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The Hedgehog Concept
Submitted by saraneppl on Tue, 02/23/2010 - 1:04pm
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Last Friday, CityClub closed down the office and held a day long board and staff retreat. As a framework for our discussion, we purchased several copies of Jim Collins' Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great.
Jim Collins describes something he calls the Hedgehog Concept. Briefly, Collins describes the concept on his website: "The essence of a Hedgehog Concept is to attain piercing clarity about how to produce the best long-term results, and then exercising the relentless discipline to say, "No thank you" to opportunities that fail the hedgehog test. When we examined the Hedgehog Concepts of the good-to-great companies, we found they reflected deep understanding of three intersecting circles: 1) what you are deeply passionate about, 2) what you can be the best in the world at, and 3) what best drives your economic engine."
With these three things in mind, the board and staff of CityClub carried forth into discussion about what we want to do in the future, and how it fits with the Hedgehog Concept. As you can see, we broke up the hard thinking with a little fun: wind-up hedgehogs that spin and do backflips! (We were surprised at how difficult it was to obtain toy hedgehogs! Even the worldly toy folk at Archie McPhee had to ask us to repeat ourselves when we asked after something along this line.)
What do you think about the Hedgehog Concept? Can you see it being useful in your own life and work?
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