based on certain inherent traits. For instance, it can be authoritarian, patriarchal, consultative, collaborative and participative.

Level 5 obviously stands for top-grade inspirational leadership that conduces to collective maximum performance.

Prof Collins views Level 5 as made up of a "potent" blend of professional will and personal humility.

The former is said to denote a "fierce, unwavering resolve to do whatever must be done to produce the best long-term results, no matter how difficult", while the latter wins over associates and stakeholders by "channelling ambition into the company, not the self", and being willing to pass on credit to others when things go right and accept blame for oneself when they go wrong.

Well, you might say there is nothing revolutionary in this thesis but, then, are not such permutations and combinations of familiar propositions the stuff of management science? If you want to have nothing to do with them, you can always roll up like a hedgehog!

B. S. Raghavan

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