Good to Great Policing: Application of Business Management Principles in the Public Sector

In his best-selling book Good to Great, Jim Collins gives business executives advice about how to push their companies from the “merely good” to the rarefied world of greatness. This PERF report explores how the principles of Good to Great might be applied to policing.

It is important to understand that Collins is extremely careful in how he uses the word “great.” His criteria for greatness in business, based on stock market performance, are so stringent that he could find only 11 companies that qualified as great. To make a rough translation of Collins’ principles into the policing environment: A police chief striving for greatness might set a goal of reducing violent crime in his jurisdiction by, say, 50 percent. It would not matter to the chief if crime were going up everywhere else in the country, because great executives do not look for excuses; they look to get things done. And to be truly great, the chief not only would need to meet his target; he would need to ensure that the reduction in crime would be sustained even if he retired.

In Collins’ view, great executives focus their ambition not on personal glory, but on making the organization great, and that includes “setting up their successors for success.”
So Collins has set high standards for greatness. And if greatness in policing can be achieved, it certainly would be a powerful force for good in the world. Good to Great first came to my attention in 2002. I was shuttling back and forth from Washington, D.C., to work with the Chicago Police Department (CPD), and everyone in Chicago seemed to be talking about “getting the right people on the bus, the wrong people off the bus, and the right people in the right seats.” I asked what that meant, and the CPD’s Good to Great fans referred me to the book. They explained that one of Collins’ key findings was that in the companies with the most impressive records of success, executives began their quest for greatness not by setting goals, but by hiring the right people, dismissing those who would thwart change, and finding the best positions for everyone who remained.

Once the right people were on the bus, then the leader and his team began deciding where to direct the bus in order to find greatness. I read Good to Great, was intrigued, and wondered whether the analysis of how to make a business successful could be applied to policing. I tracked Collins down, and he was amazingly approachable for a man who had a book on the nonfiction bestseller lists for months. He invited me out to Boulder and before I knew it, I was on a plane to Colorado. A short time later, I found myself in a Boulder deli with Collins and Milliken, Colorado Chief of Police Jim Burack. What an amazing day we had! Collins was intrigued with how his principles might apply to policing and other parts of government, as well as to nonprofit groups, social service agencies, even churches. While his research was in the field of business, he already was beginning to speculate that the ability to overcome obstacles seemed to be the key to greatness for police executives and other government leaders. (Collins has noted that in some ways, police executives face more obstacles than do business leaders. For example, throwing anyone “off the bus” can be far more difficult for police executives than for many business leaders.)

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http://www.cops.usdoj.gov/files/ric/Publications/good_to_great.pdf