Reflections ... Good to Great
“Good is the enemy of great. And that is one of the key reasons why we have so little that becomes great… Few people attain great lives, in large part because it is just so easy to settle for a good life.”
– Jim Collins
I am grateful for the opportunity to have met with many of you traveling through the LDC for various learning engagements. I am proud of our APM hosting more than 400 of our teammates and key stakeholders at the LDC during the past month. I appreciated the candid discussion we had in the halls, at the lunch table, and also this afternoon during APM Works. I ask you to continue participating in these opportunities for raising your feedback. If you heard anything from me that stuck with you, I hope it was the following items:
We must be unyielding our consistency, maturity, and resiliency with the tools that we have in our safety keystone toolbox.
We are working to be very transparent with our teams, empowering you with information and data and involving you in business ownership.
We have made significant improvements in our business. For example, more of our teams are going home safe, as evidenced by our 50% decrease in injuries this spring. Yet there are some pockets of inconsistency that remain. The next step in our journey is to close these gaps and move our APM from good to great. This is critical for our company’s brand perception and for all of us in a very demanding market.
We are also committed to involving you in the continued development and refinement of our tools. For example, the Critical X’s were created based on the expertise of our Operations Management and all of our data from previous job sites and outage seasons. However, we recognize you all as the experts in the field, and we need you engaged with us to mature our toolbox. If you have immediate questions, feedback, or ideas, I encourage you to voice those to your Service Manager. We need you to own and lead the current strategy the business has set for the fall outage season.
Allow me to leave you with some key takeaways from an all-time bestseller, Good to Great by Jim Collins, which I believe correlates well with our focus on consistency, maturity, and resiliency. The book can be summarized in one word that enables organizations to achieve greatness: Discipline.
Disciplined People – Getting the right people focused on the right things.
Disciplined Thoughts – Focused on facts and avoiding anything that sidetracks from the priorities.
Disciplined Action – Understanding what specific things are and are not important to ensure the ultimate goals are met.
At APM, we are committed to achieving and delivering greatness – great customer experiences and great employee experiences – because we know the impact we have on our teammates and their families and their communities. We have great people, and we are empowering you with the right focuses to deliver. I am confident we have your commitment to disciplined thoughts and actions in order to achieve greatness.
-Jake