Jim Collins at Educause09

Jim Collins, author of Good to Great gave the keynote address at Educause 09 in Denver. The video of his presentation wasn't made available on the educause site, but he does have a number of videos on his site if you're interested. Here's an educause podcast featuring some highlights. The following are just some of the notables that he covered that i was able to scribble down:

Good is the enemy of great.
Don't study the successful, study the contrast.
What's the difference there?
Greatness is a function of conscious choice and discipline.
It's an interesting study like studying train wrecks
How do the great fall?
Why do some great lose it, while others do not?

The Five Stages of Decline
1 Hubris born of success --- the moment you think you're great, you're not
2 Undisciplined pursuit of more --- great ones fail because they reach too far
3 Denial of risk and peril --- Stockdale Paradox the optimists didn't make it
4 Grasping for salvation --- think fly wheel, not silver bullet
5 Capitulation to irrelevance or death --- can't come back from here

It is those who are consistently disciplined who are most open to change.

The signature of mediocrity is chronic inconsistency.

Stop spending your energy on being interesting, work on being interested.

Be rigorous in getting the right people on the bus, not ruthless.

The right people ...
... don't have to be managed
... don't have a job, they have responsibilities
... do what they say
... window mirror maturity, credit through window, blame themselves
... bring passion

Ten To Do Items
1) Do your diagnostics on your team, free tool at jimcollins.com
2) How many key seats do we have on our minibus? what are plans to get to 100%
3) Build a personal board of directors, people you admire for their character
4) Get young people in your face, we may be cultivating a level 5 generation
5) Turn off electornic gadgets, create pockets of quietude. You cannot have disciplined thought with e-mail/phone/twitter.. THINK
6) Can you question your questions to statements ratio? The number of questions you ask compared to the number of statements you make. Great leaders don't have all the answers, they have experts who they ask questions. Can you double your ratio in a year?
7) Start your "stop doing" list, work is infinite, time is finite.
8) Suspend titles, articulate responsibilities "i am the one person ultimately responsible for x,y,z"
9) Discover waterline risks and take them away, risks below waterline can sink you.
10) Set BHAGs (Big Hairy Audacious Goals), Peter Drucker was asked which book are you most proud of? His response, "the next one i'm about to write"

We aren't imprisoned by mistakes, cards we're dealt, staggering defeats, we are freed by our choices.